If you're dealing with crowd clapping thats louder than the music, I agree with the earlier recommendation on the limiter instead of a compressor. You can do it with a compressor but you'll have to figure out what the top end of the music threshold is and then stop compressing just under that. I think it's just easier to go for limiting; if I'm going to work on crowd noise I might as well cut to the chase.
I'm a fan of Izotope's limiter on the Intellegent2 setting. I can usually eek out another 3-4db of volume without regret.
For those on a budget, Audacity's hard limiter works, but I wouldn't push it further than 2db into the music (compared to the 4+ I've found I could get away with using Izotope's if I wanted to), and use a residue value of 0.35 or higher. ymmv, just my experience.
This has been discussed in many other threads, but I don't have any problem with EQ'ing my sources. While I understand that people don't EQ, I personally find that almost 100% of my recordings sound better after I've done a little bit of tweeking here and there. As has been said a million times before, just make sure it's done in small doses and do it over the course of several days or several sessions. It's not unusual that I'll EQ a source one night and come back the next day and change it back.
+1
Compare on multiple systems if and where possible.