the shrewdness of apes

yeah! i'm all for screwing MLB.

i meant to write the owners, but screw the MLB too.

I watched the live DC Council meeting until about midnight when the finished voting on all of the ammendments and finally voted on the bill. I totally agree, Jamie, and I'm glad Linda had the balls to stand up to the owners and the MLB. i'd love to see baseball here, but not with the offer they wanted to give us.

Not sure where I stand on public financing for the DC stadium. It will be great to have baseball in DC again, and public financing is the stipulation. On the other hand, I think that although the tax will come from corporations, we all know that it's the citizens who will bear the brunt. I think that Linda Cropp is a piece of crap. She's playing politics and all she cares about is running for mayor. Were her actions genuine, that would be a different story. But attaching an amendment at the last minute that will only kill the deal is disgusting. It's a black eye not on MLB but on the DC Council.

Another great entry, Jamie. As I was reading Will Carroll's op-ed piece in yesterday's times, I kept thinking that you could have written it better.

I wouldn't be that surprised if they left D.C. after a year.

dan - thanks. i'll have to read what he wrote. i also wouldn't be surprised if they left DC after a year, but MLB will come out of that smelling terribly and i'm not sure they're willing to go that far. of course for a publicly financed stadium, they're probably willing to wash Linda Cropp's underwear for a year.

jake - i'm not much privy to the vagaries of DC politics these days, but i think your assessment is probably pretty spot on, especially since the public outcry that's happened since the deal was announced. but i just love to see MLB getting the same treatment that they dished out to DC for so long by getting totally jerked around after they thought they had something in place.

Supposedly, they're going to play in RFK for a year and then move. Fuck 'em--I hate them already. Go O's!

Only 4 million in the DC area? That number seems low to me, but what do I know?

dn

Had a long talk about this with Alena last night and also read an SI article about the viability of a pro franchise in Las Vegas. The city council has handled this all so poorly that I think MLB has a good chance to get away with it. The arguments in favor of Vegas are pretty persuasive, the biggest stumbing block is basically American style morality. If baseball can come to terms with the legalized gambling and take a team to Vegas, this DC kind of crap won't happen there.

If baseball moves the team, the bad guy will not be baseball. Baseball negotiated with DC in good faith (even if good faith to MLB means total screw job). DC bailed on its agreement awfully late in the game and baseball gets treated like its owners have treated so many fan bases. But for DC to lose baseball because it wants to stick it to MLB before there's even been a game here, well fuck that. Let Boston or New York be the fall guy, not DC. And to think that MLB is going to be afraid of Linda Cropp and Marion Barry is a total joke.

I don't like Linda, but I think she did the right thing here. I would LOVE to see baseball here. But I think DC gets raped and fucked up the ass enough, I don't need to watch it happen anymore and not by a multi-billion dollar org like the MLB. It's budgeted at $300M and they're asking that $150M be financed not w/ public $, I don't think that's too much to ask for. Also, if you're going to be angry at Linda, at least realize the ammendment passed 7-6. And she voted yes on the final bill, not everyone did, so she wants baseball, just not with a giant fucking baseball bat up our ass.

the total population of the DC and Baltimore areas is 7.5 million. i estimated DC's portion of that conservatively. if you start factoring in the areas all the way down to Richmond it would increase considerably.

and MLB had an agreement with the Mayor, but it was always contingent on the Council passing the required legislation. and the agreement simply says they have to have the funding in place by the end of the year. if somebody steps up with the $140 Million or whatever it is, this will all be a moot point. how is MLB not complicit in a scheme where they announced that the team was moving before all the key pieces were 100% in place? they're so desperate to finally have this lie-fest of a PR nightmare behind them that they couldn't be bothered to do it right. the team doesn't even have an owner yet for pete's sake! and yet they were still out there signing free agents. if DC ends up being a 1-year proposition, i hope the owners lose millions during that year for being complete fucktards.

i would be interested to hear more of the arguments as to why Vegas is viable besides their willingness to be MLB's toadies.

I can see why you or anyone would agree with Linda's amendment and with what the city council did. And I am uncomfortable with public funding for some rich a-holes.

But for DC to lose baseball because of petty politics is sad. I don't think what Linda did was right, I think what Adrian Fenty did was right. There are people with principles, and there are sleazy people like Linda Cropp who like to take advantage of those people for her own personal gain. In fact, she'd make a great major league baseball owner. Unfortunately she's a shitty councilperson.

http://premium.si.cnn.com/pr/subs/siexclusive/2004/pr/subs/siexclusive/12/06/vegas1213/

Let me know if the link is good.

i have to say i wasn't so terribly impressed with the Las Vegas article which seemed to mostly focus on the "don't worry about the gambling - we have systems in place!" angle. and then to claim that 35-45% of the tickets will be bought by the 36 Million tourists seems way optimistic to me. if each tourist stays an average of 5 days, that's 180 million tourist-days. Averaged out that means about 500,000 tourists are there on any given day giving Las Vegas a citizen+tourist population of only 2 million. if we assume a 40,000 seat stadium, 35% of that is 14,000 so for 81 days a year, you're expecting 10-14,000 tourists to go to a baseball game. that seems pretty implausible to me. i have to assume as well that fewer people are in Las Vegas during the baseball season as opposed to the winter, though i can't find any numbers to back up that assertion.

and just to cut into the numbers a little bit more, i just found a site that shows that the average stay is 3.4 nights and that around 30% of the people come from Southern California - not exactly a baseball starved area - while 8-10% are foreign and therefore not very likely to be interested in baseball. oh, and i did just find numbers that show that the tourist numbers by month actually are fairly steady at around 3 million with a little fluctuation on either side. that kills that argument, but i think the rest of it holds up pretty well.

Like Jake, I think Linda Cropp is a piece of shit. The only reason she's grandstanding like this is because she wants to run for mayor. Why she didn't bring her grand scheme up months earlier is beyond me. Instead, she waited (literally) until the 11th hour, and now baseball is a dead issue. I hope she's happy. I also hope she spends the money that would've gone to baseball wisely. We better see a massive influx of money to schools and poorer neighborhoods, which Cropp always states as her reasons not to back public funding for a stadium. Somehow I doubt it will happen. Instead, I'm sure she'll vote herself a raise.

All this makes D.C. seem so bush league.

more ammo for your argument, Jamie: I know of hardly anyone that goes to Vegas and ventures outside for more than a few minutes, usually just to walk to another casino. In the four days we were there, I went outside for maybe an hour to the Bally's pool, and cried when I realized my lipgloss set had melted in my purse. Who the fuck is going to sit outside in NEVADA in August for 3+ hours when you could be inside, in a constant stream of fresh, cool oxygen-enhanced air, getting free drinks? Who I ask?!

Three for the Cropp is a piece of shit. She was right there on the podium, wearing a baseball cap, clapping her hands, with Williams when he made the initial announcement that baseball was coming to D.C. Then she made her play--and her timing makes it obvious that it was a play; otherwise, she would have had a proposal weeks or months ago. But Tony Williams looks like a dope in all this, too. It's like a guest on Tony Kornheiser's radio show was saying the other day: Don't other mayors--or governors, presidents or other executive office holders--push to get their projects approved? Don't they work with, lobby, cajole, intimidate the legislators to get what they want passed? Williams made the deal, then made an announcement on a podium, then acted as if his work was done. He went to Asia for a couple of weeks. Now he's like Fred Willard in "A Mighty Wind"--"Wha'happened?"

P.S. To avoid the embarrassment of playing in D.C. for only one year, baseball is gonna try like hell not to play in D.C. at all.