The Sooner the Cards Lose This Thing, The Sooner We Get a Name

DC's MLB.com site is bringing the content. And lots of pictures of Tony Tavares.

Bob Watson is not our man. I must say I'm disappointed, if only because I thought I had a pretty good handle on the guy. I guess this makes Pat Gillick the front-runner again. Watson mentioned, quite understandably, that he "didn't want to leave my current job for a position with the Expos that might last only about three months." Gillick didn't seem to mind that possibility.

We have a ticket manager! Okay, that's not all that exciting, but it beats not having a ticket manager. Just one more step towards having a team that exists, and that was the goal all along.

More content: an interview with the aforementioned Mr. Tavares. He's a busy fellow, and tells exactly how busy. Moving on to stuff that interests me, Ryan:

MLB.com: Do you know how much money you are spending on players this offseason?

Tavares: No. We are working on that now. I hope to get that soon.

MLB.com: Do you think you will be active during the free agency period?

Tavares: That will depend on how much budget I get.

I'd be surprised if any budget increase they get is going to allow them to do much more than cover arbitration for a few of the guys.

MLB.com: The Expos have a lot of holes. How do you fix it?

Tavares: I don't agree with that. We've had a lot of injuries. I'll give you that. If Nick Johnson is healthy, he's playing first base. (Second baseman Jose) Vidro will be healthy, I'm certain. You have a question mark at shortstop. It doesn't mean we don't like Maicer Izturis. The question is, is he going to be ready at the Major League level? Third base, you have a question mark. We actually made an offer to Tony Batista. We'll see if he wants to come back. If not, you have a hole.

Sounds like my man Maicer will be starting the year in AAA. I wonder what cheap place-filler they'll get. Mike Bordick? Neifi Perez? Anyone else getting all tingly? And then there's third - bring back Fernando Tatis!

The outfield does not have holes. The way it projects right now is Brad Wilkerson in left, Endy Chavez in center and somewhat of a platoon between Terrmel Sledge and Juan Rivera. I don' have a problem going to war with that.

Well, I'm glad Tavares isn't the GM. The Expos outfield has more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire. Let's go from left to right: Brad Wilkerson is rad. He's 27, typically a player's prime. He walks, he hits homers, and he's got a great defensive reputation. Yeah, he strikes out a lot, but that doesn't mean anything in and of itself. So does Jim Thome. So did Reggie Jackson.

Endy Chavez is not rad. He ranks as maybe a slightly above-average defensive center fielder, but he'd need to be able to play all nine positions a la Bugs Bunny to make up for that .318 on-base percentage. He doesn't hit for average, hit for power, or walk. He steals a few bases. Chavez is the kind of player we're going to have to endure for a few years.

Then there's the right field platoon. The thing about a platoon is that right-handed hitters generally do better against left-handed pitchers and vice versa. In this case, though, both Terrmel Sledge and Juan Rivera hit righties better than they hit lefties. This is good for them, as Science informs us that most people are right handed. But you don't have a platoon if neither guy hits lefties. Sledge is a good guy to have on the bench, but Rivera, who hits better than Sledge against either flavor of hurler, should probably be the regular.

Let's go to the pitching: We have a lot of it. What we don't have is a lot of veteran pitching. Under ideal circumstances, you would be able to add in a veteran pitcher that is capable of eating 180 to 200 innings. I'm not talking about a stud. I'm just talking about somebody that is going to keep you in the game. You add that in and your rotation goes, (Livan Hernandez), (Tony) Armas, (Zach) Day, (Tomo) Ohka. Now you have a whole bunch of people fighting for backup jobs. You have decent depth for the first time. You have (John) Patterson, (Jon) Rauch, Claudio Vargas and Sunny Kim. You have Michael Hinckley that could win a job during Spring Training. You don't know you have Josh Karp, who everybody tells me is going to be a better Major League pitcher than he is a minor league pitcher.

Pitching, I don't have much of a concern about. You have Luis Ayala setting up and Chad Cordero closing. We are in pretty good shape. I think with a couple of key acquisitions, we are highly competitive.

If we have a little luck with injuries, pitching could be a real strength for us. Tavares wants an inexpensive innings-eater, but guys you can rely on to throw 200 innings tend to make a pretty good living. I doubt we could afford David Wells. I doubt we could afford to feed David Wells.

MLB.com: The way you are talking, you sound like Armas and Ohka are going to be with the team. Those guys are arbitration eligible. Are you close to signing them?

Tavares: We'll either sign them or go through arbitration. We are not going to give up good young pitchers like that.

I like hearing this. We're not going to lose anybody from last year's Expos except Einar Diaz and maybe Tony Batista. So, here's the team, based on what we know so far. I'm pretty hazy on the pitching staff. And I didn't bother with the bench.
C: Brian Schneider
1B: Nick Johnson
2B: Jose Vidro
SS: ? (Izturis?)
3B: ?
LF: Brad Wilkerson
CF: Endy Chavez
RF: Juan Rivera/Terrmel Sledge

SPs: Livan Hernandez, Tony Armas, Tomo Ohka, Zach Day, John Patterson
RPs: Chad Cordero, Luis Ayala, Francis Beltran, Jon Rauch, Sun-Woo Kim

Well, that's a lineup that's not going to score a lot of runs. Nope. Nick Johnson and Wilkerson are the only OBP sources, and there's very little power. But what the hell; they're cheap, they're young, they might finish ahead of the Mets, and you don't have to go to Baltimore to see them.

New Blogs Day!

A pair of new DC baseball blogs was brought to my attention today. Actually, they're not brand new, which leads to make this request: if you start a blog or see one I don't have linked, let me know. I want to stay on top of these things.

Ball Wonk reads between the lines and concludes that MLB's going with Grays as the new name, which sparked another name debate over at BTF (by the way, if you're going to suggest that they keep "Expos," please just stay out of it). Ball Wonk's been around since the announcement in September, so make sure to dig through the archives.

Capitol Punishment talks today about Bob Watson, presumed general manager of our beloved team. The more I think about Watson, the better a choice he seems. He excels at finding cheap veterans to fill gaps in a team. The Expos have little money, few prospects, and lots of gaps - a perfect fit. Anyway, he'll be around for a year at most, so as long as he doesn't get it in his head to try and win the division and start acting stupid, it'll be fine.

Some people are just assuming that our team is going to be run by idiots, for some reason. Steven Goldman of the YES Network and Baseball Prospectus is a heck of a writer, but I don't know that he's ever said anything about DC baseball that wasn't snide and ill-informed. In his Pinstriped Bible column today, for instance, he comments on the Yankees' CF situation thusly:

And where is Bernie Williams going to play? The only position at which his bat is an asset is center, and if he can't play center…Then there's that Lofton guy, who everyone assumes will be traded. Sounds like the Washington Expos are going to be taking on a lot of bad contracts.

Is there anything in Watson's history that suggests he'd be willing to clean up the Yankees' mistakes for them? It fits neither his professional profile nor his history with Steinbrenner, not to mention being out of step with the financial position of the team. I shouldn't let off-hand comments like this get to me, but I guess it means I'm a fan.

A near-endless City Council hearing (ten hours?!) about the financing plan is coming up this Thursday. Off Wing Opinion (which also pointed me to Capitol Punishment) has a run-down of this and other issues, including the whining of the DC United. That's a soccer team, apparently.

The Washington Baseball Club is sending an email around to get people to show their support for the city's team-buying largesse.

Here's the next way you can help: on Thursday, October 28, the D.C. City Council will hold a public hearing at the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., beginning at 10:00 a.m. Your presence at the hearing will help to show support for the ballpark financing package. Furthermore, if you are a D.C. resident or operate a business in D.C., you can make your voice heard directly bytestifying at the public hearing.
If you are interested in attending the public hearing this Thursday, please email us back or call us at 202-266-6613 and we will contact you with more information, or you can simply show up at the Wilson Building on Thursday! Attendance for the whole day is certainly not expected; one hour of your presence (or more if you'd like) will go a long way in showing support for the ballpark financing bill.

I won't be there, on account of having a job and the fact that listening to the "concerns" of "community activists" is something I wouldn't want to do for ten minutes, let alone ten hours. (Thanks to reader Buzz for the email, which I didn't get for some reason. I guess the WBC found out I'm trying to buy the team out from under them.)

UPDATE! This is from Gammons on ESPN:

Bob Watson will meet with Bud Selig in St. Louis to discuss becoming the interim GM of the Washington Kerrys. But Watson is telling the commissioner that he doesn't want it on an interim basis, that he will want to meet with prospective buyers and have some long-term commitment.

