Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves his baseball. Not only that, he has thrown himself - heart and soul - into his (reborn) hometown team, the Washington Nationals.

Your Maximum Leader lives about 50 miles from the Nats ballpark. The drive, coupled with the cost of tickets and time, limit the number of games to which your Maximum Leader can truck himself (and family). If he lived closer to a Metro station (as opposed to about 30 miles from one) he would likely buy cheap seats and see more games. Indeed, if that were the case, he’d likely buy a partial season ticket plan.

All that talk about going to games aside, your Maximum Leader does watch just about every Nats game on TV. In fact, Mrs Villain, Villainettes 1 & 2 and the Wee Villain also watch the games. (Okay, the Villainettes and Wee Villain don’t watch in rapt attention, but they drift in and out. Mrs Villain can’t just sit down and watch any tv - so she always has something else handy while watching.) That is a lot of baseball on TV. If you wanted to count ESPN games that would be even more baseball on TV.

Well imagine your Maximum Leader’s dismay when he read yesterday that on average about 9,000 households watch Nats games on TV. Out of a metropolitan area with 5.5 million people (5,500,000 for those of you who like numbers written out) a meagre 9,000 watch the Nats on TV.

Your Maximum Leader wonders how Nielsen gets their numbers. But he doesn’t doubt that the number is accurate. Other than Robbo, and one other friend, your Maximum Leader must admit that he doesn’t know anyone who watches the Nats on TV. (So now your Maximum Leader can account for three households - only 8,997 more households to go…)

Your Maximum Leader finds that he agrees with the dismay expressed so well by Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. Your Maximum Leader believes you should click through and read Boswell’s piece if you are interested. Here is one bit with which your Maximum Leader particularly agrees:

Perhaps the Nats’ TV malady may impact the Lerner family as well. Will the Nats’ owners feel a warm fire being lit under their feet over the next three weeks as they consider whether to make trades that add, rather than subtract, talent and payroll from their major league roster before the Aug. 1 trade deadline.

If it’s true that you could fit every Nats TV viewer into the team’s upper deck — with room to spare — perhaps there’s a frightening future in that stark stat. Can the franchise risk alienating the affections of a city that, just three years ago, rejoiced when the Nats were in first place at the all-star break and the darlings of the entire sport? Washington actually tasted the summer joy that attends a mere wild-card race, even when you don’t make the playoffs. That whiff of success makes the current 102-loss pace more bitter.

Frightening indeed. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t want to regret dissing the Braves if Washington loses their franchise because it withered on the vine…

Carry on.