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June 30th, 2004

D.C. Baseball Update

USA Today is reporting that Major League Baseball's relocation committee is leaning toward sending the Expos to the Washington area, but can't decide whether to award the team to the group from the District or Northern Virginia.

Here's what comissioner Bud had to say:

Selig believes baseball made an unwise decision when it allowed the Kansas City A's to relocate in 1968 to Oakland, across the bay from the San Francisco Giants.

"That was done without assuming what it was going to do to San Francisco," Selig said. "The leagues were more concerned about having a rivalry with each other than doing the right thing. As a result there's been a fortune lost in those cities over the past 36 years."

Which would seem to lend creedence to this report by Eric Fisher in the Washington Times that Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos has lent his support to a 11th-hour effort from a group based in Puerto Rico.

An analysis by USA Today rated the Northern Virginia site the best of all the proposals that have been submitted to MLB. Nota bene: USA Today is headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, about 20 minutes from the proposed ballpark. The author of the Washington Post's three-part series on baseball and the Expos favors Northern Virginia's bid as well:

The bottom line is I really have no idea, but since you asked for an educated guess, I would say Northern Virginia. That guess -- and it is purely a guess -- has less to do with the relative merits of the sites and the financing proposals than the internal politics now in play. Virginia might be perceived inside baseball -- and in particular by Commissioner Bud Selig -- as posing less of a threat to the Baltimore Orioles and his close ally, Peter Angelos. It's the path of least resistance, which is what Selig usually prefers. That said, I would not be shocked at all if they go to D.C. or Vegas. I think Portland, Monterrey and San Juan are less likely.

Primary assist to The Sports Economist, and Distinguished Senators. Skip also fronts news from Pittsburgh that the construction of new baseball and football stadiums has failed to create a significant economic impact, while the city may be headed into the municipal equivalent of bankruptcy.

UPDATE: Washington Mayor Anthony Williams just took a shot at the financing behind Northern Virginia's bid. Bill Collins, a man who has labored long to bring Major League Baseball to Northern Virginia, tried to sell his proposal to Loudoun County Republicans last night, but some weren't exactly buying.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 12:00 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under D.C. Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “D.C. Baseball Update”

  1. Beau says:
    June 30, 2004 at 12:17 pm

    FYI: USA TODAY is in Tysons, but I’m not sure that Hal Bodley is. I can double-check when I’m next in the office.

    I don’t believe we have anyone in Montreal, though.

    What everyone forgets, though: RFK is a soccer stadium. Not a baseball stadium.

  2. Skip Oliva says:
    June 30, 2004 at 4:01 pm

    If I were in charge of the relocation decision, I would strongly favor Northern Virginia at this point. The D.C. argument is based largely on the concept that it’s the “largest market without a team.” And while D.C. is the best *market* available, it’s not the best city available. Mayor Willams’ efforts to finance a D.C. stadium is a classic example of short-term, I-want-a-legacy urban management. The facts, as I interpert them, suggest D.C. is in no condition to mount any kind of centralized stadium-planning campaign.

    Forget the impact on the Orioles. NoVA is a better location because it is wealthier than D.C. The biggest b.s. argument in all of sports economics is the need to attract “casual fans.” You don’t build a sport on a financial foundation of casual fans. You build it on a foundation of core fans willing to annually commit a portion of their income to a franchise. You have a larger barrel of bigger fish to shoot at in NoVa relative to the District.

  3. John Doe says:
    June 30, 2004 at 4:02 pm

    Tourists will not go to Washington to watch baseball, so there are no economic development benefits to the city from getting a team. The African Americans in the district watch basketball.

    Some place in or close to New York might trim the Yankees money advantage, but that seems politically impossible.

    Las Vegas, then, seems to win by default. At least the name ‘Expositions’ actually fits the city pretty well. :)

  4. John Doe says:
    June 30, 2004 at 4:07 pm

    One other things, why move only the Expos? Surely the Brewers and the Devil Rays could do better in larger markets?

    To take the discussion a little further out of the realm of possibility: the Japanese leagues are in financial trouble, yet long-distance air travel is easier than ever. How about integrating the Japanese teams with the American ones? Six Japanese teams could form their own division etc. Like I said just a fun what if.