Hmm . . . I can understand where Watson is coming from. I have no idea if he would be a good long-term GM; his two previous tenures were too short. He's never built a team from scratch, but he's never had the chance. I'm willing to give him a shot. It'd be better than Cal Frigging Ripken, in any case.

Agincourt Day

Enjoying the World Series? I'm not. For one thing, the Cards are getting whipped. This makes Ben Affleck happy and me unhappy. The worse part, though, is that Bud Selig's understandable ban on news during the World's Series of Base Ball has us just sitting around, twiddling our thumbs and watching Fox on mute because we can't stand Joe Buck (perhaps I only speak for myself here). There's a good chance that the dessicated mummies who run baseball already have a GM (Bob Watson) and a name (Senators) picked out, but we're not going to know until after the Cards complete their shatteringly ironic comeback after falling behind 3-0. And I don't have anything to say because that thing I wrote about Watson exhausted me; it was the first time in a while I had to look things up instead of just stealing crack jokes from Dave Chappelle.

There are a couple things I've been meaning to mention, so here goes.

This Post story from last Wednesday is sweet, sweet music.

Opponents of a publicly funded D.C. baseball stadium conceded yesterday that they are unlikely to stop the project, while aides to Mayor Anthony A. Williams said they are developing detailed plans to show how tax revenue generated by the ballpark could help schools, libraries and recreation centers. . . .

"It's an uphill battle," Lazere said of stopping the stadium. "Our chances, if we had a vote today, are pretty slim. I don't think we'd win."

There are still hearings and all that coming up, but this thing's in the bag. I gather that there are those among reluctant to start celebrating. What are you worried about? RICO? Marion Barry? This bitch is set up, as Marion would say, and there's nothing any Canadian lawsuit enthusiasts or porn-defending councilmen can do about it.

We now have our own team site on MLB.com right here. There's a big picture of Tony Tavares, if that's your thing, and some half-assed attempts at history and merchandise. That jacket looks pretty sweet, but I don't know if it looks $600 sweet.

I want us all to get over this weird Orlando Cabrera obsession. It's over. Move on. Figure out how to pronounce "Maicer."

JIMMY BY GOD EDMONDS! WHOO!

Wouldn't Ric Flair make a great sports commentator? Yes, of course he would.

These playoffs are some exciting stuff, all right. That's not what I'm excited about, though. I'm excited about DC baseball.

"Well of course you are, jackass. You're the one with the blog," you're probably saying. And sure, I guess that's true, but for months now my pure, childish glee has been buried beneath deadly-dull talk of relocation committees and city council votes and lawsuits and freaking middle of nowhere Northern Virginia. But soon, dear reader(s), soon we'll really have something to talk about. You know, a real, live baseball team, with players and announcers and management to whom we can attribute incompetence and/or malignity. Go read this article in the Times. We'll have a name and a general manager after the World Series (Astros in six, and good for them). Tony Tavares is about to hire a guy to get a radio deal. MLB is setting a land speed record in getting some ownership up in here, and we could be saluting our new overlords by the end of the year. I look forward to nothing more than having an actual team to talk about, and I finally feel like we're about to have one.

So today I will talk about our apparently probable general manager, Bob Watson. Watson, who scored the one millionth run in MLB history, has had two previous GM stints. He ran the Houston Astros from October 1993 to October 1995 and the Yankees from October 1995 until February 1998, when he was replaced by Brian Cashman, who could well wind up as his successor in Washington as well. Looking at his record, Watson tends to avoid big-name, high-dollar free agents and excels at picking up still-useful veterans.

With both teams, Watson inherited a club bound for glory with most of the most important bits already in place. The 1993 Astros already had Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Shane Reynolds, and Mike Hampton. The 1995 Yankees had their core in place, with Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte already with the Yanks (say what you will about their scrilla-spreading ways, but the Yankees' recent run has been powered far more than usual by homegrown players).

Watson's Astros tenure isn't all that interesting. There was one huge trade: on December 28, 1994, the Astros acquired Derek Bell, Doug Brocail, Ricky Guiterrez, Pedro Martinez (no, not the one with the Jheri curl and the midget), Phil Plantier, and Craig Shipley from the Padres in exchange for the late Ken Caminiti, Steve Finley, Andujar Cedeno, Roberto Petagine, Brian Williams, and Sean Fesh (much thanks to Baseball Reference - now with 2004 stats!). Bell had some good years for the 'Stros (two 125 OPS+ seasons), but the Padres did better out of this deal. Caminiti won the 1996 MVP and slugged over .500 in each of his four years in San Diego, and Finley had three very good years and one not-so-good. There is one acquisition that presages his real knack for picking up useful veterans: in 1995, the Astros signed Dave Magadan, then 32 years old, to play third base for them. For the low, low cost of $360,000, Magadan put up a .428 on-base percentage and 127 OPS+. He was much worse than this the year before and the year after, but Watson didn't didn't hold onto him for the bad parts.

Moving on the Yankees, Watson pretty much kept the club on an even keel. They had most of the parts they'd need, having made the playoffs in 1995. Watson and Yanks had an excellent draft in 1996, selecting Eric Milton, Nick Johnson, and Zach Day. That none of these players are currently Yankees is a testament to George Steinbrenner's mindset. It is also worth pointing out that Joe Torre was hired as manager under Watson's watch.

The Yankees made two important trades before embarking on the reign of terror that still darkens the baseball landscape. In late 1995, they sent Russ Davis and Sterling Hitchcock to the Mariners for Jim Mecir, Jeff Nelson, and Tino Martinez. As you probably know, Martinez won four World Series at first base with New York, while Jeff Nelson was an effective reliever for five years with the Yanks. John Wetteland was acquired in April 1995 from the Expos for Fernando Seguignol, who wound up with only 178 career games. Wetteland supplied the Yanks with 81 saves in two years (including postseason) before giving way to Mariano Rivera.

Waton's free agent signings were mixed. David Cone must be considered a rousing success, however. Cone was acquired from Toronto in the middle of the '95 season for three guys you've probably never heard of. He subsequently resigned with New York in the offseason, and, with the exception of his last year with the club, was superb. In his five and a half good years, his ERA+ was between 120 and 176 (with 100 being league-average). Wade Boggs, resigned in 1995, was effective, as was Darryl Strawberry. On the other hand, Kenny Rogers had one good year and one bad year, but was flipped for Scott Brosius in 1997. Joe Girardi kept Jorge Posada on the bench longer than he should have been, and Hideki Irabu just sucked. Still does, for all I know.

Where Watson really shone was in picking up effective veterans to supplement his homegrown core. I already mentioned Strawberry, who put in five years of above-average offense (except 1997, when he played only 32 games) and never made more than a million dollars. Tim Raines, traded to New York for nothing (no offense to Blaise Kozeniewski) in 1996, supplied yet more above-average offense for three years. Chili Davis pitched in at DH for a couple years with two 115 OPS+ seasons. Watson got one year, 15 wins, and a 117 ERA+ out of Jack McDowell before letting him depart for free agency and ineffectiveness.

Given his track record, Watson would seem to be a good fit for Washington. Our next GM would be an interim GM; the most important task is to rebuild the farm system, but our MLB-appointed general manager probably won't be given time to do it (especially considering that local boy Brian Cashman is about a week away from suffering the wrath of Steinbrenner). Watson will be able to fill in the really obvious gaps in the team (third base, bullpen, etc.) without really mucking things up (say, trading Tomo Ohka and Maicer Izturis for Vinny Castilla because we need veteran presence or throwing a four-year contract at Juan Gonzalez). I'd like to see Pat Gillick given years to build the Senators up, but we could do much worse than Bob Watson in the short term.

It's Divine's Birthday! Celebrate As You Will.

Things are proceeding apace, and I suggest that if you haven't started gloating in the direction of any non-believers you may have run into, start now. Tony Tavares, one of approximately one employees of our beloved home team, is taking care of the important stuff first.

Major League Baseball's new Washington franchise wants to start selling tickets for the 2005 season in mid to late November, team president Tony Tavares said yesterday.
...
Mr. Tavares is in "advanced negotiations" with both Ticketmaster and Tickets.com to become the team's ticket distributor, with a final choice expected in the next few days. Other key parts of the ticketing infrastructure, such as setting up a sales office and hiring a box-office manager, also are close to being finalized, he said.
"This is still a guess, but I would say we're looking at the 15th of November or something toward the end of November [to begin selling tickets]," said Mr. Tavares, who arrived in town last week from Montreal and is working out of the Washington Hilton.

