Prior to the 2020 college baseball season, Mississippi State’s home venue, Dudy Noble Field, had played host to fifty-nine crowds of over 10,000 fans. All of those totals were achieved on weekends and typically against Southeastern Conference or post season foes. The only exceptions were Texas Tech and Western Illinois who were part of a three-team opening weekend in 2017.
Following last weekend’s series against Vanderbilt, the greatest cathedral in the history of college baseball claimed full ownership of the top-25 on campus crowds ever. State will simply break its own records the rest of the way.
On Tuesday night in the game between Mississippi State and Southern Miss, another milestone was reached. As the graphic announcing the 12,887 official attendance made the rounds on social media, many wondered if that tally was the new midweek high mark. After some research, those suspicions are indeed correct.
In the 2020s, Mississippi State has seen an increase in regular attendance even in some leaner years. Over the course of the last seven seasons, the Diamond Dawgs have drawn ninety-eight five digit crowds. That total will only rise in the weeks ahead as Southeastern Conference play continues and the Bulldogs keep pushing towards Omaha.
The 2020 college baseball season was canceled prior to the opening weekend of league play. During that abbreviated campaign, State still drew a pair of crowds north of 11,000, both coming on Saturdays.
The National Championship season of 2021 drew three regular season crowds of over 10,000 and the post season brought four more huge attendance totals to the ballpark the the record books.
The following year, 2022, State set a school record, at the time, as sixteen different games surpassed the 10,000 fan threshold. That number grew to twenty in 2023 and crested at twenty-three following the 2024 season. Last year, the trend ended as the gates at Dudy Noble Field only saw 10,000 or more fans in eighteen games.
Through the first month and a half of this season, State has already drawn five-digit attendance totals in a dozen games already. There is an extremely good chance that a new school record is reached and that the program leads the nation in attendance, again.
To answer the question rising in the minds of many, Tuesday night’s game in Starkville between the Bulldogs and Golden Eagles was the most attended midweek game on Mississippi soil ever. Pete Taylor Park at Southern Miss has a capacity of under 6,000. Ole Miss’s all-time attendance record came on April 23rd, 2022 against Mississippi State. That total was 12,503 fans.
Digging a little deeper, Keesler Federal Park in Biloxi drew a record number of fans when the Shuckers and Mississippi State Braves played in 2015, 6,231. Earlier this year, Mississippi State and Tulane drew the second highest attendance total with 6,112.
Mississippi State and Ole Miss have met at Trustmark Park several times drawing over 8,000 fans. The largest baseball crowd to ever walk the aisles of Trustmark came when the Bulldogs and Rebels met on April 23rd, 2019. 8,638 showed up to see it.
To summarize, not only was Tuesday night a historic night for Mississippi State, but for college baseball in the state of Mississippi. Furthermore, the Diamond Dawgs are part of attendance records in just about every other ball park in the Magnolia State.