RFK Stadium, opened for baseball in 1962 and hosted 13 major league seasons in two seperate eras has, only ten more games scheduled (The Post). The position players won’t miss RFK Stadium very much. They view it as a place where home runs go to die. The pitchers will probably miss it though as the staff ERA is 4.07 at home and 4.88 on the road. Nobody on the team will miss the complete lack of amenities though.

Thom Loverro of (The Wash. Times) wonders aloud about attendance in a column today.

Still, taking all that into consideration, a failure to reach 2 million this season would be embarrassing. The Nats drew 2.15 million last year even with the television issue unresolved for part of the season. An industry official once told me that a season of televised games — basically a three-hour commercial for the team — is worth 300,000 ticket sales. So failing to hit 2 million in the team’s first full season of television broadcasts would make that number look even worse.

That might be forgotten when the new ballpark opens and sellout crowds arrive, as would be expected — but only if the ownership of the Lerner family and Stan Kasten get it. Right now, we have no proof that they do.

This season’s turnstile count, as a reflection of the performance of the owners, could be interpreted in two ways. Either they made serious misjudgments in the marketing of this team — i.e., they tried their hardest to get people to the stadium and failed — or they decided there was little they could do this year and that they would simply wait to pull out the promotional stops until the team moves into the new ballpark.

Either way, it’s not good. Trying and failing shows poor marketing skills. Not trying shows poor vision.

Loverro nailed it, didn’t he?

Ryan Zimmerman looks at the positive aspects of RFK in his weekly Wash. Examiner column, but when the new park opens the Nats will be “like spoiled little kids.”

The Nats are lobbying to have the Sunday night ESPN game (The Post)before the full season begins at the new ballpark. I’d prefer a more traditional opener.

Also, they need to go 7-9 the rest of the way to exceed last year’s 71-91 record.