But what if you're a serious high-roller, and mere tickets aren't enough for you? Well, call up Bud and put in an offer.

We've gone crazy and we're slashing prices!!!! Major League Baseball announced today it has begun the preliminary process that will lead to the sale of the Washington Baseball franchise. Expressions of interest and requests for application materials should be made by contacting: Thomas J. Ostertag, Senior Vice President for ignoring RICO and General Counsel, Major League Baseball, at dcbaseball@mlb.com, or at 245 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10167, or by calling 212 931-7855, or by going on E-Bay. Requests should be made by November 1, 2004.

I've already put together my bid, and let me assure you that it's well into the three figure range. My lawyers advise not to say if those figures include cents.

A ringing blow has been struck in the team name war. Recently, Gerald Ensley of the Tallahassee Democrat and Eric at Off Wing Opinion have made the case that the Expos should be renamed the Grays. Both put forward cogent, convincing arguments, but they pale in comparison to the tacit endorsement of Elgin, leader of the Lil Saints Crew, in You Got Served. It's a fine film, perhaps the third best breakdancing movie I've seen, and it climaxes in a $50,000 dance-off, which is as rad as it sounds. Even radder when you learn that the winner gets to appear in a Lil Kim video. What sort of hat does Elgin (played capably by Marques Houston of Goodburger fame) choose to rock while he's dishing out a heapin' helpin' of servin' to those move-stealing Orange County bastards? Homestead Grays. Debate's over.

One Town's Very Like Another

I'm back from a long weekend in Ocean City. Call me a misanthrope, but I prefer places when there aren't any people there, so the OC in October is okay by me.

Speaking of (the opposite of) places with no people, Mayor Williams and his NoVa-smacking posse have shuffled off to China for some reason. At the "We Win" press conference, Jack Evans was saying something about how now that he's returned baseball to the District, his next challenge will be to test himself against the world's greatest martial artists, so that might have something to do with it. Depending on how much ass Evans wants to kick, don't be surprised when the Post reports tomorrow morning that Williams has been named Mayor of China and that the Marlins will be playing in Beijing.

Anyway, I don't know what this trip has to do with anything, but everyone seems to be bitching about it. It's a shame they didn't take Marion with them. Just imagine the kind of hell he could raise during one night in Bangkok, which can make a hard man crumble. Or indeed, the tough guys tumble.

Thom "Tom" Loverro is reporting that Bob Watson, former Astros and Yankees general manager, is now the leading candidate for the Washington GM job. I don't know much about this guy, but he ran the Yankees from 1995-1998, and those were pretty good years for the Highlanders (ooh, pretentious!). Anyone have an opinion? Step right up.

Oh, and this is cool: Selig also said his goal is to have an owner selected for the relocated Montreal Expos by the end of the calendar year. MLB has been getting things done pretty fast lately, so I'm not completely sure this couldn't happen. How's that for a vote of confidence?

If you're still worried about RICO, here's some movement on that front:

A hearing on the lawsuit aimed at blocking the Montreal Expos' move to Washington will be held in Miami on Dec. 6, the day before the D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on a renovation proposal to make RFK Stadium ready for baseball next season.

I don't have much to add, except that this thing isn't going to send the Expos back to Montreal.

Speaking of trying to send the Expos back to Montreal, Field of Schemes looks at what Marion Barry actually can do to undercut stadium financing.

The challenge, then, will be for the lame-duck council and Mayor Williams to both pass a stadium bill and sell stadium bonds before the new council meets for the first time in January. If they succeed, D.C. will be contractually bound to keeping the new stadium taxes in place until the bonds are paid off - no matter what Barry, D.C. voters, or Barry's hat have to say about it.

It's like I said on Thursday. It's one thing to try to stop the funding before it happens. But to revoke it after it's been passed is political suicide, and I have a hard time believing that a sound financial policy is more important to Barry than his political career.

In non-crackhead news, congratulations are due to Dr. William Yurasko, so give them heartily. Opa!

e. e. cummings day

The Expos are finally in DC! Well, two of them. Sorta.

Team headquarters for now is a humble hotel room in downtown D.C., but the new Washington baseball franchise -- technically still known as the Expos until a new name is chosen -- is officially up and running in the District, team president Tony Tavares said Wednesday.
Tavares and Kevin Uhlich, who was Tavares's chief operating officer when both worked for the Anaheim Angels and who is serving as an outside consultant for the Expos, arrived in Washington on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday began getting the team's business operations up and running.
...
Former Baltimore Orioles GM Pat Gillick has emerged as a leading candidate for the Washington team's GM job, but Tavares said he has not yet spoken to any potential candidates. Gillick has expressed public interest in the position, even if it is on an interim basis while MLB sells the franchise.

That's fine by me. Brian Cashman could be available if the Yankees blow the ALCS and incur the wrath of Steinbrenner, but it's not something we should bank on.

Meanwhile, Marion Barry is under the delusion that he can stop this thing.

Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry said he plans to block construction contracts and legislation for building a baseball stadium in Southeast, even if the city seals a deal with Major League Baseball before he likely joins the D.C. Council in January. "I'm going to do all I can to stop it at the council level and at other levels," Mr. Barry said during an interview with The Washington Times. "We have a lot of opportunities to stop this." He then delighted the reporters present with his trademark catchphrase. "In conclusion, I want to assure you all that the bitch set me up! Thanks, you've been great. Tip your waitress."

I made some of that up. Can you guess what? Anyway, Barry shows a remarkable grasp of not knowing what the hell he's talking about. "I'm going to stop this baseball stadium and take the money and spend it on housing and schools," Mr. Barry said. What money? You think Anthony Williams has a money bin he dives into every day after work? That he's just going to fill a couple of sacks with dollar signs on them and buy a stadium? One is tempted to believe that this is mere demagoguery and not a serious argument at all.

Though his intended efforts could spoil the deal to return Major League Baseball to the city after a 33-year absence, Mr. Barry said he supports baseball in the city. He said baseball officials would move the team to the District without the "sweetheart" deal offered by Mr. Williams. "He didn't just give away the store, he gave away the city," Mr. Barry said of Mr. Williams' agreement to publicly finance the cost of a $435.2 million ballpark. "That bitch set us up!"

It's reassuring that Marion Barry knows more about what MLB will do than the people who have been dealing them for years do. Maybe crack is like the spice in Dune - it lets you see into the future or something. No stadium, no team.

So, can he stop it? The financing is almost certainly going to pass. They have the seven votes they need on the current council. The problem is that Marion Barry, Kwame Brown, and Vincent Gray join it in January, and they're all anti-stadium. Could they repeal the business tax and leave the District unable to finance a new stadium? I doubt it. Imagine this: it's January, the financing has been enacted, and the Expos have moved and been given their new name. The schedule's out, the papers are counting down the days until spring training, and Jose Vidro is already doing Senate Auto Insurance commercials. Jerseys, hats, and season tickets were the most sought-after Christmas presents in two states and a district. What politician is going to have the stones to get up and tell everyone "Sorry for the false alarm, but it's off. You can get your tickets refunded, though"? I don't care if they're complaining about the money now, only a fanatic would be willing to put himself in that position. So why is Barry bothering with this? Hey, any publicity that doesn't come from a hidden police camera is good publicity, as they say.

Happy Birthday Luke Perry

Alleged presidential candidate Ralph Nader is taking time from his busy schedule to complain about DC's stadium financing plan. This isn't the first time he's done this (I commented on his last foray here), but this time it neatly reinforces what I was talking about yesterday.

Nader's minions have issued this press release, from which I shall excerpt the bits I like, as is customary.

Baseball in DC–YES! Public Financing–No!
Nader: “Lucrative deal for fat-cat owners is corporate welfare run amok”

Yeah, of course he's in favor of baseball. He's not a commie or nothin'. More on this later.

“Baseball and Washington, DC are a great match, the capitol area is wealthy, has a large population with lots of potential fans and television marketing. There is no need for DC to provide the most expensive public financing for any team in the country. Mayor Williams has given away the store and will do long-term damage to the district’s economy if his proposal is approved by the City Council,” said Nader.

Sound familiar? This is the same tack those NoTaxes people used. It's so obvious that DC is a great place for baseball that MLB should be thrilled to put a team here, free stadium or no free stadium. You know, just out of the goodness of their hearts. Their cold, black hearts.

