Nationals future in D.C. already in doubt

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Apparently if they cant work out a deal to play in DC, the team will probably become the Norfolk Nationals (doesn't make any sense except for the alliteration) and play in a 12,000 seat AAA stadium for 2 years.

 

Uh-huh.

[Vern Gagne 0]

I think a deal will be made before the deadline passes.

[The Czech Republic 0]

They can expand Harbor Park beyond 12,000, I'm sure. Also, "Squires" is a better name for a Virginia team.

[Styles 0]

As a voice from the DC area (although a 100% bleed orange and black Baltimore Orioles fan, but still someone obvious curious about a DC team) I can tell you everyone is PISSED.

Basically, the mayor, Anthony Williams on good faith and as a rep of the city negotiated the deal with MLB including the provision that the stadium would be 100% publicly funded (through taxes to local businesses). This vote was supposed to be procedural, just to make it official. Well, this councilwoman, Linda Cropp, decided to make a name for herself by amending the deal the mayor negotiated by saying 50% had to be privately funded (when no such funds are avaliable and after the mayor negotiated the original deal).

It's all politics. This woman is reportedly looking to challenge the mayor when his term is up and she throught this would be a bright move to endear herself to the DC residents (who by and large are poor and ignorant-I mean come on, they elected Marion Barry back to the council-and wouldn't be the ones coming to see the team (they would draw from the wealthier suburban Maryland and Virginia areas (basically where I'm from) as well as the upscale business sectors of DC), by facading this as a move "standing up for the taxpayers of DC" which is 100% BS because the stadium would be funded by taxes on businesses who are fine with that, since they're the ones mostly buying the luxury boxes and such.

Anyway, it backfired, bigtime. Now, she has a lot of angry people to deal with, including the Mayor who she made look like a fool (he won't talk to her) and I think she assumed MLB would cave in and accept her deal which she blindsided them with making her the hero to all (I saved the city money and you rich folk get your silly baseball team!), but instead MLB is standing firm basically saying they had a deal and they will not be pushed around, and the heat is on her to be the one to back down and agree to the original deal. The deadline is Dec. 31, chosen as such because Marion Barry begins his term on the council on Jan. 1 and has sworn to block any stadium legislation, prize that he is. Basically she's ruined it for the DC area.

As I said, I really don't care, I'm an O's fan regardless but I know so many friends and family who have waited over 30 years for a team to come back to DC and saw it basically taken away from them in a couple months. It's typical DC politics. It's why the Redskins play in Landover, MD instead of DC because they pulled the same crap on them. For once MLB is not the bad guys here. I hope they call her bluff and move the team somewhere else. It would finally make it so Peter Angelos and the Orioles are no longer the bad guys in the area, their own selfish politicians would be. Norfolk is the most likely destination. It has a large circle of popullations to draw from Virginia, the Carolinas, etc. Las Vegas still has an attractive bid too.

 

Here's a good article on the situation from Thomas Boswell, a well respected sports columnist from the Washington Post and a long time advocate for DC baseball:

 

Cropped Out of the Picture

 

By Thomas Boswell

 

Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page D01

 

Late Tuesday night, in the 11th hour of a marathon D.C. Council meeting, chairman Linda W. Cropp blew to smithereens the deal that MLB thought it had in place with Washington to build a ballpark on the Anacostia waterfront. With that single blow, which leaves baseball no alternatives, the return of major league baseball to the nation's capital is now dead.

 

The bits of charred ash and shattered fragments that you see falling from the sky are the remnants of the destruction that Cropp wrought. With one amendment to a stadium-funding bill, she demolished the most basic pillar on which the District's agreement with baseball was built. By a 10-3 vote, the council demanded that at least half of the cost of any new stadium be built with private financing, which does not exist, rather than public funding, as stipulated in D.C.'s deal with baseball.

 

A stadium in search of hypothetical funding, funding that may never be found, is not a stadium at all. It is just a convenient political lie. The entire purpose of baseball's long search for a new home for the Expos was so the sport could sell the team. Who is going to buy a team to play in a stadium that isn't funded and may never be? Nobody. Nobody on earth.

 

Now, thanks to Cropp, baseball's entire motive for moving the ex-Expos to Washington -- to sell the team -- has been erased. Any solid deal in any town is now better than what Washington is offering -- which is nothing.

