By Jarrod Leicher | Reporter
On April 5, the Texas Rangers are going to be opening the stadium at full capacity for Opening Day. Even though the pandemic is waning with the heavy distribution of vaccines, the question raised is how soon should we open back up fully? Or how long until people are actually comfortable with being back open at 100%?
We are all tired of this pandemic, but we also understand why we have to social distance and wear masks. Totally disregarding that before a decent amount of people are vaccinated is simply a disregard for public safety.
The new Rangers’ stadium has a capacity of about 40,500 fans, which is a lot of people in one area all cheering at a game, masks or not. While more and more people are getting vaccinated every day, the beginning of April does seem to be too soon to go back to 100% capacity for events like these.
Other MLB teams have not authorized attendance at the level the Rangers have. Most of baseball teams are allowing around 20-30% capacity, which seems to be a much safer alternative with only 13.7% of the U.S. population being vaccinated as of March 24.
Luckily, most other sports are not following in the Rangers’ footsteps. When we are on the brink of finally ending the pandemic that has gone on for over a year, getting back to normal too soon would just spell out disaster for everyone involved.
While obviously not much can be done about the decision the Rangers have taken since they are complying with Texas’ rules, it will be interesting to see how it will play out after the season starts and what attendance actually turns out to be.
