August 10th, 2020 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka Every year for as long as most of us can remember, the Dodgers have led all of baseball in attendance, occasionally surpassing the coveted three-million mark.
They are also known for having the loudest and most spirited fans in all of baseball, and have since their very first game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on April 18, 1958, 62 years ago.
They still do, even with no fans in the stands during the current COVID-19-shortened 2020 season.
Wait, what? How is that even possible?
After the Dodgers exciting 6-2 come-from-behind win over the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium on Sunday afternoon, Dodgers left fielder A.J. Pollock, who hit one of two huge three-run home runs (the other by Dodgers newcomer Mookie Betts), told reporters during his postgame Zoom media scrum that the piped-in fan noise was so loud that he actually had a hard time hearing home plate umpire Adam Hamari, who was a mere three(-ish) feet away from him.
Allow me to digress.
Pollock was ahead in the count 3-1 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning with runners on first and second and his team trailing 2-0 when Giants submariner right-hander Tyler Rogers threw what Pollock thought was ball four to load the bases. Pollock dropped his bat and started towards first base only to learn that Hamari had called the pitch a strike, thus making it a full count and generating a brief discussion between him and Hamari.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
On the very next pitch – one that Pollock believed never should have happened – he launched it 379 feet over the wall in left-center field for a three-run go-ahead (and eventual game-winning) home run.
“I wasn’t really arguing [the strike call] as much, it was more… just so loud; our little cardboard cutout guys were going nuts today,” Pollock said, with a straight face. “I couldn’t hear anything; I was trying to ask the umpire if it was a strike because I didn’t really hear anything. And then he was trying to talk to me, I couldn’t hear him, and it was just a mess, he’s got his mask on.
“So that was kind of a weird situation, but anyways, yeah, it worked out really well and I got the 3-2 pitch and I was able to do some damage on it.”
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
Whoda thunk it – our cardboard cutouts were too loud.
Obviously, it wasn’t really the cardboard cutouts, but rather the piped-in artificial crowd noise. But whatevr it was, it was music to our earns … pun intended.
Play Ball!
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That was the best strike call we didn’t hear in a long time.
They’ve done such a great job at Dodger Stadium I tend to forget it’s not real fans. I even wondered why that blonde in the middle of your pic didn’t have her shades over her eyes on such a bright day.
BTW, is that a Dodger Dog right next to her, in front of the guy with the 42 cap?
San Diego and Arizona could make their cut-outs more realistic by putting about half the fans in Dodger Blue.
I see what you did there. lol!
I couldn’t even hear the announcers or anything except that annoying LOUD fake fan noise. If this is how the post season will play out, I’ll skip it.