This press release and the "fact sheet" from yesterday both go to great pains to ensure everybody that they're totally for baseball; it's just the public money they don't like. Now, every Nader voter I've ever known hasn't given a rat's ass about baseball. It's a generalization, but I'd be willing to bet if you polled people involved in the Nader "campaign," at least three-fourths of them couldn't tell you who Randy Johnson plays for. Ditto for the NoTaxes crowd. The fact that they're bothering to make yay-baseball noises indicates that the return of baseball is extremely popular in the District.

Because of this popularity, Jack Evans (upon whom the Brad Pitt character in the hit movie Troy is based, incidentally), has taken the position that opposing to the free stadium equals opposing baseball in DC. If he and his ilk can convince District voters that the choice is not between a $500 million stadium and a $200 million stadium but rather between a $500 million stadium and nothing, they'll win.

No Stadium, No Team

The stadium financing plan has been submitted to the DC City Council, and the bitching has begun in earnest. Councilman David Catania, much concerned about porn-availability for his constituents, thinks the Mayor has it on lock.

Catania is convinced that Mayor Anthony Williams will find the support he needs to secure the deal.

"I think [Williams] would be perfectly happy to make these decisions on his own," Catania says, adding that the mayor and Major League Baseball "will get the seven votes they need. I see at least seven ironclad votes."

That's not going to stop people from opposing the financing plan, obviously. I'm not concerned with making a definitive defense of the Evans Doctrine, but stadium opponents are making one argument in particular that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Adrian Fenty thinks the District should make its new team play in RFK indefinitely. Adrian Fenty doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

"Where else are they going to go? They've already left Montreal. And no one else has a stadium ready."

Actually, they haven't left Montreal. The offices are still there, and there's nothing to stop them staying up there if their DC deal falls through. Montreal and San Juan have stadia ready, which Fenty would know if he had paid attention to this issue before trying to get himself some air time.

The argument seems to be that DC didn't have to give MLB nearly as much as they did; the Northern Virginia bid was falling apart, and there were no other options. An anti-stadium organization's web site features a "fact sheet" with this info:

DC's strengths should allow it to get a team without heavily subsidizing a stadium: DC is one of the largest and wealthiest metro areas in the nation, certainly the largest area that currently has no team.

Note the use of the subjunctive here: "should." These people think that DC's strength as a market should be able to get us a team all by itself. I'm surprised anyone can think that given what's happened in the last 33 years. Anybody who's been following relocation for these many years knows how wrong this argument is. MLB kept the Expos in Montreal in 2002, against all expectations and commons sense. They did the same in 2003. They did it again in 2004. Now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to think that DC is the only place the Expos could have gone for the 2005 season? Bud Selig held out until he got the stadium deal he wanted. If that deal winds up not materializing, DC doesn't get the Expos. They'll go back to Montreal and be contracted in 2006 or shipped off to a more welcoming locale. Jack Evans gets mocked for accusing stadium opponents of "trying to kill baseball," but that is exactly what they're doing. No stadium, no team.

You can argue to your heart's content about the economic and demographic wisdom of a publicly-funded stadium in DC. However, the idea that MLB is going to put the Expos here no matter where we want them to play isn't going to fly.

Happy Birthday, Neils Bohr

News is skimpy lately. Except for finance talk, which bores the hell out of me.

We don't get to play the Orioles next year. The announcement came so late that our "rival" is still Toronto. It's really too bad. I was talking to a bartender at the Wharf Rat near Camden Yards, and he was practically salivating at the prospect of the Senators coming to town. He recognized my Nats hat, too. That guy rocked. I want us all to keep in mind that most Orioles fans are not like the guys insulting Washingtonians on message boards.

Thom "Tom" Loverro had a column in the Times yesterday about all the great former Expos. Well, they're not all great. I don't see what all the fuss is about Orlando Cabrera. He's a nice defensive shortstop with no bat and back problems. Sure Boston loves him, but let's not forget that his attitude wasn't so great until he got traded to a winner. Besides, the Expos already have a slick-fielding, sick-hitting SS who's five years younger and millions of dollars cheaper. From John Sickels on ESPN:

Maicer Izturis is a 24-year-old Venezuelan, originally in the Cleveland Indians farm system. He came to Montreal in a little-noticed spring trade, but he emerged with an excellent season at Triple-A Edmonton. In 99 games for the Trappers, he hit .338 with a .428 OBP and a .423 SLG. Now, this is the Pacific Coast League, so you have to account for statistical inflation due to thin air and hitter's parks. Izturis didn't show a lot of pop in his bat, hitting 19 doubles, two homers, and three triples for the Trappers. But he showed good contact hitting ability and some very good plate discipline, drawing 57 walks while fanning only 30 times in 376 at-bats. Scouts have always loved his glove; he has excellent range, a decent arm, soft hands, and quick infield reactions. If he can add some offense to his glove skills, you'd have a very fine player.

He struggled in the majors this year, but he sounds like a nice fit for a non-contending team building for the future. If he develops, great. If not, it's not like we blew a bunch of money on him.

Go watch the playoffs.

Dammit, Gammons

Here's some random crap. Yes, that is different from how it usually is.

From Peter Gammons' ESPN column today:

MLB has assured that the Washington Lobbyists will not be among the bidders for free agents, since there won't be any ownership in place in the shopping season.

Ha ha! Lobbyists! That's almost as funny as the thousands of other Washington-themed names everyone suddenly feels obliged to come up with. Anyway, whom has MLB assured? I don't expect beautiful prose from my sportswriters, but Gammons' grammar is so bad that it tends to obscure his meaning. Whatever direct object you stick in there, though, this is not so good.

The gay community is up in arms that the proposed stadium site would deal a death-blow to the city's "homosexual entertainment" district (by the way, what do you think your average imam thinks of the phrase "homosexual nightclub mecca"?). I wonder if Michelle Malkin knows who her bedfellows are on this issue. Ha!

The Distinguished Senators Playoff Preview: Go Cards!

Stand Pat

I may have spoken too soon about the delay in getting some owners. From the Baltimore Sun (which, along with the Washington Times, scooped the snot out of the Post on Wednesday morning):

Major League Baseball wants to move fast. "They hope to have the new owner in place before the end of the year," Mark Tuohey, chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, told reporters yesterday. "I think Major League Baseball is pretty well organized on this one and they'll do it."

Can they get through the bidding process and approval in three months? That might depend on whether Bud Selig has already decided who's going to win, which he's been known to do. Well, I don't mind a little chicanery if it means this team will have its act together by April. In other hasty accomplishments news, Angelos is almost taken care of, and Anthony Williams sent the finance plan to the City Council last week. It's amazing to see everything happening so quickly after the months and years of inertia.

There's still the matter of who's going to run this operation, and I'm actually pleased at some of the names that have been mentioned. It started slow, with Cal Ripken and Steve Phillips being bandied about, but it's picked up with Brian Cashman and Pat Gillick as candidates.

Buster Olney on had a column on ESPN about Cashman, who attended Georgetown Prep and Catholic University. He has a reputation as a sharp guy, and he hates George Steinbrenner. There is little evidence, though, that the guy is a great GM. This article at NewYorkMetro.com tries to make the case but trips over the facts (it does make a good case that Steinbrenner is a complete jackass). For one thing, Cashman has nothing to do with the draft. That's a pretty big part of a GM's job, as readers of Moneyball are well aware, and Cashman apparently has no experience. His trades? Well, he picked up Javier Vasquez, Esteban Loiaza, and Kevin Brown this year, and look how well they turned out. Cashman took over in 1998, and Yankees have never been as good as they were then. Cashman apologists want to point to Steinbrenner as the man behind the bad moves, but he's also the one spending the $190 million to keep them in first.

There's also this:

Brian Cashman, the Yankees' GM, has a contract that expires at the end of next season . . . Whether Cashman becomes a candidate will depend on how quickly the ownership of the D.C. franchise is identified and whether the team would be willing to wait for Cashman. If ownership was selected in the middle of next season, for example, it would be only a few months before Cashman became available.

That might be too long to wait.

Pat Gillick is apparently interested in the job, according to this story in the Times. He's willing to start immediately, too:

But Gillick said he is still interested in the Expos' position, even as it exists now.
"I love the game," he said. "Any way I could help, I probably would. I've been around this game for a long time. If somebody asked me to do it and put things together and get things on an even keel for a while, I probably would. I'm still working for Seattle, but I am always interested in a challenge."

Gillick has one hell of a track record. He built Toronto up from scratch, and they won two straight titles under his guidance. He moved on to the Orioles in 1996, which just happened to be when they got good. Most recently, he ran the Mariners from 2000 to 2003, the best time in the history of that franchise.

