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It hath ended, Philadelphia.

The Phillies sellout streak ends at 257 games.

The announced crowd for tonight’s game at Citizens Bank Park was 41,665, about 1,500 sold tickets short of a sellout, which the Phillies count as around 43,100. It is the first time since July 7, 2009 that CBP has not been filled for a regular home game (in 2010, the series against the Blue Jays that had been scheduled to be played in Toronto did not sell out).

David Montgomery even had a statement prepared for this unfortunate event: [via Ryan Lawrence]

“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." 

 

The Phillies end with the longest sellout streak in the history of the National League, and third longest in baseball history (the Red Sox have a streak of 772 sellouts and the Indians sold out 455 from 1995-2001).

Of course, back in May, we speculated that the streak would soon end. Over the last month, crowds have been less than capacity, but the Phillies still claimed sellouts. Though they deny it, the massive availability of cheap tickets on secondary sites like StubHub, a partner with MLB, and others (like our friends at Score Big), raised a curious eyebrow to that claim as it appeared some tickets were being sold in less than traditional fashion.  Whatever the case, not even the Phillies could fudge tonight’s attendance.

An era has ended.

via beat writer Mandy Housenick, who has diligently tweeted attendance updates at every. single. home. game.