My two cents on the Cropp/D.C./MLB issue

[Jero]

I am concerned this morning about the fate of D.C. baseball. With everything that has taken place over the past 24 hours, i have a feeling MLB is going to pull out of the deal and threaten to move the team someplace else. But as much as i want baseball in D.C., i have always stated that the financing deal that Tony Williams and the MLB originally put forward was not a good one for the citry of D.C. whatsoever. Williams was so frightened about losing the Expos to another city that whatever MLB stated they wanted done he agreed to, including screwing the city in a stadium deal that financially never made sense from the get go. I always wondered what would happen if D.C. played a little hardball with MLB whether they could get a more plausible deal for the city, now i guess we'll see if that will happen. People can bad mouth Linda Cropp all they want and i agree the way she has gone about things in regards to this fianancing deal make her look incompetent, especially after standing on City Hall steps right next to Mayor Williams cheering right along with him the fact that baseball was returning to D.C. The point is, i have alot of friends who live in the city, most of whom LOVE baseball and would love to see the national pastime back in D.C., but NONE of whom think the stadium financing deal is good for the city. I have to say that i agree with them. You have to look at both sides of the coin here, we're all sports fans, but even in sports some things are just not plausible. If MLB wants to pack up and say "forget it", well SCREW THEM!! I think the recent steroid scandal has proven that the powers that be don't have a clue about what's in the best interest of the sport anyway. If they really CARE about having a team in D.C. (which would obviously be good for the sport) then they will try to work a new deal out with Williams and the city council.

[aREDSKIN]

MLB should find another location. MLB and the city had a deal and everyone knew what the deal was. If DC wants to reneg on that t deal, for whatever reason, fine but don't blame MLB for the incompetence and flim flamming by the charlatrans in the DC gov't. I'd say to MLB go find a legit local city that really wants to have MLB and just forget about the yokels in DC.

[Jero]

MLB should find another location. MLB and the city had a deal and everyone knew what the deal was. If DC wants to reneg on that t deal, for whatever reason, fine but don't blame MLB for the incompetence and flim flamming by the charlatrans in the DC gov't. I'd say to MLB go find a legit local city that really wants to have MLB and just forget about the yokels in DC.

I'm not going to disagree with you on the incompentence of the D.C. gov't, but the more i think about it, MLB is equally incompetent and trying to coax D.C. into a raw deal. The problem is that theuy just got called on it.69% of D.C.'s residents are opposed to any kind of public financing, according to a Washington Post poll a few weeks back. If anybody was doing the flim-flamming to start out with, it was MLB.

[bfauble83]

I'm not going to disagree with you on the incompentence of the D.C. gov't, but the more i think about it, MLB is equally incompetent and trying to coax D.C. into a raw deal. The problem is that theuy just got called on it.69% of D.C.'s residents are opposed to any kind of public financing, according to a Washington Post poll a few weeks back. If anybody was doing the flim-flamming to start out with, it was MLB.


Of course MLB is going to try to get the best deal in their interest, thats business. The DC Council agreed to it, then backed out...its all their fault IMO. If they didn't like the deal they should have negotiated earlier.

[dj_stouty]

I guarantee you not a single school or hospital will be saved if MLB takes their team elsewhere.

I don't buy the argument that "the money should be used towards the city". The DC city council has been mismanaging funds for a long time. NOW...all of a sudden, we are to believe they will turn things around? If it was so important to the council, why haven't they ALREADY been funding schools or saving hospitals?

Too little too late, IMO. Most of the tax burden will be towards area businesses anyway. PLUS, lets not forget the hundreds or thousands of jobs that will be created once the ball park is erected...as well as the need for jobs for new restaurants, parking garages and area attractions.

I'm not absconding Mayor Williams of fault here. He shouldn't have made an agreement with MLB unless he had full backing of the council.

[aREDSKIN]

Boswell nails it.



By Thomas Boswell

Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page D01

Late Tuesday night, in the 11th hour of a marathon D.C. Council meeting, chairman Linda W. Cropp blew to smithereens the deal that MLB thought it had in place with Washington to build a ballpark on the Anacostia waterfront. With that single blow, which leaves baseball no alternatives, the return of major league baseball to the nation's capital is now dead.