Pat Gillick has won with three different teams, and he's willing to start immediately. He's cautious ("Stand Pat"), but I like caution, and the rehabilitation of the Expos is going to be a long process; patience will definitely be a virtue. Cashman, in his favor, has won championships, has a real understanding of what makes offenses go (the A's haven't been the only team focusing on on-base percentage), and isn't even 40 yet. But Gillick has a better track record and seems ideally suited for this unique situation. Sign him up.

A Year of Treading Water

Part I is over; we're getting a team. You can worry about RICO or the finance plan passing or whatever, but I'm not. These are the kind of things everyone will have forgotten about in a year. I'm moving on.

The Montreal Expos have been a franchise in disarray for years now. One would think that the promise of permanent home and dedicated ownership would alleviate this state of affairs, but it's actually getting worse. Expos general manager Omar Minaya is gettin' while the gettin's good, accepting a job with the Mets. I'd wish him well, but the Mets are a divisional rival and a team I hated to begin with, so I hope he fails miserably. David Wright for Tony Batista straight up, Omar - you know you want to.

"Well, no big deal," you may be saying to yourself. "The owners will hire someone. Hey, maybe that Cal Ripken fella would be a good GM." If you are saying that to yourself, you could hardly be wronger. First, Cal Ripken: GM springs from the same logic that gave us John Thompson: radio personality and Madonna: Jewish mystic. Second, we're not going to have an owner. Jayson Stark has a useful overview of the impending chaos:

We surveyed several people familiar with team sales in general and this situation in particular. They estimated that MLB could be stuck with this club anywhere from another six months to (better grab the smelling salts) two years.

If everything goes perfectly smoothly, we might have ownership in place around Opening Day. This means we miss out on a very interesting crop of free agents (it's not every year a power-hitting 3B comes on the market at age 25), and without some of those guys, the Washingtons aren't going to compete. What we have in the Expos is a good skeleton around which to build a team. The current squad is pretty cheap, pretty young, and possessed of reasonably good potential. It's not Cleveland or Texas, but it's not Arizona, either. The NL East is not the strongest division in the game, and there would be nothing to stop the current Expos + $40 million from competing, or at least whipping the hell out of the Mets. With MLB continuing to own the team, we can't expect any big name free agents or, perhaps worse, the reorganization and replenishment of the farm system. Even as I rejoice at our good fortune, I lament our lost opportunities.

The good news is that, new ownership or not, the team won't be the Expos next year. The safe choice is Senators, and I don't think Rangers owner Tom Hicks will make getting the name a problem. I'm glad to see some buzz buzzing around Grays. Michael Wilbon wrote a column about it, and Dan Patrick favors it as well, not to mention notorious badass Anthony Williams. It certainly has some advantages. I, for one, don't like that damn cursive W the City Council was sporting yesterday. It looks like the logo of a dude ranch. A team called the Senators would probably have to wear red, white, and blue, and scientists have determined that it's almost impossible to do that and not look stupid. I can't say that I prefer Grays, but that and Senators are the only names that don't annoy me. And after all, shouldn't that be the overriding consideration?

In other news, I've been hearing something about a presidential election going on. I can't believe they're doing this again already. It's like making a sequel to Resident Evil - wasn't the last one bad enough? I decided to take a look at the candidates and tell you who to vote for.

George W. Bush (R)

• Pros: a baseball guy. Used to own the Rangers. Threw out first pitch at Cards game.
• Cons: traded Sammy Sosa.

John F. Kerry (D)

• Pros: looks just like Cleveland 3B Casey Blake. Red Sox fan.
  
• Cons: favorite Red Sox players? Manny Ortiz and Eddie Yost.

Well, neither of these guys is satisfactory. We're looking for leadership, for men who can do the impossible and look good doing it. We're looking for men who aren't afraid to insult Loudoun County, men who will shake William Yurasko's hand. Distinguished Senators hereby endores Anthony Williams for president and Jack "The Ripper" Evans for vice president. Write 'em in, people!

Too Bad I Couldn't Score a Free Hat

Quick update here, then off to bed. The press conference was great and included the greatest moment of my life to date: I shook Jack Evans' hand. I could feel his power flow through me, and now I don't take crap from nobody.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. I met William Yurasko of the eponymous News, and Chris Rehling of Remember the Grays was there with a squad of his Gray-remembering henchmen. I'll have more tomorrow. There's a lot to talk about; this is only the end of part I.

Press Conference

Five o'clock today at the City Museum. Directions, courtesy of the WBC:

The City Museum is located on K Street, NW between 7th and 9th streets, NW at Mt. Vernon Square directly across the street from the new Convention Center.
We recommend taking the Metro.
The City Museum is 2 blocks south of the Mount Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center Metro Station (yellow and green lines) and 2 blocks north of the Gallery Pl-Chinatown Metro station (red, yellow, and green lines).

I should be there - look for the guy in the red, white, and blue Senators hat and the brown Hawaiian shirt - and I hope to meet some of ya'll there. Remember the Grays will be out in force, as well.

IT'S OFFICIAL!

From ESPN:

Major League Baseball will announce Wednesday that Washington will be the new home of the Montreal Expos, The Associated Press has learned.
A city official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington has been notified by Major League Baseball of the impending announcement that will return the national pastime to the nation's capital for the first time in 33 years.
The city is planning its own news conference at a downtown location Wednesday afternoon, the official said.

There you have it. It's been a long, harrowing haul, but the right thing is finally happening. Now I want some input from you. Let's use the comments section to memorialize this moment. Go Senators!

Ex Lion Tamer

Negotiations with Peter Angelos are continuing. Jayson Stark has a run-down of what he's supposedly being offered.

Baseball is willing to guarantee that the Orioles will earn a still-to-be-negotiated minimum in annual revenues. If their revenues fall below that figure, MLB would make up the difference.

Baseball also is willing to guarantee a minimum franchise value for the Orioles. So if Angelos attempts to sell the team and can't find a buyer willing to pay that amount, MLB also would make up that difference.

Beyond those measures, baseball will help establish a new regional sports network in the Baltimore-Washington area that would enable the Orioles to continue to televise games in Washington and its Virginia suburbs.

Let's go backwards:

I love the regional sports network idea. I wouldn't call myself an Orioles fan, but I would call myself a baseball fan. The more games I have to choose from, the better. Plus, I wouldn't want to lose the pleasure of hearing Buck Martinez; he sounds like the noise I'd imagine a gut-punched drunk clown would make.

Minimum franchise value? Hey, if Angelos sells, we all win. Washingtonians, Baltimoreans, mammals, everyone.

Minimum annual revenues - there's a bad idea. I always figured that there were two ways Angelos could respond to baseball in the capital. He could recognize that there was some competition and actually try to make the Orioles competitive, or he could grab an excuse to cry poor and stop trying. It sounds like MLB is trying to give him an incentive to do the latter. He could field an O's team starring a washed-up catcher with bad knees and one last shot at glory, a wild pitcher just out of the California Penal League, and a superstitious slugger with concerns that his bats are afraid of curveballs. They could lose 100 games, and he'd still turn a tidy profit. It'd be 2001 all over again ("Come see CAL RIPKEN and a bunch of AAA no-hopers! Orioles Magic!").

Anyway, it seems like a very sweet deal for a very undeserving man. Reports are that the announcement is made Thursday (33 years to the day after the last Nats game), so he'd better take it while it's still there.

A couple other things you should check out:

• Neil deMause of Field of Schemes takes a look at DC's finance plan over on Baseball Prospectus. 80% public, 20% private.
• The mayor has started making the case. I like that he's making a big deal out of free tickets for inner-city children. The next time you hear someone complain about the plan, just say "Why do you hate inner-city children?!" Say it loud.
• The Brewers got sold. You don't care, of course, and neither do I, except that the article points out that approval of a new owner usually takes 6-12 months. That ain't good news.
• The William World News has a whole lot more.

We should start hearing leaks and whatnot tomorrow. If we don't hear that Angelos has caved, I might start to get a little worried. If I may quote Wire, stay glued to your TV sets.

UPDATE: Cub reporter Hal Bodley files a report confirming the Thursday (or Wednesday!) announcement and containing this tidbit:

Two baseball executives told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Selig will make his announcement even if an agreement with Angelos isn't complete.

It's up to you, Pete. You can come out of this a rich(er) man or you can hope some BS nuisance lawsuits achieve the impossible.

