Baseball's Reindeer Games

In the "don't get sportswriters to write about the business and politics of sport" department, the Post ran this article today, "Lease Uncertainty Has Nats Reeling," which discusses the impact on the team of the failure to sign a lease, and posturing by Major League Baseball. The article says that there is great risk because of all the political wrangling over the lease, that the team could leave, be contracted, etc.

Where the article fails is by not discussing how much of this situation is the result of MLB dilly-dallying in not getting around to selling the team to real people with real faces They've dilly-dallyed out of greed, because the sweetheart lease will allow them to sell the team for far more than they originally expected.

Had there been a sale, with local faces and a real owner, issues involved with the overly favorable lease terms could have been addressed. I mean Abe Pollin is a face. You might not like Dan Snyder, but he is a real person. Same with Ted Leonsis of the Capitals.

Dan Snyder is rapacious, and out to extract every possible penny he can from his team's fans, but he spends the money to try to win. Clearly his management style must be somewhat problematic based on results, but he tries.

Major League Baseball bears as much responsibility for this problem as Mayor Williams and his super-sweetheart deal.

I am not against the stadium, just public funding, but I could swallow hard and accept public funding (after all that's what the rich people who really call the shots in the city want) if there were some benefits in the contract for the city. Instead, as the Post pointed out Sunday, the construction contract signed by Mayor Williams is a massive step backward in terms of extracting benefits for cities negotiating with professional sports teams.

Abe Pollin. No matter whether or not you agree that "MCI Center made DC a comeback city", the fact is the team is downtown because the owner wanted it, and he decided to make it happen. Sure he was prodded by an unsolicited offer by Bob Johnson to pony up the money to build the arena, but he could have walked away. He didn't.

That's what makes me opposed. Why should we build this thing for 50 rich people to make even more money--the players plus the owners and the top staff are the ones who benefit the most. Calculating the long term benefit is difficult, and all sides have merits to their arguments.

If there were team owners, they could "step up to the plate" and take on part of the financial obligation for construction overruns.

"We have to work to rebuild that trust and rekindle that relationship" with the fans, says Capitals owner Ted Leonsis. His cost-cutting ways have not helped matters. Photo Credit: By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post Photo.

But that gets in the way of MLB extracting the maximum sale value (after they already destroyed team value by assigning 2/3 of the DC team television rights to the Baltimore Orioles--do you think that the Red Sox sold for $700 million because of the Fenway value, or the additional value of their cable television channel?).

Maybe Fenty, Catania, et al are playing hardball, but so is Major League Baseball, and Mayor Williams is caught in the middle, with no help from MLB at all.

NOTE: I do not spend my time, energy, or money watching or following professional sports (although I do read the articles about the business and politics of sports). As I learned in college, "whether or not they win or lose, I still have to take my finals" or now "they just play again next year," I can spend my time on other things. I do find the dealing to be interesting though...

AND I wish we could get on to the real business of "building a local economy" in DC.

Index Keywords: baseball; stadiums-arenas