The bits of charred ash and shattered fragments that you see falling from the sky are the remnants of the destruction that Cropp wrought. With one amendment to a stadium-funding bill, she demolished the most basic pillar on which the District's agreement with baseball was built. By a 10-3 vote, the council demanded that at least half of the cost of any new stadium be built with private financing, which does not exist, rather than public funding, as stipulated in D.C.'s deal with baseball.

A stadium in search of hypothetical funding, funding that may never be found, is not a stadium at all. It is just a convenient political lie. The entire purpose of baseball's long search for a new home for the Expos was so the sport could sell the team. Who is going to buy a team to play in a stadium that isn't funded and may never be? Nobody. Nobody on earth.

Now, thanks to Cropp, baseball's entire motive for moving the ex-Expos to Washington -- to sell the team -- has been erased. Any solid deal in any town is now better than what Washington is offering -- which is nothing.

The question of whether baseball will now jerk its franchise out of Washington is not a question at all. It is a foregone conclusion. Why would baseball come here? We have pulled a bait-and-switch on the sport. We have broken a deal negotiated by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, the city's highest elected official. And worst of all, Cropp and her council didn't have the guts to stand up and say: "This stadium is too good a deal for baseball and not good enough for the District. You tied poor Mayor Williams in a knot. We're not approving such a lousy ballpark deal. We reject it. Take your team somewhere else."

That's a defensible position. It may be right or wrong. But those are the kind of decisions a city's council should make.

Instead, Cropp and her crowd want to hide their true intentions so they will not have "They Killed Baseball" signs nailed to their political backs. But that's what they did. And that's who they are.

Cropp doesn't want to leave fingerprints. Instead, she wants to leave the impression that she was merely trying to save the District money. Instead, she has now cost it a team and all the benefits of development in Southeast that it might have ignited.

"I do not want to do the public financing of this deal at this level," said Cropp. "I am not sure how baseball will react. But without this piece [of the legislation] I will not vote for this agreement."

Oh, she knows how baseball will react. It'll go ballistic. Will the sport want to come to Washington badly enough to put up with what council member Jack Evans, the point man throughout negotiations, called "a complete violation of our deal"?

In our dreams. The Nationals are gone. That didn't take long, did it? Save those hats with the tilted 'W' on the front. They'll be collectors' items before the week is over. Only a miracle could save Washington's deal with baseball now. Cropp killed it. Whether she did it out of civic conscience, as she claims, or pique, or political aspiration or simply -- and this is a possibility -- a general ignorance of the waters in which she was swimming, is a question for the future.

Right now, the entire baseball-for-Washington scene is in chaos and confusion.

Apparently, hell hath no fury like Cropp when she feels that she has been spurned by baseball. Earlier in the day, she contacted baseball about adding a clause to the stadium bill that would have capped the District's possible damages at $19 million a year if the park was not finished on time. She didn't like the answer she got which was basically, "A deal is a deal."

"I received a letter from baseball that was not a good faith effort," said an annoyed Cropp.

"I don't like a farce being played," said council member Carol Schwartz. "What [baseball told Cropp] was just a regurgitation of what they have said before."

In other words, baseball wouldn't negotiate with Cropp and her council beyond a certain fairly minimal point.

But why should they? To baseball, what Cropp has done is the purest form of business deceit. Let the mayor put an acceptable stadium offer on the table, complete with fully negotiated concessions on both sides, then, at the council level say, "Now let's renegotiate everything."

Baseball feels no obligation whatsoever to make a good faith effort to negotiate with Cropp's council. It already negotiated for two years with cities all over America that wanted the Expos to come to their town. The universal assumption was that the representatives of those cities -- such as Mayor Williams -- had the authority to speak for their towns and already had the backing and understanding of their city councils.

Obviously, Williams didn't. Cropp, who has aspirations to be mayor, has stunned Williams time and again. Last week, when asked if he had Cropp's final and solid support, he shook his head and said, "With her, who knows?"

