1973 effort that almost relocated the San Diego Padres to Washington for the 1974 season, bids to purchase the Orioles in 1975 and the San Francisco Giants in 1976 and move them, a large "Baseball in Washington in ′87" promotion in 1987 advocating that a team to come to Washington, calls in 1991 and 1994 for MLB to place an expansion team in Washington, and efforts to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1995 and the Houston Astros in 1996 for a move to Washington. None of these efforts bore fruit, and Washington, D.C., had no Major League Baseball team from 1972 through 2004. Play between Baltimore and Washington did not resume until the advent of the Beltway Series in 2006. Opposition to relocation by the Orioles The Nationals–Orioles rivalry is influenced by circumstances surrounding the Nationals' founding. Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles, opposed the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington on the grounds that it would harm the Orioles financially, contending that the Orioles would lose fans to a Washington baseball team and that the Orioles alone had had a legal right to the entire Baltimore-Washington market since the departure of the second Senators team at the end of the 1971 season; in fact, the Orioles changed the team name on their away jerseys from "Baltimore" to "Orioles" in 1972 in an attempt to convince D.C. fans to adopt the Orioles as their "home" team. Ultimately, the owners of the other MLB teams approved the move to Washington in a 28–1 vote on December 3, 2004; Angelos cast the sole dissenting vote. The Orioles′ opposition to a baseball team in Washington created negative feelings among some Nationals fans toward the Orioles franchise, while some Orioles fans viewed the relocation of the Expos to Washington as an unwelcome intrusion that harmed the Orioles′ fan support and revenue. Even though the Nationals began play in 2005, the Orioles did not change the team name on their away jerseys back to "Baltimore" until 2009. In the first four full seasons after baseball returned to Washington, the Nationals drew 9,127,252 fans to their games, compared to 8,892,951 fans attending Orioles games. The Nationals were a larger draw in 2005, while both teams were about the same in 2006 (the Orioles drew exactly 100 more fans that year), and in 2007 the Orioles were a larger draw by nearly 200,000 fans. In