MLB to use canned crowd sounds, some teams to add cutout of fans to fill seats in coronavirus-shortened season

Fans will not be filling the seats once major league baseball starts its coronavirus-shortened season, but the stadiums will not be silent.

Recordings of fans will fill the void of not having people in the stands at some stadiums when the season starts this week, CBS Sports reported.

Teams tried out the canned sound during intrasquad games.

Players are supporting the piped-in fan noise.

“Speaking to the crowd noise, it’s way better than having nothing in the stadium and just silence,” Justin Turner said recently, according to CBS Sports. “I enjoyed it. It gave me a little bit of adrenaline just having that noise and random cheers. Hopefully, it’s something that we have and most stadiums have. Hopefully, everything moves in a direction where we can safely return to fans being able to watch us play again.”

The Washington Nationals experimented with the recorded fans sound, NBC Sports reported.

For the most part, players were happy with the noise, once the volume was lowered.

So where is the sound coming from?

The MLB will be giving it to all teams along with a touchpad that will be looped into ballparks’ sound systems. The noise itself was created for MLB The Show video games. There will be about 75 different reactions that can be used during the game and will accompany announcers, walkup music and in-stadium videos. All will be managed by the home team, NBC Sports reported.

While all teams will have some crowd noise playing, not all teams will have the atmosphere game plan when the season starts.

Some teams are adding cardboard cutouts of people to actually fill the empty seats, even allowing fans to have their own likenesses in the stands.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are selling cutouts for up to $299 as a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, ESPN reported.

The Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros are also offering fans to virtually fill their seats.

Opening night is set for July 23 with the New York Yankees taking on the World Series Champions Washington Nationals and the San Francisco Giants taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers. Opening Day is July 24. The first game is Atlanta Braves taking on the New York Mets with a 4:10 p.m. ET start.

Click here for the complete week-by-week MLB schedule.

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