Seeing red in Washington...

[BallWonk]

First of all, has anyone considered the fact that the managers mentioned might be wearing jerseys UNDER the jackets and pullovers?

In many a TV closeup last season, it was pretty clear that there was nothing beneath Frank Robinson's little jackety-shirt but Frank Robinson. Well, maybe a v-neck tank-top undershirt, because you just know Frank is the kind of guy who would lounge around the locker room in a v-neck tank-top undershirt with his arms bare and a big ol' slice of his chest showing, but there was no jersey under that jackety-shirt thing last year.

[LuvTheNats]

Plus, there's a lot to be said for the Nationals name as part of branding the team as a tourist destination just off the Mall. I've already seen a number of people with the tourist-identifying Smithsonian shop bags or National Archives folders at RFK this year or on the Metro after the game, far more than I ever saw last season. That is a trend to be encouraged. No other name would reinforce that branding strategy as well as Nationals.

Wait, I'm not sure I follow you.

Are you saying that the Nationals are drawing tourists to games based on the team name?

Obviously not. That would be a very silly thing to say.

What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a branding strategy that involves making a day at the ballpark part of the normal DC tourist experience, naming the team "Nationals" fits better with your strategy than naming them, say, "RiverDawgs" or "Senators" or whatnot. If you want to sell yourself as the nation's team in the nation's capital, "Nationals" is your best possible name.

Obvoiusly Abe Pollin (owner of the Wizards) would not agree to this comment. Example: That sham of a vote he did about 8 years ago re-naming the Bullets..Yes, when i think Washington DC, I think WIZARDS! idiot...

[CS85]

I wonder why they didn't wear the "W" insignia caps during this game with all the DC logos?

[Survival79]

Did the grey jerseys have front numbers last season? They would look better without.

Yup.

[Gothamite]

What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a branding strategy that involves making a day at the ballpark part of the normal DC tourist experience, naming the team "Nationals" fits better with your strategy than naming them, say, "RiverDawgs" or "Senators" or whatnot.

I don't think that's a very good strategy.

Marketing to tourists? As a substantial part of your base?

It puts butts in seats.

What evidence have you to support that?

[STL FANATIC]

What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a branding strategy that involves making a day at the ballpark part of the normal DC tourist experience, naming the team "Nationals" fits better with your strategy than naming them, say, "RiverDawgs" or "Senators" or whatnot.

I don't think that's a very good strategy.

Marketing to tourists? As a substantial part of your base?

It puts butts in seats.

What evidence have you to support that?

I'm guessing he didn't mean to say he could confirm that his strategy works.

Rather, I think he meant to imply that if one can get tourists to buy tickets and fill up some of the stadium even if they aren't true DC baseball fans, many an owner would be just fine using that strategy.

[WSU151]

What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a branding strategy that involves making a day at the ballpark part of the normal DC tourist experience, naming the team "Nationals" fits better with your strategy than naming them, say, "RiverDawgs" or "Senators" or whatnot.

I don't think that's a very good strategy.

Marketing to tourists? As a substantial part of your base?

It puts butts in seats.

What evidence have you to support that?

I'm guessing he didn't mean to say he could confirm that his strategy works.

Rather, I think he meant to imply that if one can get tourists to buy tickets and fill up some of the stadium even if they aren't true DC baseball fans, many an owner would be just fine using that strategy.

If a team ever moves to Las Vegas, tourists will be 99% of the marketing strategy.

[BallWonk]

What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a branding strategy that involves making a day at the ballpark part of the normal DC tourist experience, naming the team "Nationals" fits better with your strategy than naming them, say, "RiverDawgs" or "Senators" or whatnot.

I don't think that's a very good strategy.

Marketing to tourists? As a substantial part of your base?

It puts butts in seats.

What evidence have you to support that?

Gothamite,

There is as far as I know no evidence that tourists either can or cannot contribute a significant portion of a DC team's ticket sales. And, since you seem to be in a word-twisting mood today (happens to all of us some days!), let me say that by "significant" I mean "measurable." Say, a few hundred tickets or more per game.

So this is all theoretical. Or anecdotal: I can say that I saw more obvious tourists at RFK or on the Metro leaving RFK during this opening homestand than I recall seeing at all last year. Several local newspaper stories about the opening series also included "fan in the stands" interviews with families who decided to take a break from walking the Mall to catch a ballgame. So on an anecdotal level, the market seems to be there. (After all, RFK is a short subway ride from what is, by some counts, the most visited building in the world, and the new ballpark will be even more convenient to Washington's tourist core.)

