SARASOTA, Fla. — The Baltimore Orioles won the first World Series of Mike Elias’s lifetime in 1983, when he was 9 months old. They have not been back since.

Elias, Baltimore’s new general manager, grew up in Northern Virginia and remembers watching the Orioles at Camden Yards in the mid-1990s. Those teams were stuffed with future Hall of Famers — Cal Ripken Jr., Mike Mussina, Roberto Alomar — and twice made deep playoff runs.

“I just remember you felt so close to the field, and the stadium was packed to the brim, and the passion of the town and the fan base was on full display,” Elias said on Thursday in his office at Ed Smith Stadium. “Even today, I can see how important this team is to the city and what a baseball city it is. The fan base is engaged and educated in a way you don’t get in every market.”

Last season, though, those fans stayed away from Camden Yards like never before. The Orioles, who ranked first or second in the American League in attendance from 1992 through 2000, were 14th last season, ahead of only Tampa Bay. Their average crowd size dropped below 20,000 per game as the Orioles went 47-115, a mind-bending 61 games behind the Boston Red Sox. No team had finished so far out of first place in 76 years.