WASHINGTON (AP) -Four seasons into baseball's return to the nation's capital, a resounding question hangs in the air: Where are the Washington Nationals' fans?
The average attendance of 29,025 for the inaugural season at Nationals Park ranks among the bottom third of major league clubs - and is the worst in 26 years for an existing team at a first-year ballpark.
The local TV ratings, about 8,000 households per game according to Nielsen, are so low that Major League Baseball said Friday it is "surprised and disappointed."
The explanation?
"We missed a whole generation here," Nationals owner Mark Lerner said. "We have to build a fan base."
Washington drew an average of 33,728 spectators at RFK Stadium in 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved south and brought the sport to D.C. after an absence of more than three decades.
Attendance dropped to 26,581 in Year 2, then 24,217 in Year 3, the team's last at creaky, old RFK.
Gleaming $611 million Nationals Park was supposed to attract spectators, following the boost received by 17 other existing teams that moved into new stadiums over the past quarter-century. But not since the 1982 Minnesota Twins averaged a tad above 11,000 in the Metrodome has a club been greeted less warmly at its new address day after day.
Only eight games - No. 81 was rained out Thursday night in an appropriately dreary conclusion - drew more than the NL average of about 34,000 spectators. Many of the 41,888 seats were empty night after night.
That doesn't seem to concern the sport's hierarchy, the team's front office or the Nationals players all that much, however.
Most point to the team's poor play on the field - 99 losses heading into Friday's game at the Philadelphia Phillies - as the main reason for the small crowds.
"We've almost lost 100 games, so that plays into that. I don't know for sure, but my feeling - my gut - tells me that as we build into a winning team, all of that will start taking care of itself," veteran infielder Aaron Boone said. "This is still new."
Lerner, team president Stan Kasten and baseball's chief operating officer, Bob DuPuy, all agree that more wins and fewer losses will boost ticket sales.
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