There won’t be any Beatlesque psychedelic bus, but Major League Baseball is conducting its own magical mystery tour trying to find a new home for the orphaned Montreal Expos.
Seeking to expand the pool beyond holdover bids from the District, Northern Virginia and Portland, Ore., MLB officials have visited or will visit Las Vegas; San Antonio; Norfolk, Va.; and Monterrey, Mexico; in a period stretching from late December to tomorrow.
Each visit to date has been roughly the same. Lots of hopeful statements from local politicians. Helicopter rides over prospective stadium sites. Plenty of number-crunching through proposed financial models. A distinct lack of defined timetables for the future from MLB or firm instructions for future activity by civic leaders.
But is all the chasing around actually getting baseball closer to at last making a decision on the money-bleeding Expos or just further away? MLB officials still intend to make a decision on Expos this year, and perhaps even by spring. But no one, particularly those cities playing host to baseball on its current tour, seems to know for sure.
“Frankly, I’d be surprised if anyone could state a firm timetable on this now,” said James Eason, president of the Hampton Roads Partnership and a long-time pursuer of any major league sports franchise for greater Norfolk. “But we are very anxious to make our case.”
This second round of visits already has yielded several interesting pieces of information. Monterrey — which lost out in a race with San Juan, Puerto Rico, to play host to 22 Expos games this year — still would like a small number of games at the city’s Estadio Monterrey before making a long-term commitment to the franchise.
Though it is very late to make a change, Monterrey boosters are hoping to have a set of MLB games moved from the U.S. to Mexico this season. Given the lengthy, back-and-forth negotiations between MLB and the players’ union needed just to get the Expos back in San Juan for 2004, the effort is seen as a long shot.
“I think there’s still a feeling that, if possible, baseball would like to try [Monterrey] before they buy,” said Eric Stern, spokesman for Carlos Bremer, the Mexican industrialist fronting the Monterrey bid.
Norfolk, which has its date with members of baseball’s relocation committee tomorrow, intends to underbid all other domestic bidders with a stadium plan costing no more than $300million. Prospective stadiums in the Washington area would exceed $400million. Portland is projecting a $350million cost for a downtown ballpark.
The linchpin in the Hampton Roads penny-pinching is a publicly owned site near Harbor Park, home of the Class AAA Norfolk Tides, that is the area’s preferred spot for a new stadium. Financing details for the bid remain sketchy but, similar to local efforts, would rely in part on ballpark naming rights and using tax revenue generated at the stadium to pay off public sector bonds.
“I have personally seen the extraordinary impact of the first pro franchise in an area, places like Jacksonville [Fla.], Orlando [Fla.] and Columbus [Ohio],” said Rick Horrow, a Florida-based stadium development consultant aiding the Norfolk effort. “Hampton Roads would be right in line to receive those same kind of initial benefits.”
The Norfolk effort has also created a situation some local baseball boosters describe as “awkward.” Executives from the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority, at the request of Mayor Paul Fraim, will be in Norfolk tomorrow to aid the MLB visit and are now consulting Norfolk boosters on an ongoing basis.
The move is logical given the authority’s chartered responsibility for the entire commonwealth and executive director Gabe Paul’s long association with Milwaukee Brewers chairman Wendy Selig-Prieb, a member of the relocation committee who will be on the trip. But the connection still comes as something of a surprise considering the authority’s seven-year battle on behalf of Northern Virginia and contractual tie to William Collins’ prospective ownership group.
Greater Washington, not part of the current tour, remains decidedly puzzled at the recent activity. Each of the new candidates is vastly smaller and less wealthy than the local area and, like the capital area, has not produced any ratified stadium financing rife with public sector dollars. Both the District and Northern Virginia are asking for some type of conditional award of the Expos before completing stadium site and financing work.
“I don’t take offense with what’s happening now, but I certainly do hope the [relocation] process moves on and makes progress,” Paul said.
The urgency of baseball’s current travels is predicated on an owners’ meeting scheduled Wednesday and Thursday in Arizona. MLB’s relocation committee will be meeting again with an eye toward narrowing back down the expanded list of candidates. But after more than two years of broken promises and delays, strict timetables and firm agendas are nowhere to be seen.
“We’re optimistic someone will buy the Montreal franchise,” Jonathan Mariner, baseball’s chief financial officer, said to MLB.com.
During the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, they sang about “The Fool on the Hill,” a man that “keeps perfectly still,” “never gives an answer” and “never shows his feelings.”
Sounds more like Major League Baseball with the Expos every day.
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