  5. Skip Oliva says:
    June 30, 2004 at 8:03 pm

    The problem, John Doe, is that the baseball season is far too long to make integrating a Japanese division reality. If this were the NFL, it could be done, because they only play once per week.

    As for moving other teams, I say it’s better to contract them. Professional sports remains one of the last industries were closing underperforming offices is considered heresy. Granted, there are political ramifications to contraction–Florida’s attorney general comically tried to use the antitrust laws to stop a rumored contraction of the Marlins or Devil Rays–but in a true market, failure is always an option.

  6. Vincent says:
    July 1, 2004 at 11:31 am

    “What everyone forgets, though: RFK is a soccer stadium. Not a baseball stadium.”

    Bull. It was built in 1961 as a combo baseball/football stadium and has been restored to its full baseball configuration (the Expos and Cardinals played two exhibition games there in ‘99). Is it Citizens Bank Park or the Ballpark in Arlington? No, but it’s a decent temporary site for a few years (no one is suggesting RFK be used for baseball permanently) and comparable to some of its ’60s multisport contemporaries, such as Busch Stadium or the departed Fulton County.

  7. Beau says:
    July 1, 2004 at 9:11 pm

    Vincent — full response (sorry you’ll have to cut and paste due to Eric’s understandable decision to cut off links) is here: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/columnist/dure/2002-09-12-dure_x.htm

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June 24th, 2004

D.C. Baseball Update

Ryan at Distinguished Senators has posted a response to my last post about the relative benefits of the competing plans to bring the Expos to either Washington or Northern Virginia, and he's brought up some points that ought to be addressed.

Let me state once again: sure, I'd love to see the Montreal Expos move somewhere in the Washington area -- I just don't think we should be pursuing a ballclub at any and all costs. We need to look at all of the proposals with a cold eye, and be honest about what the final bill is going to be, and what else we could do with the money and resources that would be needed to build a ballpark.

The Senators left Washington after the 1971 season. In the 33 years since, we've seen the quality of life in this area improve markedly -- and it wouldn't have been any better if the Senators had stayed. In fact, can anyone prove to me that life has gotten worse for the District since the Redskins left back in the 1990s?

Sure, the game day experience out in Raljohn isn't what it was at RFK (believe me, I actually went to a couple of games in both places, and it isn't the same), but for the vast majority of folks aside from the 70,000+ that go to FedEx Field 10 times a season, things haven't changed at all.

As for MCI Center, sure, it's helped revive Chinatown. But, as everyone ought to remember, Abe Pollin built the place with his own cash, and he's reaping the benefits.

He took the risk, it's only right that he enjoy the rewards.

If a stadium in Washington is such a great deal financially, then why is Fred Malek's Washington Baseball unwilling to front any of its own cash to build it?

Ryan also talks about business generated around a ballpark on gameday, and cites it as evidence that we'd see much the same development here in Washington as in Baltimore near Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium. Besides, he's seen the incredible crowds at Max's, and wouldn't the same thing happen here?

But what Ryan won't talk about is what Baltimore looks like only a few blocks West of Max's down past the Baltimore Arena. What he'll see there is a depressed neighborhood that fans work hard to avoid on their way to the stadium.

I wonder how much extra business they see on game day?

That's why we call in the wonks -- the people who can do a serious cost/benefit analysis of a project, and tell us what the truth is beyond what we can plainly see with our own eyes. In this case, does the ancillary economic activity generated by a ballpark justfiy the additional public expenditures required to build it?

And the wonks, time and again, have said no. In a way, we need to be sure we're analyzing and measuring the right stats in order to get to the truth -- which sounds a lot like the idea behind baseball's own incredible wonkfest, Sabermetrics.

Do I support building a stadium in Loudoun County? Not really, but I'm a whole lot less worried about it now that I know that I won't be asked to pay for it. There are still plenty of obstacles -- the traffic problem being the most prominent, and one I've dealt with more times than I can count, most recently right here.

Baseball was the sport I first played and the sport I first loved. I'm sure I'd be very happy to see whatever we wind up calling the Expos play my beloved New York Mets on a regular basis -- whether that stadium is in Virginia or Washington.

