Major League Baseball has given the District a stay of execution until Dec. 31.
When the ball drops on New Year's Eve, Washington can say goodbye to the "Nationals," all the joy they might have brought and all the urban rejuvenation they might have ignited on the Anacostia waterfront, unless some sanity is restored.
Perhaps because he just learned last week that he had escaped a serious brush with cancer, Commissioner Bud Selig is infused with the holiday spirit. At any rate, he and his sport have given the District an enormous Christmas gift: a second chance.
In the coming days, Washington and its infuriating, disingenuous D.C. Council must make a simple, straightforward decision. Do they want to accept the deal for a new stadium that was struck between the sport and Mayor Anthony A. Williams? Or don't they?
That's it. Yes. Or no.
Either answer is acceptable. City councils decide such things. It's their job.
What is utterly and absolutely not acceptable is the current behavior of Council Chairman Linda Cropp and nine of her colleagues who want to bait-and-switch baseball into a radically altered deal than the one which Williams negotiated exhaustively -- as his city's official representative -- over a two-year period.
In business, a deal is a deal, something Cropp refuses to understand. For her any deals, those made by others or even ones she has agreed to herself in recent days, are not deals at all. They are just a starting point for her next demand. And if she finally hears "No" to one of her new conditions, as she did on Tuesday from baseball, she threatens to sabotage the whole deal.
Finally, yesterday, baseball became completely disgusted and drew a line in the sand.
"The legislation approved by the District of Columbia City Council last night . . . is inconsistent with our carefully negotiated agreement and is wholly unacceptable," said MLB President Bob DuPuy in a statement. "Because our stadium agreement provides for a December 31, 2004 deadline, we will not entertain offers for permanent relocation of the club until that deadline passes.
"In the meantime, the club's baseball operations will proceed, but its business and promotional activities will cease."
In other words, baseball will honor its deal, right down to the Dec. 31 deadline. After that, it will start the work of moving the team to another city. According to highly placed sources, no games will be played at RFK Stadium next season if the Washington ballpark deal dies. "It's fair to assume that's out of the question," said one source.
When you make a deal with baseball, they honor it. If you break a deal with them, you're out. Which is as it should be. But then baseball is big league, unlike the D.C. Council, which is bush league and just damaged the city's reputation coast-to-coast.
If you want to see how atrociously the District is acting, then simply put the shoe on the other foot.
Suppose that, over the last few weeks, it was baseball, not Washington, that was constantly trying to renegotiate. What if Selig had changed his demands at least a half-dozen times, always upping the ante and using brinksmanship to get his way?
What if Selig had canceled votes within baseball ownership or delayed approvals to try to muscle Washington into concessions? And what if, most outrageously, he had signed off on the deal in private, then reneged?
What on earth would we be calling Selig right now? Of course, rich, powerful sports commissioners are fair game in this society. When they act badly, we call them out. But Cropp and her cohorts, who are acting in exactly the same manner as our hypothetical Selig, get off almost unchallenged.
The Council claims to be fighting for the poor of the District when it is far more likely that it is in the process of killing a development deal, with baseball as its centerpiece, that would bring significant benefits, not costs, to those very constituents.
Council members claim they are protecting citizen tax dollars when they know that not one cent of public money is earmarked for the Anacostia waterfront project. All funds to back the bonds to build the park will come from the team's new owners (rich), the top 11 percent of local Washington businesses (prosperous) and fans who attend games (many affluent). As for the District's pot of money collected through taxes -- called "the general fund" -- not a cent would be taken out of it.
As a bonus, more than 80 percent of Nationals fans, about two million a year, would come from the suburbs and spend tens of millions of discretionary entertainment dollars in the District.
Cropp and others on the council, like Adrian Fenty and David Catania, realize all this. They just don't want the public to figure it out. They prefer to round up cheap votes for themselves by bashing baseball rather than bringing a team back to Washington, bringing urban development to a blighted area and adding millions of dollars to the city's tax base.
The Council should be reminded that baseball doesn't care how Washington funds its stadium. The sport has specifically stated that if Washington can get private funding, that's okay with them, as long as it's nailed down, not pie in the sky. All the Council needs to do to solve the current mess is pass an amendment that provides the District with time to pursue the kind of private funding that Cropp espouses but, if it cannot be found, that the city will fulfill its promise to build the new park itself.
We should also remember that Washington's own mayor, not some ogre in baseball, dreamed up the current funding plan that so infuriates the Council's pols. The whole concept, and it's a brilliantly original one, came from Williams's office. Of course, Council members, especially ones like Cropp who want to be mayor, have nothing to gain by approving the successful creations of a rival politician. It's easier to destroy them, and then claim that you saved the public money.
If Cropp had not chosen the nuclear option on Tuesday night, she might have continued to badger baseball into a few frills. But now she's forced the game to take a stand or else look like a patsy in any future negotiations with anybody.
"How can we trust Cropp now? When does it end?" said a baseball official yesterday. "She has signed off, given her word, said the deal was done, more than once. Then she just changes her mind and acts like that's a normal way to do business.
"It's disgraceful. Baseball has been accused of a lot of things in the last 100 years. But never anything like this. They just went back on their word. If Cropp thinks she's going to do that and [still] get a team, she's making a horrible mistake."
The clock is ticking. The ball drops at midnight on New Year's Eve. Will the District's final hopes for baseball fall with it?