Major League Baseball team the Texas Rangers recently announced that they will be opening their stadium to fans for the upcoming season. Their Globe Life Field will be opened up to 100% capacity for opening day. After a previous full season of only seating cardboard cutouts, many fans are pleasantly surprised.

“I personally think it really cool, but then again, Texas is Corona central, so I feel like it’ll get shut down fast. But besides that, it’s a refreshing change,” says Evan Kent (’22).

Now able to seat the 40,000 people Globe Life Field is able to hold, adaptations need to be made. Most games will require a new precaution of “distanced seating”, the exact rules of which are still unclear. Chief Operating Officer Neil Leibman says that all attendees will be required to wear face coverings, despite Texas going completely mask free.

“We’re fully confident that we can do this in a responsible and safe way. There is so much pent-up demand for people wanting to go to events in a safe environment,” says Leibman.

The complete plan that’s been laid out is that the Rangers intend to seat to max capacity on their opening day, and then the games that follow will only seat a portion of the stadium due to their social distanced seating policy. The reason for opening day being so much fuller than the rest of the season is that the team made a certain promise to season pass holders.

“We’re not going to have the social distance seats available for Opening Day because we made a commitment to everybody [season ticket holders] that they could hold tickets if we would allow them for the proper opening day,” says executive vice president and chief of revenue Joe Januszewski.

Even with the new precautions being made to keep people safe, not everyone is on board with the stadium reopening. Especially to max capacity while some people still have cases. Currently Texas has around 2,420 new cases, which is less than last year, but more than none. A social environment as crowded as a baseball stadium can potentially cause a spike in cases.

“I think that even if they require fans to be tested before they attend, opening up the stadium encourages people to congregate and can spread an overall problematic message. If they do require it though, it’s possible to get a false negative test result even though you have corona,” says Kiana Lum (‘22).