D.C. boosts ante with ballpark plan

District officials finally got the nerve to call Major League Baseball’s bluff. They are going to make an offer baseball can’t refuse — sort of.

It’s doubtful that commissioner Bud Selig will find a horse’s head in his bed if he and his cronies turn down the District’s latest proposal for a ballpark. But a rejection of this plan by Cadillac Bud and his cronies would prove to baseball supporters here what they’ve suspected all along: Baseball won’t ever put a team in Washington because of the presence of the Baltimore Orioles nearby.

There would be no other explanation. There simply is no other candidate city with a better combination of stadium financing, sound ownership group and lucrative market than Washington.

District officials yesterday told The Washington Times that they will give Major League Baseball what it has demanded for so long: a new ballpark fully paid for with public money.

The District’s proposal calls for the park to be built on the grounds of RFK Stadium — hardly the first choice of District officials or the Washington Baseball Club, the ownership group headed by financier Fred Malek. They preferred other sites, such as New York Avenue NE, where the presence of a ballpark would better spur economic development.

But the Williams administration and the Malek group finally came to an inevitable realization: This is Major League Baseball’s game of extortion, and, contrary to the delusions of Councilman Jack Evans, baseball holds all the cards.

The least painful way to conclude this business is to make baseball either show its cards or fold — something I have been advocating for more than a year, when the field of candidates for the Montreal Expos consisted of just the District and Northern Virginia.

I warned then that the District or Virginia officials needed to call baseball’s bluff, before Cadillac Bud had a chance to woo other competitors such as Portland, Ore.; Monterrey, Mexico; Las Vegas; and Norfolk.

That was the time to do it, when baseball had no options. The talk now — with the backing of Orioles owner Peter Angelos — is of Norfolk being a serious, even favored candidate. Monterrey is being considered for perhaps a one-year trial. Las Vegas is getting a lot of buzz, though I believe baseball will keep that proposed site open for an Oakland A’s relocation threat.

Still, it is better late then never, and the District’s proposal should either start a new chapter or close the book on baseball in this city for good. Virginia is following suit, sort of, with the state ballpark financing plan to expire at the end of this year and no plans to go back for a deadline extension.

The RFK site reduces costs enough to allow the District to propose a $340million ballpark funded entirely by public money. This gives baseball officials what they have been seeking: no financial commitment for the group that is awarded the Expos.

Not that Malek’s group refused to pay a share. But baseball is trying to avoid establishing a precedent in which the owners have to pay for any portion of a new ballpark. The notion of putting up their own money flies in the face of corporate welfare.

It stinks, but it is what it is.

Officials can rattle their sabers and threaten to tell baseball officials to take their game elsewhere. But the fact is that this torture has been going on since the expansion Washington Senators left for Arlington, Texas, after the 1971 season. Since then, millions of dollars have been spent, privately and publicly, to get major league baseball back. One way or another, it has to end now — and calling baseball’s bluff will do that.

Cadillac Bud’s relocation committee might try to find a weasel way out, making new demands or finding slivers of fault with the District’s offer. If it hems and haws now, that is as good as an answer of no.

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