{"id":179332,"date":"2026-04-29T15:29:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/179332\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:29:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:29:37","slug":"railriders-draw-largest-april-crowd-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/179332\/","title":{"rendered":"RailRiders draw largest April crowd in years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite weather challenges this season so far, the RailRiders drew a record crowd Tuesday night, thanks to a break in the rain and free ticket vouchers. <\/p>\n<p>MOOSIC, Pa. \u2014 It&#8217;s always tough to play ball in the spring, but it&#8217;s been especially hard on the &#8220;RailRiders!&#8221; says one fan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Due to weather, about a third of their home games at PNC Field in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnep.com\/section\/lackawanna-county\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Moosic\u00a0<\/a>have had to be rescheduled this season so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you play baseball in April, it&#8217;s hit or miss. But we&#8217;ve had some really nice days, and then you have some days where it&#8217;s raining,&#8221; RailRiders General Manager and President Shawn Reilly says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t control what Mother Nature does; if it rains, it rains; if it doesn&#8217;t, it doesn&#8217;t,&#8221; says Wilkes University Student Caleb Burkhart.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But for the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders community service night, Mother Nature gave the team a break.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were watching the weather for sure, but it looked like it was good enough for us to be able to get into the game and not get too wet,&#8221; says Kyle Martin of Scott Township.<\/p>\n<p>It was a stroke of luck that the sky stayed dry, especially because the railriders gave out free ticket vouchers to some organizations and thousands of people for the game.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We got some vouchers that were donated to the St. Joseph&#8217;s Center, and we brought some residents. I like the opportunity to be able the residents out in the community so they can experience different things and see different things,&#8221; says St. Joseph&#8217;s Center Residential Manager Shanika Davis.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Because of the good weather and vouchers, the stadium was packed on a normal Tuesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a great crowd for Tuesday night, it might be one of our largest April crowds in 15, 20 years,&#8221; says Reilly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Shocking to many who were expecting just a normal RailRiders crowd.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m actually really surprised. I didn&#8217;t think there was going to be traffic. I didn&#8217;t think it was going to be hard to park, but people brought their dogs. We&#8217;re excited for hot dogs,&#8221; says Hannah Martin of Scott Township.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were surprised about how many people were here when we pulled into the parking lot, but it&#8217;s great, it&#8217;s going to be a full crowd tonight,&#8221; says Wilkes University Student Ben Grater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite weather challenges this season so far, the RailRiders drew a record crowd Tuesday night, thanks to a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-179332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}