It is at least plausible that a marketing strategy that reaches out to the tourist traffic could put 500-1,000 extra butts in the seats per game (this place is crawling with tens of thousands of tourists a day from April to September, which just happens to coincide with ... say it with me ... baseball season). That's a significant cohort that's just not available to, say, the Royals. Some of those seats would be walk-up gate, but if "see a Nationals game" joins "visit the Air & Space Museum" or even lesser attractions like "see the moon rock at National Cathedral" as an element of the DC tourist experience, there would be added bulk sales of ticket blocks to various tour groups, convention planners, and hotels.

On top of that there is the merchandising potential to tourists. Making a Nationals cap or shirt one of the default I-went-to-DC-and-bought-souvenirs choices has to be a tempting opportunity that is not available to, say, the Reds. I've already seen this happening; even last summer I started to see an increasing number of obvious tourists sporting brand-new curly-W Nationals caps on the Mall and downtown.

And this isn't about buying ads on local TV in Des Moines and Boise or something silly and expensive. It would be more about tourist-targeting signs on the Metro, planting stories in travel-planning brochures, establishing contacts with the hospitality industry, and so forth. Local hotels already offer deals where you get a slight discount on tickets to other teams or the theater with a family stay; that's the kind of thing the Nationals could in theory do to sell tickets to the huge local tourist market.

The argument for marketing to tourists is unproven, but it's at least plausible. So accepting that it is a goal the team would want to pursue under a new owner, then the question is, what name best fits with that model of being a national team? A parochial name like "Senators" or "Potomacs" would work against the "national team in the national capital" brand. People don't come to Washington for the local flavor; they come because it's the capital. It's a city you can come to and feel a part of, a very literally true sense of ownership over. So while a local-flavor name like "Brewers" is great for Milwaukee -- this tourist never misses a Brew Crew game if I'm in Wisconsin -- a DC team would want a more universal name. In this context, for this purpose, the name "Nationals" would be ideal.

[Gothamite]

I'm sorry, I never meant to twist your words. If I did, than I'm sorry.

But I think it's a huge mistake to let "a few hundred tickets or more per game" influence something as profound as the name of the team.

I don't think that there's any evidence to support the contention that tourists are more likely to buy a "Nationals" cap than, for argument's sake, a "Senators" cap.

[BallWonk]

But I think it's a huge mistake to let "a few hundred tickets or more per game" influence something as profound as the name of the team.

Why? Other than the name "Senators" or an obviously partisan name, which would both have adverse effects on local attendance, the name isn't going to make a difference to the local fan base. Just as many DC-area baseball fans will come to the ballpark to watch the Washington Muddy Rockfish as to watch the Washington Nationals. It's about the baseball, not the team name. But if the choice of a name can help your efforts to expand your ticket sales by 5 percent, then that's a margin worth considering when you choose the team name.

It's all a moot point, though. The name will either be Nationals or Senators, because there are is a cohort of childish baby-boomers out there who labor under the delusion that there are a lot of sentimental Senators fans just itching for the return of the Senators. Truth is, there never were many Senators fans here, and when you apply normal actuarial models of relocation and death to the few tens of thousands of actual Senators fans left in the region in 1971, you find that there can be no more than a couple of thousand die-hard Senators fans left. There are, meanwhile, many more thousands of potential fans in DC itself who will be turned off by the Senators name. If you can avoid creating a political controversy with your team name, you should. But Bud Selig thinks everything was perfect in 1957, so he'll probably give the organization much encouragement to choose the Senators name as a proxy for his own thwarted desire to name Milwaukee's team the Braves.

[Gothamite]

While I hate to defend Bud, if he wanted to name his club the Braves he could have in the 1970s when the Braves debated a change of name. The name was out there for grabs, had he persued it. He chose to keep Brewers, even if Turner renamed his Atlanta Eagles.

Bud's an easy target, but even cheap shots have to contain something of merit.

[Gothamite]

If a team ever moves to Las Vegas, tourists will be 99% of the marketing strategy.

Precisely why no team will move to Vegas.

[NDwas]

Like the Jersey, but would've looked a lot better with an alt cap.

Ummm they were wearing an alt cap...

[teenchy]

But I think it's a huge mistake to let "a few hundred tickets or more per game" influence something as profound as the name of the team.

Why? Other than the name "Senators" or an obviously partisan name, which would both have adverse effects on local attendance, the name isn't going to make a difference to the local fan base. Just as many DC-area baseball fans will come to the ballpark to watch the Washington Muddy Rockfish as to watch the Washington Nationals. It's about the baseball, not the team name. But if the choice of a name can help your efforts to expand your ticket sales by 5 percent, then that's a margin worth considering when you choose the team name.

