One fact that’s impressed me the last few years has been baseball’s growth. In 2007, MLB set an attendance record with 79,502,524 in paid attendance; last year in 2008, baseball fell just short of that. Recently, people have been watching baseball live from the stadium, and a lot of it.

But, as we all know, there is this thing with our economy where it’s turning every industry to hell. (Except maybe porn. Does anyone have the numbers on that?) Peter Gammons has the details on what MLB is expecting for attendance this year, and it ain’t pretty.

Major League Baseball has warned club businesspeople that attendance is expected to be down 17-20 percent in 2009, and that it could be worse, especially for franchises such as the San Diego Padres, Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros, Colorado Rockies and others that could be seriously impacted by the recession.

Yeesh, 20 percent is a lot. And 20 percent less people in paid attendance means less money for teams, and that might really hurt some of them, as Gammons notes. But as E points out at FanHouse, there is one winner here in all this, and that’s you and me, the fan.

Less people attending games means tickets will be more readily available and they’ll be cheaper. Just don’t expect your $7 beers to be any less money once you’re inside the stadium.