The first person on the line to Commissioner Bud Selig may be Peter Angelos. As soon as he stops laughing, Angelos can assure the commissioner that, if he drops Washington like a hot potato, the Baltimore Orioles' owner will no longer feel the need to sue MLB.

Did Cropp fully comprehend what she was doing? Or was she simply out of her league? Bet on the former. She was told.

"What our city guaranteed baseball was that the city would build a new stadium -- that we would get it built. That was the essential thing to Major League Baseball. They want to sell the team," said Evans. "Tomorrow morning baseball can't sell that team. No owner would have certainty about a new stadium. That was always the fundamental issue in our deal."

Those who believe in the power of baseball prayer had better get to work. Because baseball would have to be run by saints -- not 30 owners -- to respond to this national insult, a direct spit in the face, by saying: "Okay, let's talk. Let's save the deal. We've already negotiated the big stuff. But now we'll negotiate it again."

Anything is possible. Maybe cows will fly soon, too.

In the end, the District, through its council, has shown that it does not want baseball -- at least not baseball in the real world. Cropp and her council are only comfortable playing fantasy baseball.

"If you wanted to kill the deal, why didn't you do it this morning?" council member Harold Brazil said after 10 p.m. "This is like 30 years of work for naught."

It's easier to do dark deeds late at night.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2004Dec14.html

[hail2skins]

Here's another article that puts blame on both Williams and Cropp. Cropp for her underhanded pull of the deal and Williams for not keeping the council involved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1427-2004Dec15.html

[hail2skins]

I guarantee you not a single school or hospital will be saved if MLB takes their team elsewhere.

I don't buy the argument that "the money should be used towards the city". The DC city council has been mismanaging funds for a long time. NOW...all of a sudden, we are to believe they will turn things around? If it was so important to the council, why haven't they ALREADY been funding schools or saving hospitals?

Too little too late, IMO. Most of the tax burden will be towards area businesses anyway. PLUS, lets not forget the hundreds or thousands of jobs that will be created once the ball park is erected...as well as the need for jobs for new restaurants, parking garages and area attractions.

I'm not absconding Mayor Williams of fault here. He shouldn't have made an agreement with MLB unless he had full backing of the council.

I just had this exact argument at lunch today.

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

I guarantee you not a single school or hospital will be saved if MLB takes their team elsewhere.

I don't buy the argument that "the money should be used towards the city". The DC city council has been mismanaging funds for a long time. NOW...all of a sudden, we are to believe they will turn things around? If it was so important to the council, why haven't they ALREADY been funding schools or saving hospitals?
You are absolutely right stouty. What people seem not to understand
is that there is no money for hospitals etc. The funds are/were
being raised for the express purpose of constructing a stadium. Is the
deal weighted heavily in baseball's favor? Yes! But sometimes you have to pay to play.

And it's not like the money is coming from the average tax payers. From what I understand, taxes will be imposed upon buisnesses generating annual revenues in excess of 4 million dollars. Like I said,
it's not a great deal but MLB is a buisness and those were the
parameters that were set.

[LATrueRedskin]

I guarantee you not a single school or hospital will be saved if MLB takes their team elsewhere.

I don't buy the argument that "the money should be used towards the city". The DC city council has been mismanaging funds for a long time. NOW...all of a sudden, we are to believe they will turn things around? If it was so important to the council, why haven't they ALREADY been funding schools or saving hospitals?

Too little too late, IMO. Most of the tax burden will be towards area businesses anyway. PLUS, lets not forget the hundreds or thousands of jobs that will be created once the ball park is erected...as well as the need for jobs for new restaurants, parking garages and area attractions.

I'm not absconding Mayor Williams of fault here. He shouldn't have made an agreement with MLB unless he had full backing of the council.

I agree. Great post. And Boswell did nail this situation in his column today.

[SkinsKY]

Agreed with the sentiments in this thread. It may cost money to build a stadium, but nothing generates revenue like pro sports. Pay now and you can reap these benefits for decades. No deal should've been made without council approval, but I imagine both sides are trying to push for an agreement that meets their interests best.