Reassurance, If You Needed It

Look, we're getting the Expos. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Thursday, when the MLB Executive Committee met and did not announce a new home for the 'Spos, was not a setback - Bob DuPuy said beforehand we wouldn't hear anything definitive, and we didn't. It doesn't matter. Consider all this:

The memorandum of understanding between MLB and the DC Sports 'n' Entertainment Commission has been formally approved. "The unanimous vote . . . represents the final step from city officials before Major League Baseball executives announce the Expos' new home next week."

Didn't Bob DuPuy say no one's been eliminated? Someone tell Portland.

Oregon Stadium Campaign leader David Kahn said he has been in contact with a relocation committee member this week.

"Our conversation was consistent with what has been evolving over the last several weeks," Kahn said. "That is, it appears as if they have been pointing toward a conclusion to the Expos franchise that resides in Washington, D.C."

Someone tell Vegas, too.

[Vegas mayor "Diamond" Oscar] Goodman said he is prepared to concede the Expos race to the Washington, D.C. group, but said it was a "positive" for Las Vegas that Selig gave the city serious consideration.

Those District businesses are eager to buy me baseball.

Many of the D.C. businesses that would be taxed to help pay for a new baseball stadium said yesterday that they support the preliminary details of the proposal, which as currently envisioned would cost the city's largest companies up to $28,000 a year.

The Potomac Cannons have just signed on as an A-Ball affiliate of the Expos. No big deal? Maybe, except that they've been trying to do this for two years in hopes that the Expos would move down here, but were denied permission. This time they got it.

Of course, there's Angelos trouble. There's always Angelos trouble. It'll pass. He's one man standing against almost everyone else in MLB, not to mention the country, and his choice is to get a big fat payday and a team in DC or to get nothing and a team in DC. He may be evil, but he's not stupid. Expect an announcement next week.

10 Minutes to the New Year

I'll have something a little more substantive tomorrow. I've said it before, but Professor Yurasko is absolutely priceless on a day like today, so go there. Also dig how Field of Schemes is as much as conceding that we get the Expos a day after crowing about the lack of announcement. His odds still have DC even with Montreal, but that's still less insane than they were before.

See you tomorrow, and a happy new year to any Jewish readers out there.
שתהיה לכם שנה טובה ומתוקה
(Hebrew stolen from this guy)

I'm Still Waiting

Well, that was disappointing. I can't say that I was expecting an announcement, but it would have been nice. Perhaps the Post-alanche of relocation coverage this morning got my hopes up. Here's what we learned from this meeting:

1) Peter Angelos is really pissed
2) Bud Selig doesn't have the stones to stand up to him

Check this out from ESPN:

"Bud hasn't come close to finding a way to satisfy him," the official said. "I'm not saying he won't find a way. But if he does, it won't be with money. He's saying there's no number in the world that would be acceptable. You wouldn't believe the (dollars) that have been thrown around, as recently as this week. And he's had absolutely no interest."

My previous offer stands: one dollar and a picture of my ass.

Et Tu, Bud?

Buy the Post today; it's overflowing with baseball stuff. Boswell thinks Angelos is about to get stabbed four hundred times by his friends, Caesar-style. Go have a look at the William World News for a round-up of the ninety or so articles out today. I'll have more tonight, unless I get too distracted by Rome: Total War.

Endgame: We Have a Site

From the front page of the Post:

District officials disclosed plans yesterday to build a publicly financed stadium costing more than $400 million on the Anacostia waterfront near South Capitol Street, amid growing signs that Major League Baseball will attempt to move the Montreal Expos to Washington.

Two high-level baseball sources said the owners' relocation committee is leaning toward recommending at an executive council meeting tomorrow in Milwaukee that the Expos be moved to Washington. That would trigger what figure to be delicate negotiations with Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos.

Here's the Times report (no registration). This is happening, and we could have the announcement tomorrow.

When Bodley Comes Marching Home Again

Almost exactly a month after he waved the white flag, USA Today columnist Hal Bodley has shoveled the last bit of dirt on the Loudoun Cabal and hoisted ours.

The commissioner now must make another difficult decision. He has no other option this time either. He must move the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., and not linger in making the announcement.
When baseball's executive council meets Thursday in Milwaukee, it will be told what just about every owner now knows. Downtown Washington, temporarily at RFK Stadium, is really the only location the Expos can be placed.

Bodley was once a vocal supporter of that farcical Loudoun County plan you may have heard of. Now, just in time, he's on our side. Welcome home, Hal.

Here's something that really sticks in my craw, wherever that is:

There must be a creative financial solution to projected losses for the Orioles caused by a team in D.C.
My guess is much of Thursday's meeting will center around ways to eliminate the impact on the Orioles.

I've got a creative financial solution for you: Angelos gets one (1) American dollar and a framed, autographed picture of my ass. Peter Angelos has done absolutely everything he could to stop Washington from getting a team, and now he gets paid when it happens? Yeah, yeah - he loses his broadcast monopoly and all, but he knew full well when he bought the Orioles (and subsequently ran them into the ground) that DC was not part of his territory. It's a shame that the ability to kiss up and threaten lawsuits should be rewarded. If I tell Bud that haircut looks great, flirt with his daughter and nominal Brewers owner Cruella, and then tell the Baltimore Sun I'm going to sue both of them, can I get a couple million?

There's still the RICO suit. Eric Fisher has a run-down in the Times today, if you're interested. I admit that everything I know about legal matters I picked up from Law and Order, but look at it this way: what are the chances a judge is going to order the Expos to stay in Montreal? That's the only way they're not coming to DC, and that seems pretty unlikely.

I'm eagerly anticipating any news that comes out of the Executive Council meeting on Thursday. Maybe we'll get a full-on announcement and maybe not, but we'll get something.

Arn Anderson Day

First, a new link you all need to check out. Daily. First thing. The William World News will greet you every morning with links to all the DC baseball stories you need to see. And Penn State football, if that's your thing. Check out the Senators logo!

My faith in the news media continues to dwindle. I know I shouldn't expect the Baltimore Sun to run the kind of rah-rah yay DC pap you get from, say, here, but I expect at least something more than rank dipshittery. It's like USA Today without the pretty graphs. From Peter Schmuck:

There is a chance Major League Baseball's relocation committee will make its long-awaited recommendation to commissioner Bud Selig on the next permanent home of the Montreal Expos, and it doesn't look like the team will be landing in the District.

Baseball chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said last week the troublesome outcome of the D.C. City Council primary would not necessarily affect Washington's offer to build a publicly financed stadium, but no one in baseball's central office really knows for sure.

That means baseball will either have to delay the decision (which wouldn't be a major shock to me, of course) or opt for the safest deal, which is in Northern Virginia.

It has already been demonstrated here and elsewhere that the results of the Council primary are probably not as damaging as first reported. That's okay, though; nobody seems interested in reporting anything but "Marion Barry's sticking it to the Man." The real problem is that last paragraph (what is it with sports writers and one-sentence paragraphs?). Somebody explain to me how Northern Virginia is "the safest deal." Here's a stadium "effort" that flat-out lied about the land it owned and its local government support. The governor of Virginia has abandoned them, and they're desperately trying to make it sound like they can still pay for this. Where the hell does Schmuck get off saying that these 50 acres in the middle of nowhere are "the safest deal"? This guy is like the Hal Bodley of sportswriters.

The Sun isn't the only paper I'm mad at. My last post, as you may recall, concerned a fascinating conversation Jack Evans had with a couple newbie city councilmen on WTOP. Evans neatly pointed out the flaws in the new guys' objections to his financing plan and made a strong, well-reasoned case for it. How does the Washington Times cover it?

Jack Evans, the D.C. Council's outspoken finance chairman, lashed out yesterday at Major League Baseball, which has delayed a relocation decision on the Montreal Expos for nearly three years.

That was the least important part of the whole thing and has no bearing on what happens to the Expos, which the article itself admits. Eric Fisher deserves credit for his coverage of this endless story, but here he seems a bit too interested in portraying Jack the Ripper as a bile-spewing loose cannon rather than as an savvy and effective civil servant.

And the Post? The only people over there who care about this are a Metro columnist and a semi-retired sportswriter. Let us all take a moment to give thanks for the glorious internet, without which we would know nothing.

Jack Evans SMASH

Jack Evans, the Babe Ruth of city counciling, is on the warpath. He's heard all the talk about the new DC councilmen stopping ballpark financing, and he's not going to stand for it. Thanks to message board denizen "Not" for this transcript of an interview on WTOP, where councilmen-more-or-less-elect Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown suffer the wrath of 100% Jack (I'm skipping around, and you should read the whole thing).

