Off Wing Opinion

A story is running on the AP wire quoting the Montreal Expos' union representative as well as an official of the Major League Baseball Players Association that the players are unlikely to approve playing home games in two cities again next season. Said Expos union rep, catcher Brian Schneider:

"We want to play 81 games in one city," said catcher Brian Schneider, the Expos' player representative. "That's what the players want, and I think everyone's expressed that pretty much. I don't think the guys would be very happy if we had a split schedule."

But just as interesting was the following quote from an Expos front office executive:

Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, has said baseball hopes to make a decision by the end of September on the future of the Expos, but team president Tony Tavares isn't sure the timetable will be met.

"We're just not privy to what the decision-making process is, other than to know that major league baseball is focused on a permanent relocation of this franchise," he said. "Whether they can accomplish this before the 2004 schedule, frankly, I'm a bit skeptical."

Glad to see somebody associated with Major League Baseball telling the truth about Washington's chances to get the Expos.

UPDATE: Forces in the District have just floated a new stadium financing plan that's getting qualified support from City Councilman Jack Evans. As many may recall, it was Evans who earned all sorts of applause a few weeks ago when he told MLB that they would have to award a team to Washington before any financing plan would be approved in the District.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2003 at 12:55 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Representatives of the Major League Baseball Players Association will meet with the Montreal Expos to determine which city the players would like to be based in next season. The choices: Washington, D.C., San Juan, Montreal, or a modified schedule with both San Juan and Montreal as home parks. Meanwhile in the Washington Times, Dick Heller is agitating once more for a decision on the Expos from Major League Baseball -- something which will likely have little effect on the disposition of the team.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2003 at 11:51 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Recognizing that a growing number of its residents are passionately opposed to hosting a baseball stadium, the Board of Arlington County, Virginia told the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority that they would resist any attempt to place a stadium in the county.

For those of you unfamiliar with Washington, D.C. geography, Arlington sits opposite the District of Columbia on the other side of the Potomac River. A number of the sites that were under consideration for a stadium in the county would have provided some excellent views of the monuments on the National Mall.

The decision is hardly surprising, given the fact that Northern Virginians have proved particularly adept at foiling large scale development plans that don't suit their tastes. Back in the 1990s, the late Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke was prevented from building a Football stadium with his own money in the Potomac Yards section of Alexandria, Va. -- a site just a few minutes South of one of the proposed Baseball stadium site. In addition, community activists further West near the site of the Civil War battlefields near Manassas blocked Walt Disney from building a theme park.

The Stadium Authority has vowed to fight on, but the fact of the matter remains that the most attractive sites were all in Arlington, a bedroom community where local Democrats dominate politics. The only alternate sites ever mentioned for a Virginia stadium were near Dulles Airport in Western Fairfax/Eastern Loudoun Counties; or in Springfield in Southern Fairfax County near I-95. Neither area is well served by public transportation, meaning roads that are already overloaded at rush hour would have to accomodate thousands more locals rushing to a ballgame.

Baseball in Virginia was always a long-shot proposition. Now it's a no-shot, just like Washington's prospects.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2003 at 11:37 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Remember that July 15th deadline that Major League Baseball (MLB) set to announce the decision on where the Montreal Expos will play in 2004?

Nevermind:

A decision on the future home of the Montreal Expos might not be made until September, a high-ranking baseball official said Saturday. The commissioner's office originally had targeted the All-Star break for a decision. Northern Virginia, Portland, Ore., and Washington all want the Expos to relocate to their areas for the 2004 season. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the commissioner's office now hoped to have a decision by Labor Day, and that the end of the regular season was the current "drop-dead date."

Labor Day? Last year, as July creeped into August, and August into September, it became clear that even if the Expos had been sold to a D.C.-based ownership group, that RFK Stadium couldn't possibly be made ready to host a game in time for the 2003 season. And that doesn't even begin considering the difficulties involved in getting a franchise up and running in a new city, and reconstituting the business operation you need in order to support it.

