August 31, 2002
Jeff Cooper Is Right. .
Jeff Cooper Is Right. . . To point out that yesterday's labor settlement in baseball seems to have opened the way for a franchise (most likely the Montreal Expos) to relocate to the Washington, D.C. area. I hinted at this in my post yesterday, and both local papers here picked up on the story right quick. The Washington Post gave plenty of column inches to local baseball maven Tom Boswell for his analysis of the situation:
"This is exactly what we hoped for," said a principal in one of the area's three prospective ownership groups. "The Expos are up for grabs and there isn't another town out there that can compete with this area. Las Vegas? Portland? Charlotte? This is the place, the only place. Our competition will be among ourselves, between Washington and Northern Virginia. So we'll have to scrap it out."
That may be overly optimistic. Baltimore owner Peter Angelos, a central figure in the labor negotiations and most recently a close ally of Selig, fiercely opposes a team for Washington.
Nothing in the sport's bylaws gives him a right to block a National League team, like the Expos, from coming here. But baseball is famous for backroom deals and power brokering. Some potential local owners already concede that Angelos would need to be indemnified by millions if a team came here.
"Seeing Angelos seated so prominently at [yesterday's labor settlement] press conference didn't do my stomach any good," said another member of a local ownership group. "It was like watching the May Day Parade [in Moscow] to see who was 'in' and who was 'out' in the Kremlin."
The price to buy out Angelos: according to Boswell, $50 million. And that on top of the roughly $300 million it will take to buy the team from Major League Baseball.
And who is going to step up with a check that big? Boswell names three possible groups. The first is headed by Fred Malek, an old friend of the Bush family. Not mentioned in the Boswell piece, but also part of the Malek group is Franklin Raines, former head of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton Administration, and now head of Fannie Mae. They're committed to putting a team in the District at RFK, and then getting a new stadium built, location TBD in the District. Take a look at the rest of his management team, which includes AOL Founder Jim Kimsey, here.
The second group, headed by William Collins, seems to have been around forever. Collins is Chairman and CEO of Metrocall, a paging company based in Northern Virginia. He'd like to decamp the team to RFK for a few seasons, and then move it to a brand new stadium somewhere in traffic choked Northern Virginia. The state of Virginia has moved stongly behind Collins, starting a baseball stadium authority. According to the Washington Times, plans have gone so far that they are on the verge of selecting an architect to design a new park. Check out Virginians for Baseball, here.
The last mentioned is the team of Redskins owner Dan Snyder and Black Entertainment Television CEO Bob Johnson. They casually mentioned once that they would like to investigate bringing a team to the area, but haven't made any other moves since. Johnson has been on the trail of a sports franchise for the better part of a decade now, having once pursued the NHL's Washington Capitals. Back then, he vowed he would turn the Caps into "black America's team," before Abe Pollin decided to sell the team to current owner Ted Leonsis.
But there are a number of problems with some of these groups, ones that weren't really dealt with in either story. Let's rewind through the list. We need to remember that Snyder's only business interest these days is the Redskins, and he needed to leverage himself pretty heavily in order to acqire the team (I also recall that Snyder's financing of the team required special approval from the NFL). Plus, the Redskins are his first love; do we really believe he would drop everything right now in the beginning of the football season in order to acquire a baseball team too? I'll believe it when I see it. In the Washington Times piece, Snyder and Johnson aren't mentioned at all as serious players.
While I give the Collins group points for their peristence, as well as for their deft enlistment of the state of Virginia in their cause, there is one huge optic problems with their bid -- namely the poor state of Metrocall, a company that's teetering on the brink of oblivion. To see a selection of recent headlines about Metrocall's bankruptcy woes, click here. While the market value of Metrocall might not track exactly with Collins' own net worth, it doesn't help his bid much at all. (As Caps owner Leonsis pointed out, the crash in AOL/TW's stock price didn't make his ownership of the Caps shaky, as he had "paid cash" for the team.) And if you're the owners of MLB, are you going to sell to somebody who's running a company in bankruptcy?
Which leaves Malek's group. Politically connected on both sides of the aisle, and with easy access to all sorts of capital. It doesn't hurt that he wants to plop the team in the District and keep it there. And that's where I'd lay my money if I was a betting man.
What could go wrong? Plenty. Baseball hasn't exactly been known for making all the right moves, and although it seems as if there isn't any choice but to move the Expos immediately, you never know with this crew. If a move to D.C. does happen, I would think we'd have to see it all sewn up before the end of the regular season. So buying up lots of sod in the District might not be a bad investment.
POSTSCRIPT: If I was one of the investors in Major League Soccer, or the Women's United Soccer Association, I'd look at all of this news with growing alarm. In terms of attendance, both D.C. United and the Washington Freedom are among the most successful franchises in their respective leagues. But whenever talk turns to baseball moving to their home field at RFK, it seems as if everyone assumes that they'd be on their own. As to where they would go, the best bet would be to George Mason University in Fairfax. At that point, you start hoping you can convince the locals to help build a soccer-specific stadium right next to the baseball field.
August 30, 2002
Cutting Off The Cash To
Cutting Off The Cash To Spite Your Foe? The very public, and at times nasty, fight over whether women should be admitted as members to Augusta National Golf Club has taken a truly bizzare turn. In an effort to blunt an avenue of attack by feminist pressure groups, the club has decided to "suspend" all television sponsorships for the 2003 Masters -- making the tournament the only major sporting event on television to run commercial free:
Club chairman Hootie Johnson notified IBM, Citigroup and Coca-Cola that the Masters ''will not request their participation.''
