The Mankato MoonDogs have yet to jump the shark.

The Northwoods League baseball team just completed its sixth season in Mankato, and the games were as popular as ever down last week’s final stretch.

Friday’s home finale drew nearly 2,000 fans to Franklin Rogers Park. They got their money’s worth, too: an extra-inning game with playoff implications, a wild infield triple (yes, triple!) in the seventh inning, a game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth, the old hidden-ball trick and a manager meltdown that would make Lou Piniella blush.

They got everything but a MoonDogs win.

That game’s crowd raised the team’s total season attendance to an all-time high of 39,101. The MoonDogs’ average attendance jumped up by more than 9 percent — exactly 100 people per game — this season.

In 2001, the final season of city’s previous Northwoods League incarnation, the Mankato Mashers, wooden-bat baseball struggled to draw a few hundred folks. The Mashers’ chronic attendance woes kept league schedulers from giving them weekends and other prime-time home games.

This year, the MoonDogs got to host the Northwoods League All-Star Game and drew more than 2,300 fans for the July 11 event.

“What we’re seeing here is more big crowds,” owner Joe Schwei said Friday. “We’ve had big crowds here throughout our six years. But we’re seeing more nights with big crowds.”

Team officials have been trying to keep growing those crowds and prevent that proverbial jumping of the shark, a pop-culture term that refers to a phenomenon’s peak and ensuing downslide.

General manager Kyle Mrozek said the MoonDogs have focused more marketing efforts to communities surrounding Mankato and drew many first-time customers this summer.

Last week’s playoff push helped, too, he said.

Although conventional wisdom often has it that the game’s outcome is secondary, Mrozek said meaningful games enhanced the ball park’s usual festive atmosphere.

“I think being in a pennant drive for the first time since 2002 helped the buzz a little,” Mrozek said.

It certainly added interest Friday’s game.

Sean Nicol hit a high pop fly that fell between the St. Cloud pitcher and four infielders, and Nicol scrambled all the way around to an uncovered third base. Nate Hanson, who led the Northwoods League with a .363 average, smacked a two-run homer to send the game to extra innings. And manager Jason Nell went ballistic arguing the legality of the River Bats’ hidden-ball play. It was a fireworks display outdone only by the real thing after the game ended.