Orioles, D’Backs Struggling At Gate; Cards Add New Offer

Orioles’ Attendance Down 18.8% Through First 12 Games

The Orioles’ attendance is down 18.8% through the team’s first 12 games of the season, according to Thomas Boswell of the WASHINGTON POST, who writes while Orioles attendance “has been mostly shrinking for the last eight years ... it’s never fallen off a cliff like this before,” The team’s average attendance this season is 26,238, down from 32,305 at this time last year. The Orioles have had six crowds under 20,000 this season, including a Camden Yards-record low of 13,194, compared with 12 in all of ’05. Boswell writes the “knee-jerk response ... is to say, ‘It must be the Nationals,’” but the team’s attendance “held up just fine” last year. Also, with Orioles Owner Peter Angelos “playing a role in keeping Nationals games off Comcast, which serves 1.3 million Washington area homes, Angelos has made himself a nightly issue in countless living rooms.” Boswell wonders, “Has a critical mass of grass-roots dissatisfaction finally been reached? Have the Orioles, and especially Angelos, succeeded in progressively alienating more and more of the team’s fans in both the Baltimore and the Washington markets?” (WASHINGTON POST, 4/20).

D’BACKS: In Phoenix, Nick Piecoro reports D’Backs attendance at Chase Field is down 14% through the first nine games,and the club ranks “near the bottom of the [NL] in average attendance.” The team has already drawn the “two smallest crowds in franchise history and is on pace to set a record low in total attendance for the third consecutive season.” But Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick said that the “small crowds aren’t a surprise,” considering the team’s consecutive losing seasons. Kendrick: “We are realists. ... It isn’t reasonable to expect that people are going to start to come out in really large numbers until we start playing very well” (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 4/20).

CARDINALS: The Cardinals and KTRS-AM tomorrow will launch the First Pitch Tickets program, in which 250 tickets will be available for purchase in pairs for $5.50 the morning of each home game. KTRS’ location on the AM dial is 550. The location of the tickets will be “potluck, known only when they are handed out ... 10 minutes before first pitch” (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 4/20).