Modesto Nuts enjoy another year of record attendance

The view from Steve Sather's seat might have been the best at John Thurman Field.

Perched 17 rows above the diamond, just to the left of home plate, his seat gave him an unobstructed view of the entire field and the video board while being close enough to the action to be able to argue with the home- plate umpire during Friday night's game.

"This is a $9 seat, and I think we paid $55 for our Giants tickets the last time we went, not even counting the travel expense and the parking," Sather said. "And you're a lot closer to the action here. This is a much better deal and they put on a pretty good program here — with T-shirt tosses and all the games they play between innings."

In a nutshell, Sather hailed the value of the minor league game. It's real baseball, real entertaining, real close to home and — comparatively speaking — real cheap.

That combination has made the minor league game almost recession-proof, not only in Modesto but across the country.

With the crowd of 2,968 for Sunday's regular-season finale, the Nuts' final attendance clocked in at 167,722, breaking last year's record of 164,306. Like every other professional sport, minor league attendance figures are based on the number of tickets sold.

"It's been a solid year for the industry as a whole," said Modesto Nuts' vice president and general manager Mike Gorrasi.

"Minor league baseball is a great value. We focus on families and value because we know people are making decisions that are affecting their pocketbooks, and they're all looking for ways to get the most bang for their buck."

The Nuts nearly lost any shot at the record before a pitch was

thrown this season, when it lost a certain sellout crowd to an opening night rainout. They not only lost the crowd, but by having to make up the game in a doubleheader, their number of dates was reduced from 70 to 69.

So this year's record not only eclipsed the mark set last season, it did so with one less date.

Part of the reason the Nuts were able to overcome the loss of the opening night crowd was the addition of the two press box-level party decks and the left field covered picnic area. Although the stadium continues to seat 4,000, and anything above that number is considered a sellout, the functional ca- pacity of the stadium, including all the new general admission and standing-room areas, is much greater.

That new capacity was tested July 3, when the Independence Day fireworks promotion drew a franchise record 5,424 fans. That crowd broke the record of 5,083 set May 9. Crowds in excess of 5,000 were not possible before this season, but the Nuts eclipsed that mark for a third time Friday when 5,292 came out to the ballgame.

The team caught a huge attendance break Thursday when the Texas Rangers promoted local baseball hero Tommy Mendonca onto the roster of the Bakersfield Blaze just in time for their visit to Modesto. The sudden arrival of the Turlock High graduate and 2008 College World Series star from Fresno State created a walk-up ticket demand not seen in Modesto since the surprise visit of major league pitcher Randy Johnson with the Vi- salia Oaks on Easter Sunday, 2007.

The additional walk-up sales probably weren't enough to offset the loss of the opening-day crowd, but they gave the team the extra sales to break the single- season attendance mark.

"We had one rainout, and yes, it was a sellout we lost, but some teams back east got killed by the weather," Gorrasi said. "That wild weather this season killed a lot of teams at the gate."