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Here is Boz' latest column
That silence you hear, day after day, is baseball trying to decide whether to do something stupid.
The sport has until Monday to make up its mind whether to accept the District's latest $611-million proposal to build a publicly financed ballpark for the Washington Nationals.
The dumbest thing that MLB can do is to call the bluff of the D.C. City Council and refuse the amended lease proposal that is on the table. With that one miscalculation, baseball could squander a deal worth more than a billion dollars.
The smartest thing baseball can do is realize that it took a midnight miracle last month to get a 9-4 vote out of the rebellious council for a stadium lease of any kind. Baseball should think: Let's nail this down before that crazy council votes again.
With one word ("yes"), baseball can lock up a $450-million sale of the Nats, set the new ballpark in motion, name a new owner for the team and, in short order, erase every iota of the vast ill will that the game has earned for itself in this town.
Or the game can say "no," and walk down a dark alley where public hostility and political intransigence are sure to lurk. The local media will likely join the baseball bashing party. (I'll bring an old Louisville slugger.) My guess is that baseball will do what it usually does: choose the worst available option. And say, "Not good enough."
For 30 years, when baseball has been in a showdown with big money, lawyers and huge egos in play, the sport has made the wrong decision almost every time. The lone exception was when MLB finally avoided a strike in its last labor negotiation. Time after time, Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf were near the center of the negotiations that ended in stubborn expensive stalemates.
Once again, Selig, who'll make the final call, and Reinsdorf, who was the main negotiator with D.C., are at the core of the process. Baseball can scream, "Washington signed a contract for a new park so that we'd give them the Expos and face down Peter Angelos. And by Jove they're going to build it for us." And, technically, baseball would be right. Also, many of the city's current cost overruns are the result of the council's half-year public-relations pursuit of "private funding."
Sometimes, however, it's better to learn from painful experience (like 1994), grit your teeth and compromise. Baseball's negotiations of September 2004 are no longer the realities on the ground in Washington in March 2006. Politics is the art of the possible. And, politically, it isn't possible for D.C. to eat all $200 million in extra construction costs while the public knows that baseball will get $200 million more for the Nats than it bargained.
I wish I could tell you that I am optimistic. I'm not.
Based on decades of observation of the central characters, not on inside information, I suspect that baseball will turn down the council lease on the flawed assumption that it can get a better deal if it punishes Washington and the Nats for a few more months. "Go sit in your room, Washington, and think about what a bad child you have been for talking back to your parents."
If baseball plays hardball next week, the council will follow its infallible instincts for political self-preservation -- and throw the ballpark idea into the Anacostia River to see if it will float. If enough voters yell, "Save the park," they'll respond.
But what happened last month when the council voted down the lease? Did the public storm city hall? No. There was stunned silence, not anger. The only sound was the ringing of cell phones as real estate developers demanded, "What happened?" Pressure, presumably from big shots, got the council to revote once. Will it work again? That bullet's used up.
If baseball turns down the lease next week, Washington's response will probably dumbfound the sport. Many residents and politicians will say, "What's wrong with RFK Stadium? Play there. If you want a fancy park, then pay your fair share out of the $200 million in found money that fell in your lap."
Of course, baseball will immediately threaten to move the Nats out of town "someday." In the suburbs, there will be weeping. But relatively few D.C. voters will cry. And almost every city council member will sigh, "It's over! We made them an offer that we can sell to the public as being fair. And the fools, they turned it down. Now I can worry about being reelected."
In the metropolitan area of 5.5 million people, there is overwhelming support for the Nationals. However, in the District itself, with only a 10th that many people, there has never been more than tepid political support for an expensive park that would be used by crowds that were 75-percent suburbanite. The idea that D.C. could tax Nats tickets to create a commuter tax was never successfully sold to the public by Mayor Tony Williams. It's too late to win that PR battle now.
Major League Baseball now holds a 9-4 council vote for a new $611-million stadium in its hand. The sport needs to grasp how precious, precarious and politically unpopular that document is.
If baseball tears up that lease next week, the odds are no better than a coin flip that it will ever get another one.
