Of all of the brickbats their critics love to throw at the Nationals, the phoniest of all is the rap on attendance.
As the ballclub prepares to begin their final 2009 homestand on Tuesday, it finds itself 24th overall in attendance, with a per game average of 22,681, roughly 54 percent of capacity. Given their won-lost record, it’s a pretty impressive figure.
The Nationals are outdrawing the Royals, Reds, Indians, Pirates, Marlins and A’s, in that order. All have better records than the Nationals, with the Marlins still technically in the wild card race in the National League.
In a society where perception becomes reality, regardless of fact, the perception is that if you have a new ballpark, you should sell out every night. It’s based totally on the phenomenon that was Oriole Park at Camden Yards. OPACY attracted better than 3 million fans every year for its first decade, though that base began to erode when the Birds started to lose more often than they won.
What many fans have either forgotten or choose to ignore is that OPACY was a truly groundbreaking design. They went out of their way to build something new that seemed quite old. The brick facades, asymmetrical fences and looming warehouse backdrop made it seem like something out of the 1920’s instead of the 1990’s. It was radical.
The other new stadiums across the country that followed lost their novelty far quicker than Baltimore, and by the time Nationals Park came along, many, if not most, local fans, had already been through the “new” ballpark experience elsewhere.
If someone can point out for me a 100-loss team that, new ballpark or not, had fans beating down their doors I’d love to hear about it. I’ve researched the last 40 years — since the beginning of divisional play — and it’s just not there.
Many of the Nats’ loudest critics are the same folks who never wanted to see Washington get a team in the first place, because it flew in the face of the myth they’d accepted as fact since 1971: Washington lost two teams because it’s a lousy baseball town.
In their final 38 seasons — following their last post-season appearance in 1933 — Washington’s American League franchise finished at .500 or better just six times, and only one time in consecutive seasons. Use your head on this one: good ballclubs draw bigger crowds than bad ones. Always have, always will.
There’s a formula professional sports marketing people use called Fans Per Victory. It’s based on the number of tickets sold in a ratio with wins and losses. It’s quite revealing, inasmuch as a team like the Nationals, headed for a second straight 100-loss season, show up as having much better fan support as some teams with better records.
Stan Kasten was right when he said, “We’ll get the attendance we deserve.”
They have.
Phil Wood is a contributor to Nats Xtra on MASN. Contact him at [email protected].
