[1][2] The lack of crowds was due to civil unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American man who was critically injured while in police custody 10 days earlier.

[4] On the morning of April 12, 2015, Baltimore police officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, in the Sandtown–Winchester neighborhood on the city's western outskirts, on a charge of possessing a switchblade knife.

[5] While being transported to the Western District police station to be booked, officers claimed Gray had become unruly in the back of the van and stopped several times to restrain and calm him.

By April 24, after the police had released records showing that Gray had not been injured either before or at the time of his arrest and the officers involved had been placed on paid leave pending investigation,[5] Governor Larry Hogan deployed state troopers to the city to assist in maintaining order.

[6] The following day, a march in the city's downtown Inner Harbor neighborhood started peacefully, but later turned violent, with some protesters smashing windows and vandalizing parked cars near Camden Yards, home stadium of the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball (MLB) team.

Roving gangs of youths broke windows, looted stores, lit fires, and threw cinder blocks at police, who in turn responded with tear gas, in several neighborhoods over the next two days.

[4] But while baseball commissioner Rob Manfred appeared to have suggested that possibility was under consideration earlier that week,[11] the Nationals said later that neither MLB nor the Orioles had talked to them about it; nor had they made the offer themselves.

[4] At the time, the Post further noted, the two teams were in litigation with each other over revenues from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) cable channel, a joint venture which broadcasts their games.

[22] Fans in the former group had started gathering outside the gate three hours earlier; some had come from as far away as Chincoteague, Virginia, at the south end of the Delmarva Peninsula, two of whom had brought trash bags along to help with post-riot cleanup.

He walked up and down Camden Street carrying a sign showing the team's mascot bird with a tear in its eye, faulting the mayor for allowing this to happen.

"[22] Another protester, Brendan Hurson, a public defender, walked up and down Camden Street wearing an Orioles jersey and carrying a sign urging that Freddie Gray not be forgotten.

Players on both teams lined up in midfield and placed their hats across their chests, along with the umpires, for the national anthem, which was played over the stadium's public address system rather than sung from the field as the Orioles typically had had it performed.

Orioles' catcher Caleb Joseph, after finishing his pregame warmups, ran along the fence high-fiving nonexistent fans, at one point stopping to mime signing an autograph, on his way to the bullpen.

A teammate, first baseman Chris Davis, who before the game had lamented that "this isn't the way you want to make history", similarly tossed balls he had caught for the final out of the inning into the seats behind the dugout, despite the lack of fans to catch them as souvenirs.

[3] The two broadcast teams are separated by a wall that normally prevents this from happening; Thorne said afterwards that the Sox announcers were teasingly telling him and color commentator Jim Palmer to speak more quietly.

[26] Players could hear not only the TV announcers but conversations in the press box,[20] to the point that Jones acknowledged a familiar voice calling out to someone else from that level while standing in the on-deck circle.

[23] Showalter said conversations in the dugout were tempered by the awareness that the umpires and the media could hear them;[27] likewise, Chicago second baseman Micah Johnson said that he tried to moderate his verbal reactions to mistakes.

[20] The seventh-inning stretch was marked, as usual, with "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" followed by John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" on the stadium's sound system.

As Jones came up to bat, having failed to hit successfully since his first-inning sacrifice fly, Thorne called it in the hushed tone of voice commonly used by golf announcers such as Jim Nantz.

[28] A deep fly to center off reliever Scott Carroll turned into a double off the outfield fence for Jones' first (and only[25]) hit of the game, leading Thorne to say "that green jacket appears well within reach", alluding to the garment given to the winner of the annual Masters Tournament.

In addition to the team staff retrieving fouls, television cameramen set up in their usual locations, and photographers roamed freely, taking pictures not only of the action on the field but the empty concourses and closed concession stands.

[21] Other than those groups, three scouts for other major league teams sat near home plate and watched the action, evaluating players for possible trades or free agency signings.

Since it could not be known how many might have shown up had the game been played at night, as originally scheduled, the paper offered a "reasonable estimate" of 25,000, slightly over half Camden Yards' capacity.

Sportswriter Bill Baer set up a GoFundMe page for fans to contribute and make up the difference to their paychecks[19] (he later refunded all the donations when the Orioles informed him that they had indeed paid the workers for the lost games[31]).

[32] A year later, Eaton, who had seen smoke rising from the affected areas of the city from his hotel room and watched protesters get arrested when he walked across the street to get lunch during the two days of postponed games, admitted to the Sun he had underestimated the effect of not having fans present.

[27] He had also drawn praise for his conciliatory answer about the situation in the city to a young local African-American man covering his first-ever game for his website, and on the anniversary said he was still "real proud of everything, the whole organization ...

"[34] On Brian Kilmeade's Fox News Radio show, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani also criticized the Orioles for playing without fans.

[27][3][37][38] "Baseball might have found the magic formula to speeding up games: no fans" wrote Austin Knoblauch in the Los Angeles Times[39] Showalter, too, noted that "[s]ome of the altercations we've had early in the season, I was thinking how much of that is feeding off crowd reaction?

[27] Late night talk show host Conan O'Brien sounded a common theme in humorous popular culture responses to the game.

Taran Killam and Kenan Thompson portrayed past Orioles' stars Jim Palmer and Frank Robinson calling the game[d] despite not only the absence of fans but a heavy National Guard presence, which required the teams to use a Nerf bat and shot down a fly ball with a military drone; Bobby Moynihan played a hotdog vendor with no one to sell to.