The Marlins attendance yesterday

Fishcrazy guessed it and LadyFish probably knew in it advance, yesterday's attendance was somewhat rigged.

The last year when the Marlins played a weekday day game and about 257 people showed up.  But this year the club in order to save themselves from embarrassment, gave away a bunch of tickets to school kids.  Something I have no problem with .

In his last home start, Burke Badenhop could hear Marlins fans booing him as he struggled through a five-walk performance.

But he knew the crowd would be friendlier Thursday when he saw sections of colorful T-shirts representing thousands of field-trip students who made up the majority of the 15,556 in attendance.

"Just seeing all the little kids in the crowd, I knew nobody would boo me too bad,'' he said.

When the young ones attend the game in mass, due to free tickets, they are maybe the most rabid supporters of the team.  To me, this is very encouraging for the future when it comes to Marlins fans, if it takes hold.

Naturally, at that age, I would cheer for anyone who got me out of school to see a baseball game.   But it is also possible that by doing the free ticket give away it is creating longtime fans of the club.  And probably working in the favor of growing new fans is the fact that their parents are Red Sox, Yankees, Mets and Brave fans, et. al., and really, who wants to be a fan of an out of market team just because your parents are.  In other words, I'm counting on the rebellious nature of youth.