Louis Sockalexis: The First Cleveland Indian 

by David Fleitz

(coming in October 2002)

 Baltimore and Washington

by David Fleitz
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Ted Williams was the last manager of the Washington Senators.

 

One of baseball's major problems is the fact that three of its franchises are dragging down all the others. 

Tampa Bay has averaged only 13,002 fans per game so far this season, while the Montreal Expos (9,920 fans per game) and Florida Marlins (10,015) are doing even worse than that. I looked in the paper last week and saw that a game in Montreal drew only 2,134 people. That's ridiculous, and if I owned the Expos, I'd play all road games for the rest of the year if possible.

They could move the Expos to Toledo and draw more fans, for heaven's sake. Toledo's new stadium holds 10,300 people, and they had 26 sellouts this year.

Anyway, a lot of folks want to move the Expos to Washington, DC. Washington was the home of the Senators until 1971 when the team moved to Dallas-Fort Worth and became the Texas Rangers.

Washington is, by far, the largest city in the US without a major league team. It's the 8th largest TV market in the nation as well. There are two groups trying to buy the Expos and bring them to DC, and you can learn more about the whole issue at http://www.baseballindc.com.

The main objection to a new Washington team comes from Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He says that a new club only 40 miles from Baltimore will hurt his team's attendance.

If that's true, then the Orioles' turnstile count must have jumped in 1972 when the Senators moved. A lot of Washington-area fans must have ventured to Baltimore to get their baseball fix, right?

I looked up the attendance figures for Baltimore and Washington from 1969 to 1975, and this is what I found:

Year      Baltimore Washington

1969      1,062,000   918,000
1970      1,057,000   824,000
1971      1,023,000   655,000
1972        899,000         0
1973        958,000         0
1974        962,000         0
1975      1,002,000         0
1976      1,058,000         0

Doesn't it seem strange that when the Senators left town, Baltimore's attendance went down?

I know that the Orioles won the pennant in 1969, 1970, and 1971, and slumped in 1972. However, they won their division in 1973 and 1974.  As the table shows, the Orioles did not get any boost from the absence of a team in Washington.

Looking at the issue from the other end, what happened to Washington's attendance when Baltimore entered the league in 1954?

Year      Baltimore Washington

1951              0   695,000
1952              0   699,000
1953              0   595,000
1954      1,060,000   503,000
1955        852,000   425,000
1956        901,000   431,000 

Washington's turnstile count fell after 1953, partly because of the new Orioles and partly because the Senators were so awful at the time.  Anyway, it appears that the presence of the Orioles cut into Washington's attendance, while the presence of the Senators had no effect on Baltimore's.  I'll bet that if a new Senators team comes in, it won't have any effect on the Orioles' profits.

I don't know why Peter Angelos is being hard-headed about the issue, unless he hopes to gain some concessions from the commissioner in other areas. I don't think that Washington and Baltimore will interfere with each other, especially if the two teams play in different leagues. Go ahead and move the Expos to Washington and solve one of the sport's most nagging problems.