Simulated Gameday Experience

So the Nats’ Opening Day was on Monday.  That isn’t necessarily news, but the crowd composition ended up making the most headlines.  A group (and by “a group”, I mean “more than a few thousand”) Phillies fans ended up crashing Opening Day in DC, turning the game into a virtual home game for the Phillies.  This went over about as well as you’d expect among Nats fans:

Nats Triple Play

Capitol Punishment

Nationals Inquisition

Those of you who are aware of foreshadowing are probably smart enough to figure out where this is going.

Look, I understand that from a purely financial standpoint, you want to sell seats.  The Nationals aren’t any good, and with the rise of hockey (and the associated zombie bandwagon fans I’ll probably disparage later – hey look!  It’s a Caps tattoo sleeve!) the Nats get to compete with the Wizards for the title of third-most followed team in the DC area.  DC’s more transient than most, so you’re going to have a larger than typical away crowd at most games.  That’s just how it goes.  There’s a fine line between dealing with transients and implicitly encouraging them, and most of the rage comes from the Nationals having a festival on the far side of that line.

Take the email exchange here as an example.  (And, for the purposes of this argument, I’m not going to reference Stan openly asking Phillies fans to come support their team in DC – this was last season.)  Where do you see any mention of “we might’ve wanted to be careful about making sure we limited out-of-town group sales” or “the atmosphere at Opening Day wasn’t supportive for our Nationals” or “man, that was totally fucked up”?  I don’t see any evidence of contrition, and as frustrating as it is to see a ton of Philly fans storm the home park, it’s equally frustrating to have upper management respond with “hey, sucks to be y’all”.  Whether or not that was the intent, that was the interpretation.   People are pissed.

It seems to me that it’d be a good idea to make sure that the fans you have converted don’t decide things aren’t going well.  Hell, I was a straight-up holdover from the previous incarnation of the franchise – I’m as close to caught as you can get, and this makes no sense to me at all.  It’s OPENING DAY – it’s not hard to sell out Opening Day.  You know why it’s not hard to sell out Opening Day?  BECAUSE IT’S OPENING DAY.  Sell group tickets to Phillies fans for the rest of the games for all I care – Opening Day was one of two times all season that the Nats will get a good percentage of the nation’s eyes.  (The other will be Strasburg’s first start, whenever that is.  And even that will be the baseball diehards, and they’ll turn away once he leaves the game.)  It’s not like the Nats are known as anything other than a crapbag franchise, and when people tune in and get treated to CBP Southeast, the impression you leave fans with is twofold:

- The Nats don’t have many fans

- Front office doesn’t particularly care about this fact

Here’s a protip: local fans can figure that out as well.  Are you sure that second message is the one you want to be sending?

Tags: baseball, pathetic