Those were the only companies that were allowed to run commercials during the broadcast. Their logos also appeared on the Masters' Web site.
''This year's telecast will be conducted by the Masters Tournament,'' Johnson said in a statement. ''We appreciate everything our media sponsors have done for us, but under the circumstances, we think it is important to take this step.''
The broadcast of the Masters was already nearly commercial free, with only 4 minutes per hour given over to spots. To read a copy of Johnson's statement, click here. Essentially, the club's action takes the biggest club out of the hands of the National Council of Women's Organizations, the feminist group that approached the sponsors in an attempt to enlist them in the fight to get Augusta to change its membership policies.
First question: just how much money will Augusta forfeit with this action? Hard to say, but according to the Seattle Times, weekly tickets to the Masters only cost $125 -- approximately half the cost of the other major golf championships (PGA Championship, US Open). For scalpers, the Masters is a gold mine. Back in 1998, CNNSI reported that badges that then went for $100, regularly were re-sold for $5,000 each. And in 1997, when Tiger Woods won his first Masters, the badges went for $10,000 a piece.
According to CBS Sportsline, only 30,000 badges are printed every year, and are tightly controlled by the folks at Augusta. Management is very vigilant about fighting scalping, and members who are discovered re-selling badges for greater than face value have them revoked.
The club could easily raise the price to equal the other majors, and could most likely raise them even higher. Right now, with 30,000 badges priced at $125 each, the club takes in $3.75 million from ticket sales. If they were to raise the price to $500, they could easily increase their take to $15 million. Better yet, instead of issuing weekly passes, Augusta could issue passes for individual rounds -- driving the price, and the take, even higher. For instance, they could institute a sliding scale, charging progressively higher amounts for later rounds.
Also of note, is the fact that the folks at Augusta have been scrupulous about keeping the tournamnet as far away from commercial influence as possible, often forgoing types of merchandising other golf tournaments eagerly embrace. But with the club needing to make up the shortfall from the suspension of television advertsing, it's clear a number of options Augusta would normally have refused to contemplate have to be on the table now.
So, in the end, Augusta National seems better positioned to whether this fight than any other private organization in the country. It seems clear that there going to do exactly what they say -- take their time and admit women to the club on their own terms. And if these preliminary figures are anywhere near the truth, they can afford to wait a heck of a long time.
Something tells me that much of the bitterness we've heard in Johnson's voice over this issue is rooted in these decisions he now clearly feels forced to make. Keeping commercial influence away from Augusta and the Masters has always been a real priority for the club, and Johnson has been confronted with a choice. Namely, which change is easier to swallow, admitting women to Augusta, or permitting a crass commercialization of his beloved event. In this case, it's clear he's chosen the former. To what effect remains to be seen.
(News links via Sportsfilter.)
UPDATE: The New York Times has some specifics on the money involved.
Now That The Baseball's Owners
Now That The Baseball's Owners and Players. . . Have settled their differences, it's time to retire our first Pulse Poll that asked my readers what they would do in the event of a baseball strike. For the record, more than 65 percent said they would, "get on with their lives." Just about 19 percent would have blamed the players, while a little more than 9 percent would have scorched ownership. A little more than 3 percent each would have blamed the media, or their parents.
In any case, onto the next poll. I'd like to ask what my readers think about the next Super Bowl champ. I consulted a random online odds maker, and listed last year's Super Bowl finalists along with the next five favorites. If you don't like any of the picks, I've included a device from paramutual betting where you can lay odds on anyone else who isn't named. I'll keep the poll up until the NFL season opener on Thursday, September 5th. As always, vote early and often.
Early This Morning. . .
Early This Morning. . . I read about the spontaneous anti-strike protest that took place in Anahiem last night during the Angels-Devil Rays game. But, thanks to the blogosphere, we can read about it first hand from blogger and Angels fan, Matt Welch. And that's far more fun, and chock full of extra details:
Yet the real fun was letting these bastards have it. The crowd, as is normal for Anaheim, was mostly well-behaved and supportive for the first six innings. Then, before the top of the seventh, the rowdies in the right field pavilion staged a beautifully Southern Californian protest -- they dumped 10 beach balls onto the field. Play had to be stopped, and people started chanting “Don’t Strike! Don’t Strike!” It felt good. Tampa Bay’s Steve Cox came up, and fouled off about 39 pitches. On the 36th or so, the teen behind the home-plate screen who caught the ball immediately fired it back onto the field. We went nuts. Every foul ball from then on was greeted with chants of “Throw it back! Throw it back!” About half the time, they did (including one from the upper deck that landed about 10 feet from Appier) In one instance, a sheepish guy handed the ball to his wife, who immediately flung toward the infield, though it didn’t quite make it over the screen. She got a standing O while being escorted out of the stadium.
For the rest of the game, the players looked spooked. The public address announcer kept trying to lecture us about the “appropriate” way to express ourselves, but he was drowned out with boos. Middle-aged men were randomly shouting out things like: “You strike you SUCK!” The bottom of the ninth began with a fusillade of toilet paper, full $4 cokes, plastic bottles and spit. The PA dude warned us about forcing the Angels to forfeit, which would have been a deliciously painful twist, especially if the season ended today (with the team out of the playoffs by a half-game, because of the fans).
Read the whole thing, you'll be glad you did.
UPDATE: Steve MacLaughlin, a fan who gave up on the game after the 1994 strike, has his own thoughts.