But what we shouldn't do, is pursue this so aggressively that we wind up overpaying to make it happen. And don't doubt for a second that if the tax revenue generated by either of these ballparks falls short of the projections, that local taxpayers are going to be left holding the bag. And in the case of District taxpayers, already forced to pay more than any others in the Washington metro area, it's another bill they can ill afford to foot.

POSTSCRIPT: To see everything I've ever written about the prospects of the Expos moving to D.C. -- something I've been following here at Off Wing since early 2002 -- click here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2004 at 12:21 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.

One Response to “D.C. Baseball Update”

  1. chris says:
    June 25, 2004 at 2:53 pm

    “But what Ryan won’t talk about is what Baltimore looks like only a few blocks West of Max’s down past the Baltimore Arena. What he’ll see there is a depressed neighborhood that fans work hard to avoid on their way to the stadium.”

    In general, I agree with the wonks. But to be fair, CY did probably help wake people up to the possibilities of waterfront living in Baltimore, and city living overall, by extension. Can’t speak for the neighborhoods of Federal Hill or Fells Point — to the south and east of the Harbor — but Canton is an area that was nowheresville 10 years ago, and is now an overpriced “it” area in town.

    Granted, there’s nothing of that phenomenon that would enhance DC, but it wouldn’t be totally accurate to characterize Baltimore as two stadiums, the Harbor, then a blight-fest beyond that. Or at least it’s becoming less of that.

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June 23rd, 2004

D.C. Baseball Update

For some time now, I've been pretty conflicted over the issue of bringing the Expos to Washington. Sure, I'd love to see a baseball team in the Washington area, but we ought to be asking just what price we're willing to pay to make it happen.

As a Virignia resident, I couldn't see justifying any sort of public expenditures for a ballpark while the state was in the midst of a fiscal crisis. As for any of the proposed stadium sites on my side of the Potomac, there simply isn't any spot available in Northern Virginia that wouldn't exacerbate an already overtaxed transportation system (something both Peter White and I have noted recently).

Which leads us to the District. Because the transportation infrastructure in the Washington Metropolitan Area was designed to move government employees from the suburbs to downtown, putting a stadium there makes the most sense. The roads are there, the Metro is there, the tourists are there.

Unfortunately, given the District's history of fiscal irresponsibility, building a new ballpark would probably fall on the backs of local taxpayers -- something that's bound to make Washington a less attractive place to do business. And the plan that Mayor Anthony Williams has proposed to the D.C. City Council, but has yet to be approved (thanks to City Councilman Jack Evans), puts the onus of paying for the new stadium on businesses that are overtaxed already.

Which is why the latest post about Virginia baseball over at Distinguished Senators seems more than a little ironic. Ryan titled his post, Commonwealth of Whores, playing off the title of P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores -- an excellent read you ought to make time for.

For those who haven't read Parliament, it's all about how the Federal Government finds incredibly creative ways to waste our tax dollars. But when it comes to the question about Washington baseball, it's the officials in the District who are going to be ripping off taxpayers, while the Virginia plan announced this week doesn't commit the state to any new public expenditures in support of a stadium.

As a resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, Ryan may not care that the folks in the District are going to be asked to pay for the ballpark he so dearly wants downtown. Unfortunately, with businesses in the city taxed so heavily already, the plan he's favoring would only encourage those who are going to be asked to pay for the stadium to flee the city like so many others before them.

Want to know why Loudoun County, Virginia is the fastest growing county in the U.S.? Look no further than the absolute mess that the District has become when it comes to essential city services (public safety, sanitation, education). And it isn't just a case of Westward migration either, as the explosive growth of Prince George's County, spurred on by an exodus of the African-American middle class from the city, adequately demonstrates.

I've lived in the Washington area for 19 years. I've lived in the District (Brookland and the SW Waterfront), worked in Montgomery County, and lived for the last 13 years in Northern Virginia (Alexandria, Crystal City, McLean, Reston). After all that time, I can say one thing for sure -- life in our area has gotten significantly better everywhere, and we did it without a baseball team. In fact, we've survived 33 years without it, and we sure as Hell don't need to overpay to get one now.

So say what you want about the Virginia proposal -- at least it doesn't lean on already overburdened taxpayers to finance a stadium for multimillionaires who won't finance a ballpark out of their own deep pockets.

