Baseball Striking Out in Washington

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (1)

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST writing the column you are about to read is that no 
one cares about the Nationals, but that is precisely the point.

After four years, baseball in Washington is an unqualified flop.

Since Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, no stadium has drawn fewer fans in its inaugural season than Nationals Park. For the record, 17 parks have debuted in that time span.

Baseball's magic formula says the last-place Nationals were averaging 29,077 fans per game — the 20th best in the majors — as of Wednesday. (Thursday was to be the home finale, weather permitting.) Anyone who's actually been to a game or watched one on TV — we'll get back to that subject — knows that far less than that fill the seats.

Any report you hear about TV ratings shows greater disinterest than the previous bleak news. Just this month, only 6,000 people tuned into the Nationals game on the same day as the Redskins opener. More people probably watched C-SPAN.

The Washington Post even reported that the radio audience is so small that the ratings aren't statistically valid.

A dreadful team is to blame for most of this, and the Tampa Bay Rays' success offers hope that D.C. can one day drum up support for a winning team.

Let's be realistic, though. The Nationals are going to stink next year and probably the year after that. Attendance will only drop, and fewer people will bother searching for MASN to watch the games on TV.

It took 33 years to bring baseball back to D.C. It took four to get bored by it.

Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post