15,000 Reasons to Move to Washington

Washingtonpost.com reports that the Nats have collected deposits on 15,000 season tickets. 15,000 full-81-game plans. At $300 each, the team now has $4,500,000 in new swag to work with in the offseason, which will go a long way to making sure that Tony Tavares and crew have enough laptops, software, and subscriptions to Baseball Prospectus to run a quality organization.

More importantly, it shows an excited and committed DC fan base. 15,000 full game plans (they haven't yet started sell popular 27-game plans, Sunday-only plans, etc.) equals guaranteed attendance of 1,215,000 fans. The Expos hadn't had 1.2 million fans since 1997. And they never had attendance of more than 2.3 million per season (1983). I would be shocked, shocked if the Nats didn't pull in 2.5 million or greater this year.

[Edit - 11/26/04 - 9:43 a.m.] Alert reader Anonymous (man, is that guy prolific- first this book, and then this and now commenting on this blog) points out that by selling 15,000 season tickets, and guaranteeing an attendance level of 1,215,000, the Washington Nationals, as of 11/25/2004, having never played a single game, have the highest single-season attendance in DC Baseball history. Check out the Twins historic attendance and the Rangers historic attendance for confirmation - the highest was 1,027,000 in 1946.]