 

The question of whether baseball will now jerk its franchise out of Washington is not a question at all. It is a foregone conclusion. Why would baseball come here? We have pulled a bait-and-switch on the sport. We have broken a deal negotiated by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, the city's highest elected official. And worst of all, Cropp and her council didn't have the guts to stand up and say: "This stadium is too good a deal for baseball and not good enough for the District. You tied poor Mayor Williams in a knot. We're not approving such a lousy ballpark deal. We reject it. Take your team somewhere else."

 

That's a defensible position. It may be right or wrong. But those are the kind of decisions a city's council should make.

 

Instead, Cropp and her crowd want to hide their true intentions so they will not have "They Killed Baseball" signs nailed to their political backs. But that's what they did. And that's who they are.

 

Cropp doesn't want to leave fingerprints. Instead, she wants to leave the impression that she was merely trying to save the District money. Instead, she has now cost it a team and all the benefits of development in Southeast that it might have ignited.

 

"I do not want to do the public financing of this deal at this level," said Cropp. "I am not sure how baseball will react. But without this piece [of the legislation] I will not vote for this agreement."

 

Oh, she knows how baseball will react. It'll go ballistic. Will the sport want to come to Washington badly enough to put up with what council member Jack Evans, the point man throughout negotiations, called "a complete violation of our deal"?

 

In our dreams. The Nationals are gone. That didn't take long, did it? Save those hats with the tilted 'W' on the front. They'll be collectors' items before the week is over. Only a miracle could save Washington's deal with baseball now. Cropp killed it. Whether she did it out of civic conscience, as she claims, or pique, or political aspiration or simply -- and this is a possibility -- a general ignorance of the waters in which she was swimming, is a question for the future.

 

Right now, the entire baseball-for-Washington scene is in chaos and confusion.

 

Apparently, hell hath no fury like Cropp when she feels that she has been spurned by baseball. Earlier in the day, she contacted baseball about adding a clause to the stadium bill that would have capped the District's possible damages at $19 million a year if the park was not finished on time. She didn't like the answer she got which was basically, "A deal is a deal."

 

"I received a letter from baseball that was not a good faith effort," said an annoyed Cropp.

 

"I don't like a farce being played," said council member Carol Schwartz. "What [baseball told Cropp] was just a regurgitation of what they have said before."

 

In other words, baseball wouldn't negotiate with Cropp and her council beyond a certain fairly minimal point.

 

But why should they? To baseball, what Cropp has done is the purest form of business deceit. Let the mayor put an acceptable stadium offer on the table, complete with fully negotiated concessions on both sides, then, at the council level say, "Now let's renegotiate everything."

 

Baseball feels no obligation whatsoever to make a good faith effort to negotiate with Cropp's council. It already negotiated for two years with cities all over America that wanted the Expos to come to their town. The universal assumption was that the representatives of those cities -- such as Mayor Williams -- had the authority to speak for their towns and already had the backing and understanding of their city councils.

 

Obviously, Williams didn't. Cropp, who has aspirations to be mayor, has stunned Williams time and again. Last week, when asked if he had Cropp's final and solid support, he shook his head and said, "With her, who knows?"

 

The first person on the line to Commissioner Bud Selig may be Peter Angelos. As soon as he stops laughing, Angelos can assure the commissioner that, if he drops Washington like a hot potato, the Baltimore Orioles' owner will no longer feel the need to sue MLB.

 

Did Cropp fully comprehend what she was doing? Or was she simply out of her league? Bet on the former. She was told.

 

"What our city guaranteed baseball was that the city would build a new stadium -- that we would get it built. That was the essential thing to Major League Baseball. They want to sell the team," said Evans. "Tomorrow morning baseball can't sell that team. No owner would have certainty about a new stadium. That was always the fundamental issue in our deal."

 

Those who believe in the power of baseball prayer had better get to work. Because baseball would have to be run by saints -- not 30 owners -- to respond to this national insult, a direct spit in the face, by saying: "Okay, let's talk. Let's save the deal. We've already negotiated the big stuff. But now we'll negotiate it again."

 

Anything is possible. Maybe cows will fly soon, too.

 

In the end, the District, through its council, has shown that it does not want baseball -- at least not baseball in the real world. Cropp and her council are only comfortable playing fantasy baseball.

 

"If you wanted to kill the deal, why didn't you do it this morning?" council member Harold Brazil said after 10 p.m. "This is like 30 years of work for naught."

