Today in History—September 22: The Day Only 413 Fans Watched the Yankees

On this day in 1966, the Yankees set a weird new record: smallest paid attendance at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Just 413 fans attended this Thursday afternoon makeup game against the White Sox, representing a wild decline for a team that almost scraped out a win in the World Series just two years before.

(And a team that currently has the most World Series wins in history, more than double any other franchise.)

But in September 1966, the Yankees were finishing their season in last place, 10th out of the newly expanded 10-team American League. There were some pretty historic names on the roster, including Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford, but nothing could salvage this season.

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The White Sox had fared slightly better that year, ending up in fourth place, but they too had already been mathematically eliminated from pennant contention.

Basically, the game didn’t matter. But it would become pretty consequential for one of the Yankees’ most-famous voices.

First, it had been a very wet week. New York City had experienced four days of near-record rainfall, leaving both the field and the fans soggy, with many expecting that Thursday’s game would be postponed or canceled. The September 22 game was originally supposed to have been played on September 20, but it was postponed because of the weather. This surely contributed to the low attendance. (Friday’s game only drew 1,440 fans as well.)

The 413-person game also just happened to be the first home game under the team’s brand new president, Mike Burke of CBS.

During the game, Yankees management forbade the cameras from showing the empty stands—a precious PR move—but the team’s longtime broadcaster, Red Barber, made some notable comments on it on air: “This crowd is the story, not the game.”

Barber, a sports announcer who’d been calling games for three decades and for the Yankees for 13 years, was let go the following week. His refusal to not spotlight the spotty attendance exacerbated already-brewing tensions between him and the new management.

The Yankees dropped the game to the White Sox, 1–4.