Field of Schemes: D.C. follies, cont'd

December 18, 2004

D.C. follies, cont'd

More bullet points from the Montshington Natpos brouhaha, while my crack headline-writing team runs out to buy a jumbo box of Youppi! puns:

D.C. council chair Linda Cropp will be meeting with Mayor Anthony Williams on Monday to discuss how to resolve the stadium impasse, but it looks like Williams neglected to invite MLB to join them. "That's news to me," baseball COO Bob DuPuy told the Washington Post. "No one has asked us to come. No one said what the purpose of such a meeting is." Tuesday is the year's last scheduled council meeting, but Cropp has asked her colleagues to stick around until after Christmas if necessary.
The leading candidate to provide "private financing" for the stadium, as required by The Amendment Heard Round The World, is a proposal by the Cleveland investment firm the Gates Group to install parking meters on streets near the new stadium to raise money to pay off stadium debt. Actually, the city would be installing the meters, and collecting the fees - all Gates would do would be to lend the District $100 million in exchange for a cut of the resulting revenues. While this might actually provide a backdoor way of tapping into baseball's stadium revenues - you have to think at least some fans would think twice about ordering that second tray of nachos after shelling out big bucks to park their car - it's still hardly "private money," but rather just a complicated way for the city to take out a loan. Other options reportedly being discussed: Selling zoning variances to build in the stadium district, auctioning off the right to build retail stores into the stadium's outer wall, or just going to a bank and borrowing the damn money.
Meanwhile, the dearth of viable options for where to put the Expos in 2005 if MLB refuses to go to RFK Stadium has led to some wild speculation about possible solutions, including having them play home games in Baltimore's Camden Yards . (Because of scheduling conflicts with the Orioles, this would likely result in 25 day-night split-team doubleheaders.) Also being heard again is the C-word: Baseball's labor agreement allows the owners to pursue contraction after the 2006 season, and at least some baseball observers say buying out two teams would be cheaper than continuing to lug the Expos around like a dead weight. Of course, the last time contraction was proposed, consensus was that it would be more trouble than it was worth, but at this point, it's uncharted waters ahead. As yet another unnamed baseball official (at the Winter Meetings did they all wear name tags that said, "HI MY NAME IS"?) told the Washington Post of the Camden Yards scenario: "It's not likely to happen. But at this point, I can't say it's out of the question. Nothing is out of the question."
With that in mind, and by popular demand, I've brought back the Expos 2005 Odds Chart, but with a twist: It's now the Expos 2005 Odds Poll, letting you readers do the handicapping, since your guess is as good as mine. Vote in the right-hand column, then see if Field of Schemes readers are smarter than Bud Selig!

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