Padres may be able to host some fans early in the season

The San Diego Padres might allow limited fans at Petco Park to start the 2021 season.

The San Diego Padres are coming off one of their most successful seasons in franchise history in 2020, as Jayce Tingler‘s club went 37-23 during the pandemic-shortened season and beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round of the postseason before falling to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was also the first year that the team went back to brown as their primary color.

It was an important year for the team. Unfortunately, fans were unable to attend the games due to coronavirus concerns, as was the case around Major League Baseball. As the start of the 2021 season gets closer, a lot of questions remain. Will we even start on time? And if so, how many fans, if any, will be allowed to attend games?

In what is shaping up to be yet another exciting season of Padres baseball, with the acquisitions of Blake Snell, Ha-Seong Kim, and Yu Darvish to an already talented roster, plenty of questions still remain. Yet we may have gotten a glimpse of what the beginning of the season will look like at Petco Park, as a report recently came out that the team is expecting a limited number of fans at games to start the year.

According to the above article, which quoted Padres President of Business Operations Erik Greupner, the team is expecting at least 20% capacity for Opening Day on April 1, when the Padres face the Arizona Diamondbacks. They then hope to let more fans in as the season goes on.

Of course, there’s a lot that will have to go right for that to happen. For starters, the season will need to start on time, which the latest report is that it will, though no official announcement has been made. Plus, the team will need to work with local health authorities to make sure they can still provide a safe experience for fans.

Usually by now, there is information available regarding single-game tickets, such as when they will go on sale, though that information has not yet been announced. Game times also have not been posted. And if there is a limited number of fans permitted to get tickets, those tickets will likely be hard to come by.

Then there’s Spring Training games in Peoria, Arizona, which start in less than two months. Again, no single-game ticket information is yet available, nor are game times posted.

Hopefully, we will learn more information in the near future. While there’s a lot of uncertainty about the virus, fans are also anxious to know whether they will be able to attend games either in the Cactus League or at Petco Park in 2021. That being said, it’s certainly good news that the team intends to host limited fans on Opening Day. Let’s hope they can pull it off.