Jack Evans: It’s not going to be rushed through. It’s going to go through the normal legislative process. But the other thing is, it’s a privately financed stadium. And to the extent that this public finance got carried away in the campaign, there’s not a tax dollar that is currently being raised for anything – capital projects, operating dollars – that’s going to be spent on a baseball stadium. So the question for the two gentlemen you have there is: “Would you support a privately financed baseball stadium?” It just comes down to that. The concessions, the taxes on the concessions. The rent of the stadium. The proposed Gross Receipts Tax that doesn’t currently exist. That’s what’s used to finance the stadium. So that’s what it comes down to. And it’s been done everywhere. And it’s the kind of way you get these things built.

Now watch as the demagoguery of the new kids withers under Jack's assault:

And Vince, when you’re talking about education, I mean, we’re spending right now $1.3 Billion in our public school system. And you tell me: if I spend another $500 million in that system, would they have gotten Eastern High School open on time? I mean, c’mon. And you want to go out and borrow another $300 million, with no financing mechanism to pay it back, and use it on our school system.

Let's see what the new guys have to say now.

Vincent Gray: I just want to say one thing to Jack, and that is, I don’t think the case that he’s making now has been effectively made on a widespread basis. I think those who are proponents of baseball and a publicly financed baseball stadium, if that’s an appropriate way to put it, need to do a better job of getting the message out to the residents of the District of Columbia. Because I can tell you, there are lots of people who don’t have a clear understanding of this. There are lots of people who do not want to spend any public dollars on a baseball stadium.

Jack Evans: To respond to Vince, I think you’re absolutely right. I think the case has not been made. And secondly, I do not want to spend any public dollars on a baseball stadium. I’ve said it repeatedly. And to the extent that this term “public financing” has gotten legs in the media, it’s a fallacy.

So you see, Gray's already softening his stance. It's not that he's against it, it's that case hasn't been effectively made. There's a lot of hooting among stadium opponents and the half-informed that the results of the recent election constitutes a black eye for Evans and a roadblock to the return of baseball. But when Marion Barry calls for contruction of a stadium and the two other supposedly anti-stadium councilmen soften their stace within minutes of a talking-to from Evans, the return of the Senators just looks surer and surer.

I Got Pixies Tickets!

Hell yeah!
Also, Jack Evans is awesome. More later.

This Is It

The Expos are coming to Washington, DC. Period. I don't base this statement on wild speculation or wishful thinking. "It hasn't happened yet, why would it now?" is no longer a viable argument, if it ever was. DC officials and the Relocation Committee have produced a "30-page memorandum of understanding." Baseball has given formal notice that they're moving the Expos. There are reports that the team has been giving a moving date - November 30. Even Will Carroll, who has made being dead-ass wrong something of a trademark, has come around, after laughably declaring the DC bid "dead" in June. There is no more question of Northern Virginia or Montreal or anywhere else. From this point on, the only conflicts will come from within the District.

I guess there's still RICO. Look, I know nothing about the merits of this case, but I would be beyond shocked if a judge says the Expos have to stay in Montreal. The dearth of RICO-talk in the media is telling. Anti-stadium zealots and desperate Quebecois are leaning on it pretty hard, but I find it really hard to believe that MLB would have done all this work if they didn't think it would lead to anything.

About those new councilmen. It's conventional wisdom at this point to say that DC needs to get stadium funding passed while the lame duck City Council is still in power. Marion Barry's going to put the kibosh on this boondoggle, they may be heard to say. I'm not so sure.

The former "mayor for life" says he then plans to push for, among other things, building a major-league baseball park on the site of RFK Stadium on East Capitol Street . . .

That doesn't sound like something a staunch opponent of a publicly-financed ball park would say.

It's On Like Donkey Kong!

Thanks to Maury at the message board for this:

Major League Baseball has talked for years about relocating the Montreal Expos. Now the game has taken a formal first step--most likely toward either Northern Virginia or the District of Columbia.
Rich Levin, baseball's senior vice president for public relations, confirmed that it has given written notice to Miami U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages of its intention to move the team.
"Yes, we did--that's the requirement," Levin said yesterday in a telephone interview from New York.

Somebody go tell Field of Schemes to redo their relocation odds.

William Howard Taft Day

It's three hundred-plus pounds of relocation, baby! Stuck in your bathtub!

So, that election. It could have gone better. Three pro-stadium incumbents were knocked out by three anti-stadium challengers in yesterday's DC Democratic primary. What's this mean? Well, the current pro-stadium majority remains in office through the end of the year. Will that force MLB to speed things up? Apparently not.

Changes in the makeup of the D.C. Council won't force a quick vote on the District's baseball proposal.

Councilwoman Linda Cropp says business leaders remain committed to baseball and appear ready to increase their own tax burden to make that happen. She also says they understand that may not preclude additional increases in business taxes for other purposes in the future.

I'm glad to hear someone else spouting the Jack Evans line about how glad businesses are to buy me a baseball team. I wonder if they know that I don't patronize any of them except for the ones with Belgian beer. Speaking of Jack Evans, he got 100% of the vote! That guy is so rad.

I'm going to put words in your mouth now. "Well, so much for baseball in DC, smartass!" I beg to differ. And unlike you, I shall remain civil, sir. First, Northern Virginia:

A self-imposed ban on quoting Saturday Night Live jokes is the only thing standing between and me a "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" crack. The point is that the Loudoun Cabal is still as dead as they were when I first put the tag on 'em. From the Post:

Concerns of Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, as well as top state lawmakers, about putting the state's "moral obligation" on the line to finance a baseball stadium have complicated negotiations with Major League Baseball, backers of bringing a team to Northern Virginia said yesterday. (emphases mine)

Even NoVa's backers are despairing. Publicly, I mean; they've been crying themselves to sleep every night for weeks.

"But what about Montreal, merde-tete!" Hey, lay off, man. Anyway, I'm still convinced they aren't staying in the Great White North. Observe, RICO movement:

Lawyers for the former limited partners of the Montreal Expos plan to ask a federal judge to block major league baseball from moving the team.
The commissioner's office told the U.S. District Court in Miami on Tuesday that it intends to relocate the Expos for 2005 but did not specify to where. Washington and Northern Virginia are the leading contenders, and a decision could be announced this month. Baseball officials met with the Washington group Wednesday, one day after meeting with the Northern Virginia bidders.

But what of the reports of MLB already negotiating to use Olympic Stadium next year? Buried in a fairly worthless story about Reinsdorf's visit to NoVa (except that he didn't go to NoVa at all - I guess Georgetown is easier on the eyes and the itinerary), we see this:

Meanwhile, Expos president Tony Tavares denied recent press reports that the team was actively negotiating a lease to use Montreal's Olympic Stadium for the 2005 season. What happened, he said, is MLB requested potential dates to fill out a preliminary 2005 schedule. And without knowing where the team will be next year, Tavares submitted dates relative to Montreal and Olympic Stadium.
The early 2005 slate now lists the Expos in Montreal, but the new city will need to inherit that schedule. Tavares said he "guessed there may be a chance" the team stays in Quebec next year, but he continues to operate on the assumption the team will be moved.
"We're completely in the dark as to what's going to happen," Tavares said. "They needed dates, and I went with what I knew. But are we prepared to deal with last-minute changes? It's what we've been doing for the last three seasons."

To conclude: I think Montreal has a better shot than Loudoun County at this point, in the same way a one-legged man would beat a corpse in the 100-yard dash. That said, I don't think the announcement will come before the playoffs. The Expos will be in DC next year, but it will be some time before we know for sure.

Clayton Moore Day

First off, let me point you to a dissenting opinion. Reader Olibou thinks the Expos are staying right where they are. He also thinks Livan Hernandez is a dead man walking. Or rather, he's attached to a dead arm throwing.

Speaking of dead people, MLB has developed an interest in the paranormal that fits in nicely with their interest in putting the Expos in Washington.

Major League Baseball's relocation committee will make another trip to the Washington area this week to meet with officials on both sides of the Potomac River to discuss their respective bids for the Montreal Expos.
The panel will repeat a trip made Aug. 24-25 but this time will reverse the order. Northern Virginia will go first today, with the District following tomorrow. Like those sessions three weeks ago, the new meetings will delve deep into each jurisdiction's proposed plan to finance a new ballpark for the Expos and negotiate detailed lease terms for the use of that ballpark.

First they get to go find some spooky ghosts in Loudoun, then they get down to business in the District. Hey, I see one now!

Field of Schemes thinks they're stalling until RICO gets settled.

