Philadelphia Phillies 257-Game Ticket Sellout Streak Ends

The Philadelphia Phillies’ regular-season sellout streak at Citizens Bank Park was snapped at 257 consecutive games during Monday night’s 6-1 loss to Atlanta.

It ends as the longest streak ever in the National League and third longest in Major League history.

“You kinda know it’s gonna happen,” said Jimmy Rollins, the longest-tenured Phillies player. “You would hope that it wouldn’t. You would hope that one bad season wouldn’t break it up, especially after the five winning seasons that we had and division championships. But that’s the way it goes. People aren’t gonna spend money and come to the game if they don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth. And this year we’ve been a little short.”

Manager Charlie Manuel, whose club fell to 49-60 on Monday night, said: “It’s kind of up to us to make sure we get our team together and get better and get our crowd back. I’m sure we can. I know we still had 40,000 or something like that. I’m sorry we didn’t sell out. That just goes to show you what kind of season we’ve had.”

The streak started during a 4-3 loss to the Reds on July 7, 2009. From that game through Sunday’s, the combined paid attendance was 11,585,952, with an average of 45,082 per game. During the streak, the Phillies went 154-103 at Citizens Bank Park in the midst of three NL East championship seasons.

“The number of sellouts could not have been possible without the tremendous loyalty of our fans who continue to lead all of Major League Baseball in average attendance this year,” Phillies president David Montgomery said.

The paid attendance for Monday’s game against the Braves was 41,665.

The Phillies’ streak trails only the Red Sox’s current string of 772 consecutive sellouts and the Indians’ run of 455 in a row from 1995-2001.

“It was a heck of a run. We had fun. I know I go out every night, first thing I do is look up and see how many seats are empty at the beginning of the game, and by the third inning, see how many of those seats were filled. It was something we came to expect really. … That’s a lot of baseball games. There’s been a lot of winning in that time. Hopefully, they enjoyed it as much as we did.”