Here's a bet: look for the Expos to play even more games in Puerto Rico next year.

UPDATE: Some other stuff from over the weekend: D.C.'s quasi-independent agency responsible in part to bring baseball back to the city, the Sports and Entertainment Commission, is in a huge financial hole. This is the case despite the fact it recently brought in "professional" management.

And on Sunday morning, Ralph Nader chimed in with an op-ed piece, essentially demanding MLB sell the Expos to local investors at cost, without taking into account an losses the team might have accrued over the last two seasons:

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball should sell the Expos to new local owners for the amount it paid for the team -- $120 million, not the $250 million or more it will demand. The savings could be used by the private owners to build a new stadium or renovate an existing one, such as RFK, covering part of what baseball is now trying to squeeze from taxpayers.

Entertainment should be given the first privilege of surviving the tests of a free market.

I'm all in agreement with Nader on "squeezing the taxpayers," but MLB isn't going to let this team go cheap. Meanwhile, at the Washington Times, Eric Fisher makes an important point of one of the results of MLB's painfully methodical relocation process:

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2003 at 1:50 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Eric Fisher of the Washington Times has another great article on the prospects of putting a stadium in Northern Virginia to house the Montreal Expos.

The owners of the land that contains one of the proposed stadium sites, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and the H Street Building Corp., have started an intense public relations campaign to let the world know they aren't interested in selling their site. Further, this effort included a poll of Arlington, Virginia county residents that found that 65 percent of them are against building a stadium.

A poll taken recently by the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority found that 55 percent of Arlingtonians actually favored a stadium.

"We have owned this land for more than 50 years and intend to continue to own it for another 50 years, and another 50 years after that," said Jack Ritchie, H Street Building Corp. president. "There has been much speculation about the possibility that, if we do not agree to sell to the Stadium Authority, they may attempt to take our site by condemnation. It's an unfortunate situation when a long-term landowner is forced to incur substantial expense to keep the government from coming along and taking his property for what is really a private use."

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2003 at 9:40 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

When there is doubt, there is no doubt. Robert DeNiro in Ronin

In the Washington Times, Eric Fisher is reporting that Major League Baseball will not meet its self-imposed deadline of July 15th to announce whether or not the Montreal Expos will relocate in time to begin play somewhere else in time for the start of the 2004 Baseball season.

It's over. But then again, it was never really on to begin with.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2003 at 2:49 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

D.C. City Councilman Jack Evans was scheduled to meet with a delegation from Major League Baseball concerning the potential move of the Montreal Expos to Washington.

With only a few hours to go before the meeting, the folks at MLB cancelled:

"They canceled," said Evans (D-Ward 2), who has been the loudest council critic of the mayor's $339-million stadium financing package to lure a team to Washington.

The meeting was not immediately rescheduled, although officials from both baseball and the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said they hoped that it would be.

"We'll have it again some other time," said Richard Levin, a spokesman for Major League Baseball. "It's not that big of a deal."

But don't read anything into the cancellation. Then again, why should we care?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 at 11:50 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

D.C. City Councilman Jack Evans was scheduled to meet today with John McHale, Major League Baseball's Chief Administrative Officer, to discuss the possible move of the Montreal Expos to Washington.

Evans last week significantly altered the District's bid for baseball by demanding MLB executives first commit to moving the Expos to Washington before legislative work continues on either a public-sector financing package for a new ballpark or developing a site for that stadium. The move instantly reversed years of Washington subjugation before baseball and was widely cheered by local residents. "To be honest, I don't know why they're coming," Evans said yesterday. "If they're coming to say the team is coming to Washington, then, yes, I'm very interested. But beyond that, what are they doing?"

Indeed, what are they doing? I'm still convinced they're not coming. In another development, New York real estate developer Mark Broxmeyer announced that he has retained Lehman Brothers in his efforts to purchase the Expos.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 at 4:38 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.