 

It's easier to do dark deeds late at night.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

It's all politics. This woman is reportedly looking to challenge the mayor when his term is up and she throught this would be a bright move to endear herself to the DC residents (who by and large are poor and ignorant-I mean come on, they elected Marion Barry back to the council-and wouldn't be the ones coming to see the team (they would draw from the wealthier suburban Maryland and Virginia areas (basically where I'm from) as well as the upscale business sectors of DC), by facading this as a move "standing up for the taxpayers of DC" which is 100% BS because the stadium would be funded by taxes on businesses who are fine with that, since they're the ones mostly buying the luxury boxes and such.

 

So the poorer people of Washington D.C. wouldn't even see the team. No wonder they are against it. Wouldn't you? The city needs new hospitals, schools and such. Businesses are willing to pay for baseball, but they can't raise money for civic services? This is exactly the problem with the stadium. The needy people of the city are screwed so that the rich can have their new plaything.

 

In the last election, three anti-stadium represenatives were elected to the council. That is a strong message from the taxpayers of Washington, right there. They don't want to spend public money on a stadium. Given how much of a cash cow this would be, $140 million is nothing. I question whether they will get a better deal elsewhere. There are a plethera of financing opportunities, so I see no reason MLB and DC cannot get get this deal done.

 

Thomas Boswell is clearly biased in this situation. He has nothing to lose from the DC stadium deal, and he'll get press passes to 81 major league games. Of course he wants to see a DC Stadium deal.

 

I would also add that there is no reason a team couldn't play full time in RFK Stadium, if need be.

[Styles 0]

The "taxpayers" are losing out on nothing. Newsflash: the businesses wouldn't accept a tax for social services, it wasn't happening, this was specifically meant for the fuding of the baseball stadium. And you want the city to be cleaned up and have more revenues? That's what a baseball stadium would bring. The same thing happened in Baltimore and happened with the MCI Center (basketball arena/hockey arena built by Abe Polin). Both areas were slums in desperate need of rebuilding, and when they built the stadiums it brought all sorts of revenues into the city. Business and restaurants popped up all around, people invested in the land, bought real estate near by and quality of life as a whole improved as places like the inner harbor and Gallery Place (China Town) went from slums to entertainment districts. This would bring the city so much from so many different avenues. Instead, if it is indeed blocked, DC will remian a slum and its politics will remain the joke of the nation.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

While Baltimore is a success story, new parks in Cleveland, Milwaukee and elsewhere have done little for their cities.

[Slovakia 0]

Well consider that Camden Yards went off without a hitch (I think, I'm not sure) whilst Miller Park was one screw-up after another for a good five or so years.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

While Baltimore is a success story, new parks in Cleveland, Milwaukee and elsewhere have done little for their cities.

I would consider Jacobs Field a success. That old Mistake on the Lake was worse than Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

The stadium itself is a success. But residents say it has done little for the surrounding area.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

The stadium itself is a success.  But residents say it has done little for the surrounding area.

Ok. Gotcha.

 

BTW, I absolutely agree that they should be privately funded.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Once again, http://www.fieldofschemes.com has some excellent analysis on the situation.

[Slovakia 0]

Well when it's closed for six months a year, how much can it do? Year-round arenas are more apt to benefit the area, like the MCI Center evidently did.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Al. Just wondering have you been or will you go to a Phillies game since it's partially funded by public financing?

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Al. Just wondering have you been or will you go to a Phillies game since it's partially funded by public financing?

Yes.

[treble 0]

I would also add that there is no reason a team couldn't play full time in RFK Stadium, if need be.

They could go the Anaheim route and refurbish it. It looks like a brand new place but the cost is much lower than building a new park.

[Dr. Tom 0]

RFK doesn't have a lot of the amenities that MLB and its owners are looking for. In other words, they can't gouge the public with riduculous prices for luxury boxes, club seating, premium concessions, etc. I agree that refurbishing RFK would be a much cheaper alternative, and certainly give MLB and DC 10+ years to finally get a deal in place that both sides will back the whole way.

 

Personally, I'm glad this happened. DC doesn't need a baseball stadium, and bravo to the city council for acting in accordance with the clearly-established will of the citizenry. MLB is bent because they can't sell the team for as much now. My heart bleeds...

[Vern Gagne 0]

Looks like the deal is back on. Both sides agreed, so there shouldn't be any problems.

 

ESPN.Com