[LATrueRedskin]

Agreed with the sentiments in this thread. It may cost money to build a stadium, but nothing generates revenue like pro sports. Pay now and you can reap these benefits for decades. No deal should've been made without council approval, but I imagine both sides are trying to push for an agreement that meets their interests best.

Especially Major League Baseball. that's 80-something games that could bring in millions upon millions of dollars.

[Jero]

Well, regardless of everyone's opinion, one thing is almost certain. Baseball in D.C. is dead in the water. Wow, that was a whole lot of getting worked up over nothing! I'm depressed...

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

Well, regardless of everyone's opinion, one thing is almost certain. Baseball in D.C. is dead in the water. Wow, that was a whole lot of getting worked up over nothing! I'm depressed...
:cry:

[split3clemente]

somewhere peter angelos is smiling, and that makes me wanna hurl cause i hate that bama sooooo bad

[RedskinsDave]

If the deal really is dead then I wish Cropp's political future an equal demise.

[LATrueRedskin]

If this deal doesn't go down, baseball will never even think about coming here again.

[bgforever]

I know there are some that will agree wiith at least her trying to get 50% from private financing, but it just doesn't happen no more. Also, she did no feasability studies offering her points to the arguement, just looking at 100% and how its divided in "building', which has always been the problem in D. C., not wanting to invest the next step to get where you are going. It took the D. C. Council years or decades for a convention centre, until Marion Barry had enough drit on some politicians to finally ratify it, now baseball, where Williams brokered a fair deal to "start" with. It was a START dammit! and Cropp blew it!

Economically, D.C. offers employment in government and if it moves its headquarters, which may happen one day, "what" tourism would you offer of significance, that someone would be interested in - Go Go Music?

Stores only survive of other economic movements, not just because they are stores. No money, no shop - byyyyyyyye!

This is a cropp of .....!

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

Wanted: 1 savior. Must have at least $150,000,000 cash. Monetary
payback uncertain, however you will receive enormous amounts of
publicity as the Hero of DC baseball. All parties will consider you
thier savior and perhaps name a stadium after you (or if your last
name is the same as a state, we'll rededicate a street in your honor).
Flamboyant attitude welcome and will help bolster your public
profile. TV and Radio time guaranteed. Groups welcome but would
share publicity and cult status.


:cry:

[Jimreaper007]

Why not ask Microsoft to fund it?

And while they are here...have them fix the schools which Mayor Williams has ignored.

[aREDSKIN]

Why not ask Microsoft to fund it?

And while they are here...have them fix the schools which Mayor Williams has ignored.

I'm not exactly sure of the amount that the DC gov't spends on a per pupil basis annually but I'll recall reading soemwhere that they spend more than any other jurisdiction in the US and still turn out illiterates. As proposed, none of the monies for the stadium would have come from the DC general fund. This argument is a red herring and disingenuous or ignorant.

[hail2skins]

Uhhh, wouldn't asking for private funds means you have to pay it back which means it'll be more expensive? Just wondering because I heard this last night.

[Jimreaper007]

Welcome aRedskin, (if no one else has welcomed you)

DC government does spend more per pupil than most places in the country, but lost in that broad brush is that everything is more expensive in DC proper than most places in the country. The richest areas in the country with the best schools turn out illiterates so I fail to see your point. Oh by the way I graduated from DCPS two years early and I speak in complete sentences.

None of the monies will come from the "DC General Fund" but everyone who is familiar with DC's financial setup knows that the General Fund is just a giving the big pot a different name to appease the incredibly gullable.

Oh, by the way...Mayor Williams shut down DC General Hospital which was the only hospital in DC that would treat people without Insurance. Now the people living in Anocostia have to go to greater southest hospital which is barely operating. Considering the whole country is suffering from a lack of health insurance do you do you think DC should be concentrating on building a hospital for it's poorest residents or a baseball stadium for richer folks who do not live in the city?

Calling the argument a red herring, disingenuous or ignorant shows a lack of knowledge of the entire scope of the issues involved here. I want baseball too, but a hospital for poor people and better schools should be the priority.