DuPuy sees home soon for Expos

BOSTON — Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball president, said yesterday he believes a permanent home for the Montreal Expos could be determined by Sept.1, despite the growing legion of baseball insiders in Quebec and the Washington area who disagree.

DuPuy, speaking during the first of a two-day owners’ meeting here, concurred with earlier comments by Expos president Tony Tavares that a decision on the team’s future for at least 2004 needs to happen by the end of the month.

“We continue to hope we can move this process along significantly by [Sept.[ThSp]1],” DuPuy said after helping lead a meeting yesterday of MLB’s relocation committee lasting about an hour. “There are schedule issues, stadium issues, people issues that all have to be dealt with. Our No.1 priority with this is still to get a permanent [relocation] deal done.”

Though DuPuy’s comments continue the maddening tea leaf-reading process that has defined the ongoing Expos relocation saga, they also suggest at last a sense of responsibility for baseball to act. For weeks MLB executives have appeared to take a more hands-off stance on the Expos, content to wait until a bidding jurisdiction knocks them off their feet with a solid, ratified stadium financing deal loaded with public dollars.

Local politicians, conversely, have waited for some kind of definitive action from baseball and felt there was not much else that could be done without it.

“We are certainly still within the time to have RFK Stadium ready for the 2004 season,” said Bobby Goldwater, executive director of the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission. “We obviously look forward to hearing more from baseball.”

But DuPuy’s optimism for a permanent move by 2004 still is not without doubters. Tavares has said repeatedly over the last six weeks that time is running short to make a permanent move for 2004, particularly in light of politicians in both the District and Northern Virginia demanding some kind of conditional award of the Expos before completing stadium financing.

Paul Ferguson, Arlington County Board chairman, is quick to point out MLB’s failure to meet a previously stated and self-imposed deadline of July15 to act on the Expos, a failure that contributed to the board’s requesting that Arlington be removed from any future site consideration.

Numerous individuals within the local baseball lobbies privately have doubted the readiness of baseball to move the Expos permanently by next year, but they have been unwilling to say so publicly. And contact between members of the relocation committee and local politicians and stadium authority leaders has slowed considerably in recent weeks.

If the Expos do not move to the District, Northern Virginia or Portland, Ore., for next year, the leading options are temporary homes in Montreal; San Juan, Puerto Rico; or Monterrey, Mexico. The players union has made it known it prefers a full season in one place for the Expos instead of another split schedule. A draft of the 2004 schedule is due to the union from MLB by tomorrow.

DuPuy did attempt yesterday to inject a bit of levity into the glacially slow Expos process, telling assembled reporters they should check with Baseball Prospectus.com for answers on the beleaguered franchise. The Web site earlier this week angered MLB executives by reporting that a deal to reinstate Pete Rose to baseball already was signed and return of the all-time leader in hits to baseball was imminent. DuPuy called the Rose report “wholly inaccurate” and “journalistically irresponsible.”

Yesterday’s meetings came to a painful conclusion for DuPuy, who stumbled on the stairs at the Ritz Carlton Hotel and wrenched his right knee. He was taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority, along with George Mason University economist Stephen Fuller, are completing a study on the fiscal benefits of an Arlington-based stadium. Despite the fervent county board opposition, Gabe Paul, stadium authority executive director, said he believes all the facts on a ballpark in the county have not yet been released.

A recent county-commissioned economic study that projected far greater fiscal return from a conference center in Pentagon City as opposed to baseball stadium does not accurately reflect full economic spinoff from a ballpark, Paul said.

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