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Nationals Make Inroads on Orioles' Turf
Orioles fans Ian Hester and Jackie Fritsch, both 21, of Crofton, cheer at a recent Nationals game at RFK.
(By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
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It's too early to tell whether the Orioles need to make up ground with targeted marketing, Orioles official Spiro Alafassos said.
Anecdotally, however, there is plenty of evidence that Nationals' fans are creating their own identity -- and that the fan base is pushing farther into Orioles territory.
The changes began at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where when the season began, some fans still were following an Orioles tradition and chanting "O! O! O!" during one verse of the national anthem. But boos often followed, and the chant weakened. By this week, the O's were faint to nonexistent.
Heading north from the city, the Nats have had an impact as far away as the Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie -- near the orange-and-black heart of Orioles country. There, Pro Image sportswear store cannot keep in stock the team caps with the interlocking "DC" logo.
"New Era just isn't producing them fast enough for me," owner Robert Harnsberger said of the cap company.
But the front line seems to have settled in Howard and Anne Arundel counties, where the two big-league ballparks are almost equidistant.
There, the Orioles' monolith has begun to crack along several lines.
One dividing line is age: Some fans of the long-departed Washington Senators said they forgot about all other suitors when they saw a new team with a "W" on their caps.
"All of a sudden, I didn't have any interest in the Orioles at all," said David Paulson, 73, a retired pharmacist from Columbia. "It's the Nationals all the way."
Some fans cited the Angelos Factor, saying that they were sick of Orioles owner Peter Angelos lobbying against baseball coming to Washington.
And in many cases, the allegiance to either the Nats or O's is based on a connection to one metropolis or the other.
"I was always a Washington-oriented person," said McElwaine, who grew up in Largo and has a law office in Greenbelt. "And Baltimore's not Washington."
