The Worcester Bravehearts played the 2019 baseball season knowing knowing their days in Worcester may eventually be numbered, or at least that they’ll have to fight harder for fans once the Pawtucket Red Sox have their planned arrival in 2021.
But the Bravehearts hit another high for attendance this year, landing sixth nationally among all collegiate summer league teams with 2,574 fans per game. That’s a slight bump of about 3% from the prior year but a 47% increase from the team’s inaugural season in 2014 at Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field at the College of the Holy Cross.
Attendance at Bravehearts games were by far the highest in the Northeast among collegiate league teams, which field college baseball players over short summer seasons. The team trailed some Midwestern and Southern cities including the Madison Mallards in Wisconsin, with 6,080 a game, and the Savannah Bananas in Georgia with 4,205 a game, according to ballparkdigest.com.
When the Worcester City Council and Pawtucket Red Sox announced a deal in August 2018 to bring the team to Worcester, the Bravehearts’ owners, the Creedon family, said the team wouldn’t be going away. Team president and owner John Creedon acknowledged in a message to fans that it would be hard for the team to compete with the PawSox, which fields a team just one level below Major League Baseball, but vowed to continue playing in the city.
This March, Creedon said he was pursuing buying another Futures Collegiate Baseball League team, the Nashua Silver Knights in New Hampshire. Plans to keep the Bravehearts in Worcester remained.
As for the PawSox, attendance took another drop this year in Rhode Island, with 5,254 fans per game, according to the International League. That mark landed the team 12th out of 14 teams in the league. That was also a 12% drop from 2018 and a 41% drop from a decade ago.
The PawSox are slated to begin playing in Worcester for the 2021 season. Site work is underway now for the team’s $101-million municipally owned ballpark, Polar Park.