CORRECTION: Yesterday, I upbraided the Washington Post for not sending a reporter to the Dulles press conference announcing the details of the plan for a Virginia ballpark. Turns out I was wrong. Thanks to reader Vincent Paterno, who directed me to two pieces that appeared in the paper's Metro section yesterday. Here's the straight news story, as well as Metro columnist Marc Fisher's anti-suburban screed.

Why did I miss these two? First off, because I didn't look hard enough through the online edition. And second, because the Post neglected to include links to either piece in the Sports section of their online edition -- an oversight that they should correct in the future.

UPDATE: Is Northern Virginia big enough to support a team on its own? The one reporter in town who knows the issue better than anybody else, Eric Fisher of the Washington Times takes a look.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 at 12:52 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under D.C. Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “D.C. Baseball Update”

  1. John says:
    June 23, 2004 at 3:27 pm

    As a current DC resident I say: Exactly and thank you. Jack Kent Cooke may have been a jerk, and people may complain endlessly about Abe Pollin’s failure to build a winner, but I highly respect the fact that they built their arenas themselves. Similarly, I will be mildly crushed when the Penguins fold/leave Pittsburgh, but it’s absurd for the club to demand public money to save their asses.

  2. Chris Marcil says:
    June 23, 2004 at 4:21 pm

    Also Pac Bell Park, or whatever the hell it’s called now. I think the city might have helped out with the land and stuff. But the ballpark was privately built.

    It’s no sin to spend the public money on something as nice and unnecessary as stadia if the public agrees — it’s their money, after all. I’d tend to vote against such stuff, myself. Just appropriating the public money — such as Giulani was proposing for the Yankees and Mets — strikes me as wrong.

    And you’re right: LA has done just fine without the NFL, nor does NYC seem to have gone down the tubes because the football teams left for Jersey.

  3. Jeff Grimshaw says:
    June 23, 2004 at 8:00 pm

    I must take exception with a few of Chris’ comments:

    1) LA has totally SUCKED without NFL football. It’s just that the laid back So. Cal fans don’t reaize it and probably never will.

    2) NY hasn’t been the same since the NFL clubs went to Jersey. I abandoned both teams when they left the city, but have recently adopted them because they made other changes (ie – they play on grass and they have both re-adopted their rightful NY uniforms). Now it appears that the Jets will be moving to Manhattan’s west side. I for one will welcome them back with open arms. NFL Football will be back in Manhattan for the first time since the Giants played at the Polo Grounds. If the Giants are too stupid to follow suit and want to stay in Jersey – fine. I won’t schlepp out to Jersey. I’ll follow the REAL NY football team that is actually committed to the city proper.

    Lastly – the WASHINGTON SENATORS must be in DC to be the true WASHINGTON SENATORS. Every DC fans knows that the Redskins suck being in Raljon, MD and the Caps/
    Wizards experience has improved dramatically (even though both clubs just blow) since they moved into DC. Northern
    Virginia is NOT DC — it’s a bedroom community as are the
    Maryland suburbs — as are the Meadowlands — well, maybe that’s stretching it a bit.

  4. Beau says:
    June 24, 2004 at 10:47 am

    Parliament of Whores is a great read, though many forget the conclusion — the “whores” are all of us. This was back when PJ was the best writer in the country, before he became just another partisan shill.

    I also maintain DC will make no progress as long as the rest of the country continues to send us a never-ending succession of jerks who rip our fair city to their constituents but are perfectly happy here as long as the restaurants have privacy booths for their extramarital interests. These wastes of DNA don’t care about the state of the supposed capital of the free world.

  5. Chris Marcil says:
    June 24, 2004 at 8:46 pm

    Surely Jeff Grimshaw has had to watch enough meaningless late November 9-6 Jets-Bills games to appreciate the greatness of living in a major city that has no blackout restrictions.

    LA fans do. If they want NFL live, and why would you, they go down to San Diego.

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June 11th, 2004

D.C. Baseball Update

Distinguished Senators is a blog dedicated to following the travails of the Montreal Expos, and the possibility of their relocation to Washington, D.C. Check it out.

UPDATE: Turns out the Expos are in Seattle to take on Peter White's beloved Mariners. Peter breaks down the sorry story.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2004 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.

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