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July 14, 2003
D.C. Baseball Update
Remember that July 15th deadline that Major League Baseball (MLB) set to announce the decision on where the Montreal Expos will play in 2004? A decision on the future home of the Montreal Expos might not be made until September, a high-ranking baseball official said Saturday. The commissioner's office originally had targeted the All-Star break for a decision. Northern Virginia, Portland, Ore., and Washington all want the Expos to relocate to their areas for the 2004 season. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the commissioner's office now hoped to have a decision by Labor Day, and that the end of the regular season was the current "drop-dead date." Labor Day? Last year, as July creeped into August, and August into September, it became clear that even if the Expos had been sold to a D.C.-based ownership group, that RFK Stadium couldn't possibly be made ready to host a game in time for the 2003 season. And that doesn't even begin considering the difficulties involved in getting a franchise up and running in a new city, and reconstituting the business operation you need in order to support it. Here's a bet: look for the Expos to play even more games in Puerto Rico next year. UPDATE: Some other stuff from over the weekend: D.C.'s quasi-independent agency responsible in part to bring baseball back to the city, the Sports and Entertainment Commission, is in a huge financial hole. This is the case despite the fact it recently brought in "professional" management. And on Sunday morning, Ralph Nader chimed in with an op-ed piece, essentially demanding MLB sell the Expos to local investors at cost, without taking into account an losses the team might have accrued over the last two seasons: Meanwhile, Major League Baseball should sell the Expos to new local owners for the amount it paid for the team -- $120 million, not the $250 million or more it will demand. The savings could be used by the private owners to build a new stadium or renovate an existing one, such as RFK, covering part of what baseball is now trying to squeeze from taxpayers. I'm all in agreement with Nader on "squeezing the taxpayers," but MLB isn't going to let this team go cheap. Meanwhile, at the Washington Times, Eric Fisher makes an important point of one of the results of MLB's painfully methodical relocation process: The delay in the relocation timetable, much in keeping with baseball's traditionally slow-moving decision making, could provide time for either Portland, Ore., or the District to advance stadium financing efforts. Both areas have stadium bills before legislative bodies, though concern about debt loads and baseball's chronic indecision have slowed both efforts. And delaying another few months allows time for an investor to appear to back the Portland bid, something sure to drive up the eventual sale price of the team.
Eric
01:50 AM
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