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August 7, 2006

The Ledger Domain

Mid-Atlantic Tango: Looking at the Orioles and Nationals Attendance

by Maury Brown

I can’t explain it, but there’s something about the Mid-Atlantic that fascinates me. I’ve never stepped on her well-worn shores, or been influenced by her cities, but I’ve been hit with her siren song a coast away when it comes to baseball.

It’s Brooks and Frank. It’s Hondo and Short and the Griffiths. It’s Camden Yards and the relocation of the Expos. In the case of one club, it’s the admiration of fans that still cling to the greatness of its past, while the other tries to reconcile with a past that was, for the most part, horrid, while trying to forge a new identity. It’s the Orioles and the Senators and now, the Nationals. The obsession has been daily for almost 6 years, and there seems to be no indication that it'll change.

Where there was one, there now is two – Attendance

Peter Angelos’ words are still fresh in my mind, even though he said them two years ago. "If [the Expos move to Washington], this team [the Orioles] will never be competitive,” Angelos said. “We're in the most difficult division to start with. You'll end up with a two-team division with the Yankees and Red Sox driving the payroll up through the stratosphere." He then said that a team in D.C. would cost him about $40 million a year; no small pittance.

Here we are just a little over a season and a half into the era of a DC team (yet again) and, lo and behold, attendance is down in both Baltimore and DC. There are a number of factors involved in the swoons, with the most obvious being that both teams aren’t exactly ripping up the standings.

To try and get a feel for how the attendance for the two clubs functions, you have to see how the schedules make attendance rise and fall.