That silence you hear, day after day, is baseball trying to decide whether to do something stupid.
The sport has until Monday to make up its mind whether to accept the District's latest $611-million proposal to build a publicly financed ballpark for the Washington Nationals.
The dumbest thing that MLB can do is to call the bluff of the D.C. City Council and refuse the amended lease proposal that is on the table. With that one miscalculation, baseball could squander a deal worth more than a billion dollars.
The smartest thing baseball can do is realize that it took a midnight miracle last month to get a 9-4 vote out of the rebellious council for a stadium lease of any kind. Baseball should think: Let's nail this down before that crazy council votes again.
With one word ("yes"), baseball can lock up a $450-million sale of the Nats, set the new ballpark in motion, name a new owner for the team and, in short order, erase every iota of the vast ill will that the game has earned for itself in this town.
Or the game can say "no," and walk down a dark alley where public hostility and political intransigence are sure to lurk. The local media will likely join the baseball bashing party. (I'll bring an old Louisville slugger.) My guess is that baseball will do what it usually does: choose the worst available option. And say, "Not good enough."
For 30 years, when baseball has been in a showdown with big money, lawyers and huge egos in play, the sport has made the wrong decision almost every time. The lone exception was when MLB finally avoided a strike in its last labor negotiation. Time after time, Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf were near the center of the negotiations that ended in stubborn expensive stalemates.
Once again, Selig, who'll make the final call, and Reinsdorf, who was the main negotiator with D.C., are at the core of the process. Baseball can scream, "Washington signed a contract for a new park so that we'd give them the Expos and face down Peter Angelos. And by Jove they're going to build it for us." And, technically, baseball would be right. Also, many of the city's current cost overruns are the result of the council's half-year public-relations pursuit of "private funding."
Sometimes, however, it's better to learn from painful experience (like 1994), grit your teeth and compromise. Baseball's negotiations of September 2004 are no longer the realities on the ground in Washington in March 2006. Politics is the art of the possible. And, politically, it isn't possible for D.C. to eat all $200 million in extra construction costs while the public knows that baseball will get $200 million more for the Nats than it bargained.
I wish I could tell you that I am optimistic. I'm not.
Based on decades of observation of the central characters, not on inside information, I suspect that baseball will turn down the council lease on the flawed assumption that it can get a better deal if it punishes Washington and the Nats for a few more months. "Go sit in your room, Washington, and think about what a bad child you have been for talking back to your parents."
If baseball plays hardball next week, the council will follow its infallible instincts for political self-preservation -- and throw the ballpark idea into the Anacostia River to see if it will float. If enough voters yell, "Save the park," they'll respond.
But what happened last month when the council voted down the lease? Did the public storm city hall? No. There was stunned silence, not anger. The only sound was the ringing of cell phones as real estate developers demanded, "What happened?" Pressure, presumably from big shots, got the council to revote once. Will it work again? That bullet's used up.
If baseball turns down the lease next week, Washington's response will probably dumbfound the sport. Many residents and politicians will say, "What's wrong with RFK Stadium? Play there. If you want a fancy park, then pay your fair share out of the $200 million in found money that fell in your lap."
Of course, baseball will immediately threaten to move the Nats out of town "someday." In the suburbs, there will be weeping. But relatively few D.C. voters will cry. And almost every city council member will sigh, "It's over! We made them an offer that we can sell to the public as being fair. And the fools, they turned it down. Now I can worry about being reelected."
In the metropolitan area of 5.5 million people, there is overwhelming support for the Nationals. However, in the District itself, with only a 10th that many people, there has never been more than tepid political support for an expensive park that would be used by crowds that were 75-percent suburbanite. The idea that D.C. could tax Nats tickets to create a commuter tax was never successfully sold to the public by Mayor Tony Williams. It's too late to win that PR battle now.
Major League Baseball now holds a 9-4 council vote for a new $611-million stadium in its hand. The sport needs to grasp how precious, precarious and politically unpopular that document is.
If baseball tears up that lease next week, the odds are no better than a coin flip that it will ever get another one.
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