Why did Major League baseball bother to move the Expos to Washington? They solved exactly zero problems. Will the Washington team draw more than Montreal. Yes, of course they will. Will they draw better than your average small market team? After the first couple of years, highly doubtful. I know Baseball was desperate to get the Expos out of Montreal. It was foolish of them to expand to a francophone, anglophobic society to begin with. And I also know that Latin America is probably not capable of supporting a Major League baseball club yet. Las Vegas presented numerous problems with baseball's longtime nemesis, gambling. Unfortunately, DC isn't the solution. It will be socially popular to attend the games at first, but political Washington is fickle. Unless that team wins and wins big quickly, the fan base will fall off quickly. This isn't the NFL where you only need to sell 8 games a year. 81 games is a tough sell to most markets, let alone D.C.'s.
I roll my eyes at Selig plenty. I appreciate him for bringing baseball back to my home state, but I've done my fair share of questioning him. I'm ecstatic that the team is being sold, although I think it was overpaid for and bought by the wrong guy. Just the same, I fully supported Selig's untenable position of contraction. Baseball is overstretched for the time being. The Expos and the Devil Rays need to go.
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