It's all a moot point, though. The name will either be Nationals or Senators, because there are is a cohort of childish baby-boomers out there who labor under the delusion that there are a lot of sentimental Senators fans just itching for the return of the Senators. Truth is, there never were many Senators fans here, and when you apply normal actuarial models of relocation and death to the few tens of thousands of actual Senators fans left in the region in 1971, you find that there can be no more than a couple of thousand die-hard Senators fans left. There are, meanwhile, many more thousands of potential fans in DC itself who will be turned off by the Senators name. If you can avoid creating a political controversy with your team name, you should. But Bud Selig thinks everything was perfect in 1957, so he'll probably give the organization much encouragement to choose the Senators name as a proxy for his own thwarted desire to name Milwaukee's team the Braves.

B-W, you make some good points but some slightly hurtful ones as well. I say that because I'd consider myself among those "couple of thousand die-hard Senators fans left," even though I'd yet to go through puberty when Bob Short moved the expansion club. (Technically, that either makes me not a boomer or puts me at the very end of the boom.)

So many people seem to think that there is nothing or nobody worth celebrating out of Washington's 20th-century baseball past. Granted there is virtually no one living who can remember a World Series win 82 years ago, and there's only one survivor left from the last pennant winner 73 years ago. The original AL franchise had its share of star players even when the team as a whole stunk (not unlike the current NL franchise). That can't be said so much for the expansion AL franchise (quick, name a Senators All-Star besides Frank Howard) but, honestly, that's a function of what ownership invested in the team and of the lack of an expansion draft in 1961. The expansion Senators had to make do mostly with castoffs, has-beens and never-will-bes (gee, again not unlike the current NL franchise). Of course there's the distinction between being lovable losers (the Cubs have played that to the hilt; witness all the Ernie Banks and Ron Santo love while the team stunk) and just being losers; it's all in the spin.

When a franchise makes no effort to put a winning team on the field - and, for that matter, the franchise's status and stability is in doubt - fans stay away from the ballpark. Look at last night's (4/24) RFK attendance vs. the Reds. The media is trying to make a big deal out of the lowest RFK turnout since relocation, but come on for Pete's sake: people are tired of MLB's ownership mambo crap.

I guess I should just get to the point and say that there's room in the new Nats' identity to give nods to Washington's baseball past. Retro and nostalgia sell - ever been to Mitchell&Ness in Philly? - so a script "W" on a ballcap shouldn't get people's panties in a wad. Personally I'm fine with it (especially the navy road cap) and I'm fine with the Nationals nickname; it's a good tie between the baseball past and present. I'm even okay with the uniforms. I actually hope the owners keep the name though I expect they'll come up with somthing inane like the DC Momentum.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I don't think that there's any evidence to support the contention that tourists are more likely to buy a "Nationals" cap than, for argument's sake, a "Senators" cap.

That's where you're wrong. If you've ever been to DC, you would know that tourists are MOST likely to wear those stupid FBI hats and the matching "You Don't Know Me" t-shirts.

[Gothamite]

LOL.

And when tourists come to NYC, they buy illegal bootleg NYPD caps off the street (which is a nice ironic touch, methinks).

But I still don't think there's any evidence that tourists are buying Nationals caps because they think "Hey, Nationals, that applies to me!"

[The_Admiral]

Okay, how about this.

1. The name "Nationals" and "Nats" will have been fairly established by the time new ownership comes in.

2. "Senators" has a connotation of futility, and the DC city council doesn't like it.

3. "Grays" is ill-advised, because this beloved Negro League team was actually a Pittsburgh team that played in Washington now and then, and really, what is grey? Boring. Bland. Stripped of color. Flat. Dull. Is that what you're selling? Nobody's thinking "oh, how delightful that they're paying a rightful tribute to the erstwhile Homestead Grays of the Negro League!", they're thinking of a concrete wall and an overcast sky.

Just leave the name alone.

[eww7633]

Lloyd McClendon also usually wore just a pullover or jacket.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, and look how upset that umpire is about it.

[griffin128]

If a team ever moves to Las Vegas, tourists will be 99% of the marketing strategy.

Precisely why no team will move to Vegas.

Ok, now that statement makes absolutely no sense.

Las Vegas is the 29th largest US city. RESIDENTS not tourists.

Ahead of Cleveland, Kansas City, Atlanta, Oakland, Minneapolis, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Cinncinati and Anaheim.

And it is consistently in the top 5 fastest growing cities, so seriously do you think that they would not have the population to support a team.

C'mon, they have 0 competition, no NBA, no NHL, no NFL.

The people who live in Vegas probably gamble 0% of the time.

So, no I don't think they would spend 99% of their time marketing to tourists, that's just a comment with no research at all.