Atlanta ? Blue skies. Pleasant temperatures. The home team in first place. By all indications, a perfect day for baseball.

Yet nearly half the seats at Turner Field were empty, striking proof that a once-passionate baseball city has turned decidedly cool toward the sport.

The Atlanta Braves, winners of 11 straight division championships, once drew nearly 4 million fans in a season. If this keeps up, they’ll barely reach 2 million.

“Before the game, you look around and see what kind of crowd you’ve got,” outfielder Chipper Jones said after Sunday’s game, which drew only 27,313 fans to 50,091-seat Turner Field despite a sunny, 70-degree afternoon. “I just think ticket prices have gotten so outlandish, it’s tough for a family of four to come watch their team play.”

The Braves aren’t alone, either.

Attendance is down throughout the major leagues, slipping 4.8 percent through Sunday’s games when compared to a similar point last year. And this comes on top of a 6-percent decline for the 2002 season.

More troubling, 21 of 30 teams are running behind — for teams such as the Braves, way behind — their per-game averages from last April.

A smattering of fans watches Atlanta play Milwaukee in the second inning in this file photo. Nearly half the seats were empty Sunday in Atlanta, a once-hot baseball city that has cooled toward the sport.

Atlanta is averaging 24,133 through 16 home games, compared with 30,582 through the same number of dates a year ago. That’s a decline of 21 percent — hardly encouraging for a team that’s already had five straight years of falling attendance since getting a spike with the move to Turner Field in 1997.

Eleven other teams have experienced double-figure drop-offs, including the New York Yankees, down 16 percent, and Seattle Mariners, down 20 percent. Both teams lead their respective divisions.

The biggest fall has been in Cleveland, where that amazing Jacobs Field sellout streak is a distant memory. The Indians are down 30.7 percent this season, just ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers, where attendance is down 30.5 percent in Miller Park’s third year.

The Braves have drawn only one crowd larger than 30,000 — the opening day turnout of 40,244. Since then, they haven’t done better than 29,777 for a Saturday night game against NL East rival Philadelphia. Three early season games drew fewer than 20,000.

Paul Adams, director of ticket sales, admitted being concerned about the slow start at the turnstiles, but he was confident that crowds would improve now that the war in Iraq is essentially over.

A sluggish economy also has hurt attendance. Atlanta was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country during the ’90s, but it’s been hit hard by layoffs and corporate losses the past few years.