You civics buffs out there may be aware the today was the DC Democratic primary. Who gives a rat's ass, you say? Well, comedians have a stake in it. They're salivating at the prospect of having Marion Barry to kick around again. As to how this pertains to baseball, I'll let Marc Fisher do my talking for me.

There is definitely a relationship between today's election and the rather sudden moves by major league baseball to get the Expos decision done fast. The reports I'm hearing are that Commissioner Bud Selig will announce sometime this week or next that the Expos will move to the Washington area, without specifying whether the team will be based in the District or northern Virginia. Under this scenario, Selig would then open the bidding on the Expos--meaning that the D.C. and Virginia ownership groups would be removed from the awarding of the franchise to Washington and would merely be two among however many other groups might want to own a baseball team. Then, whoever wins the bidding war would get to decide between DC and Va.
But the time is short: The Virginia baseball authority's money and legal powers run out at the end of this year, and if incumbents lose today in the District, the majority supporting a ballpark could be gone when the new council is seated at the start of next year.

This is the same idea Thom Loverro put forth last week. I do hope it's true, though I'm still skeptical. I'm hoping we'll hear more in the fallout of the elections tomorrow.

About Last Week

Yeah, I pretty much skipped last week. On the off chance that this is the only place you get your Expos relocation news, let me assure that you didn't miss anything. Oh sure, there was plenty of speculation and complaint, but nothing substantive. Here's some of it anyway:

Jayson Stark lamented on Thursday how long this whole thing has already taken.

And we hate to break it to our favorite, agonizing commissioner. But he has already waited too long. It's already too late to do this right -- even if he makes an announcement in the next 30 seconds. Bob DuPuy, Selig's right-hand man/COO, told Rumblings this week "it would be nice to get this done before the playoffs." But the truth is, it wouldn't just be "nice." It's the only hope to avoid a total relocation fiasco.

You hear this a lot, and I don't care. It would have taken a remarkable confluence of good luck and smart leadership to prevent the 2005 Senators/Grays/whatever being a mess. Once the Expos get here, they're going to be here for a good long time. Years from now we'll be able to laugh at that wacky, hectic first year.

Thom Loverro made some waves with this story from the Times.

Some Major League Baseball club owners are pushing the sport's senior executives to scrap the current relocation process for the Montreal Expos because they want the team to be sold to the highest bidder, industry sources have told The Washington Times.

I don't buy it. No doubt some owners are annoyed at the way this has turned out, but Selig has that free stadium fixation.

"I think the committee has done an excellent job," said Gabe Paul Jr., Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority executive director. "They have been very thorough and I think the process is so far along, I don't see anything except this reaching its final conclusion through the commissioner."
Mark Tuohey, chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, also doubted the current process could be halted at this stage.
"It's getting down to the wire on a recommendation," he said. "I think the process is coming to a conclusion."

Like maybe around Labor Day, you damn idiots?

Loverro again, from Friday.

The two local groups that have worked to secure a baseball team for the Washington area would not necessarily own the club should Major League Baseball award the Montreal Expos to the District or Northern Virginia.

The article goes on to talk about a couple prospective ownership groups. I don't enough about any of these people to care one way or t'other. None of them has said anything about not going to DC, so that's good.

Tracy "The Chapeau" Ringolsby had perhaps the most interesting article of the week.

Commissioner Bud Selig isn't going to make a decision until he is confident he has a solid consensus, which means he still is trying to ensure he has enough support to place the team in Washington in what can be announced as a two- year trial.
Such a scenario would give baseball a chance to see what type of legitimate ownership interest surfaces.

This is not a new idea (check out StevenJB's comment to this post). At that time, I was all for it, but that was when I was still worried about the Loudoun Cabal. Since then, of course, the Cabal has passed on the land of wind and ghosts, taking with them my concerns. I'm not any more worried about Dulles than I am about Portland or Monterrey. Therefore, I now think this is a lousy idea. I want some owners, dammit. I want some free agents and a restocked farm system. Two more years of MLB ownership, even if they loosen the pursestrings a bit, would be a very bad thing.

Fortunately, there are holes in this plan. For one thing, why do they need two years? Don't they already have "legitimate ownership interest"? Field of Schemes has further objections: it would trigger a RICO injunction, and it's all about the free stadium, of course. Neil of the Field still thinks they're staying in Montreal, which I think has almost no chance of happening.

So, in conclusion, we don't know any more today than we did a week ago. Are they coming? When will they tell us? After the DC primaries? After the playoffs? February? Why hasn't Jack Evans resumed insulting people for my amusement? Has anyone else noticed that Casey Blake looks just like John Kerry? I hope next week proves to be more informative.

Interpol and Deutsche Bank

Fond happy birthday wishes to Queen Elizabeth I.

Peter Gammons, who rather resembles Good Queen Bess (at least in her later years), talks a little bit about DC baseball in his ESPN column.

The other sites have dropped out in the Expos sweepstakes, but there are still problems: 1) the D.C. politicians are playing hardball with MLB on the stadium financing, 2) MLB has overpriced the club because of promises made to the 29 owners paying the bills and 3) Peter Angelos believes that Bud Selig promised him that there'd never be a team in the Washington area.

This is a rehash of what he said in his chat the other day, but it's just about the only thing we've had for days. I didn't not post over the long weekend because I was off doing stuff; there was just nothing to talk about.

If Eric Fisher of the Washington Times is to be believed, Selig may already have the recommendation of the Relocation Committee. If Peter Gammons is to be believed, it's DC. So now we wait. And laugh at Norfolk.

While you're waiting, check out Kraftwerk's website. I guess I shouldn't be suprised that a bunch of robots from Germany have a rad site, but that doesn't make my mind any less blown.

Twiddling My Thumbs on Mark Harmon's Birthday

Normally I like to do a little something on Mark Harmon's birthday. Get some beer, throw on a Hawaiian shirt, watch Summer School a few times. It really snuck up on me this year, though. Someone remind me next year, alright?

As little as was going on yesterday, there's even less today. Last Friday was action-packed, so maybe we'll get some action tomorrow. I suppose I could point you to this:

In recent weeks, the buzz in local baseball circles has focused on comments from prominent state legislators questioning the financing of the proposed ballpark just north of Dulles Airport and revisions to the development proposal for the new community that would rise up around it just across the county line in Loudoun.
But Northern Virginia baseball officials say nothing has surfaced to diminish their chances of fielding a team.

I'm still of the opinion that these are words that don't mean nuttin', like looptid. Think about it; who's admitted they're out of the Expos race? No one that I know of. Not even Puerto Rico. I think NoVa's dead, and so does Peter Gammons. He's got all the inside sources, I'm vaguely aware of where commas go. Together, we're unstoppable.

Bijan Bayne looks at the DC baseball issue again and sticks it to Angelos.

Angelos has stated that a Montreal Expos move to D.C. (or even Northern Virginia)would cut into “his” ticket sales and t.v. revenue. I’m sorry, the Orioles’ market is Baltimore, Owings Mills, Dundalk, Catonsville, Perry Hall, etc. It is not Laurel, McLean, Georgetown, Arlington and Bethesda. A Baltimore team has no unwritten right to out-of-town fans. The Orioles do not give ticket discounts to those that travel from D.C. to see their games, nor do they providevouchers for gasoline or the MARC train service between Chocolate City and Charm City. Baltimore and D.C. have separate city councils, separate television stations, and separate fire departments.

Go read the rest of it. And if anybody knows Jack Evans' phone number, call him up and tell him to get something started for tomorrow. I'm bored.

Conway Twitty Day

It's Conway Twitty's birthday. Running out of titles for posts has really expanded my knowledge of minor celebrity birthdays.

I know I say this a lot, but there's nothing going on. Peter Gammons had a chat on the ESPN site, where this exchange occured:

Steve (DC): Obligatory Expos question: What are the chances that this is your last chat where we don't know next year's home? Does the past week of trouble for the N. Va. bid leave D.C. as the Last Bid Standing?

Peter Gammons: D.C. is the last bid standing, but it still will take a long time. First, the politicians are hardballing baseball b/c they know they have no where else to go. Second, MLB still has too high a price for the D.C. group. Third, Orioles owner Peter Angelos claims Bud Selig promised him their wouldn't be a team in Washington and if there is one thing that Angelos is good at, it's threatening and executing legal action.

Not that he has anything to sue about. Anyway, it's nice to hear Gammons say that DC is the only remaining option.

That's about it. If you want to get mad, you can go look at this moronic op-ed in the Sun. You'll probably be happier if you don't, and you won't run the risk of being made stupider just by reading it. See you tomorrow.