For the first time since 1971 there will be professional baseball in our nation’s capital. In an announcement on Tuesday September 28th, Major League Baseball stated that the Montreal/San Juan Expos will be relocated to Northern Virginia and claim Washington DC as their home base. The deal ended speculation on where the Expos, who have seen their home attendance figures drop to almost laughable numbers, would play in the future. Some other contenders were Portland and Las Vegas but in the end, DC made the most sense. Many experts said this was inevitable and that the team should have moved years ago. Sadly, essentially one man was holding up the process. This is a man who embodies everything that people hate about sports, from the greed to the lack of caring about fans to his outright devotion to the might dollar. The man is Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, and he managed to finally cave in to allowing the Expos to move so long as several caveats were included that protected his franchise.
The most basic argument perpetrated by Angelos was that having a team in the nearby market of Washington DC would dilute the fan base of his own Orioles. At first glance, his objections raise a valid point, however when you examine the sports landscape throughout the country you begin to realize how full of crap this man is. New York support two baseball teams, Chicago has two as well, Texas has three and California has a whopping five teams. Considering Baltimore and Washington DC are both in top 20 MSA markets, meaning in terms of households’ used to determine advertising reach. Secondly, and more locally, Baltimore currently has the Ravens while Washington DC is home to the Redskins and I think both of them are doing okay.
Another argument that Angelos perpetuated is that his crown jewel of a stadium, Camden Yards, would suffer drastic loss in attendance and therefore revenue. On one hand that may be true, as introducing another team to the market will no doubt draw away some fans, however, the fact his Orioles have been absolute garbage the past few seasons is a bigger negative aspect. The formula for attendance in sports is very easy, the more you win, the more the fans come. There are obvious exceptions such as the Cubs and Green Bay Packers who have huge fan bases that are immune to the record of the team.
It used to be said that a new stadium would attract fans, and it does, for the first year, but the Brewers and Tigers, both playing in brand new parks, are prime examples of the notion that no matter how fancy the paper is that you wrap the present in, if the actual present is crap, people won’t be interested. And let’s make one thing perfectly clear, the Expos, or whatever they wind up being called, are crap and will be crap for quite some time. But when you think about it the grand context that is the best thing about the team moving.
Their arrival in a new city, one that has been without baseball for over 30 years will automatically generate interest, even more so than a new stadium would, so the team can plan on playing in front of large at first, then moderately sized crowds. Secondly, with a new team come virtually no expectations, the fans will be grateful to have a team and won’t be expecting a championship anytime soon. Therefore the team can play in a vacuum, skill wise at least, and as they slowly improve, their fan base will grow. Ideally, around the fifth or sixth season they begin to compete and perhaps even qualify for the playoffs. By then the proper incubation for fan interest will have been completed and you are left with a passionate group of fans that have weathered the storm and are deserving of a winning team. A complete success, one that was experienced recently by the Arizona Diamondbacks. That is not the hard part though. As proved in Arizona this past year, the key will be to retain fans once that initial wave of success and euphoria wears off. The reason this won’t be a problem in Washington DC is due to the huge population and their already existing love of the game. The residents out in Phoenix knew of baseball obviously, but it was not engrained in their memories. Hell, they had to provide a list of rules of the game during the World Series in 2001. Such will not be the case in Washington D.C. This is a city with a long baseball history, most of it bad, but history nonetheless. The great Walter “Night Train” Johnson pitched for the Senators and Griffith Field is one of the more historic parks in the annals of the game.
When you add up all the pieces, a large population, and knowledgeable fan base, a team with low expectations, the outlook for the Expos is suddenly very bright. Even the most jaded baseball fan has to be happy for the Expos, for no team deserves what they have had to go through the past few years. And if there is any justice in the world, while the Expos improve on the field, the Orioles will continue to tank thereby executing a payback in karmic sense on Peter Angelos, the man who tried to prevent this from ever happening.
