Selig has a history of using hardball tactics. He won a publicly funded stadium for his Milwaukee Brewers by hinting that he would pull out of town. For more than a year, he sought to keep baseball out of Washington to appease Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos, who has argued that a D.C. team would cut into his profits.
When baseball's owners decided to find a new home for the financially struggling Montreal Expos, Selig instructed the relocation committee to look at places other than Washington. The committee, led by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, did as it was told.
A banner hangs along East Capitol St. SE in reaction to an amendment from D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp.
(Jay Premack -- The Washington Post)
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Last year, when Williams suggested that the city would be willing to build a ballpark by using two-thirds public funding and one-third of the money coming from the team, The Washington Post reported that Reinsdorf responded: "Two-thirds/one-third is fine. But three-thirds/no-thirds is more of what we had in mind."
This past spring, Williams decided that the only way to overcome the Angelos problem was to give baseball what it wanted and take away all the reasons for saying no. In May, with Cropp by his side, Williams offered to pay for a 41,000-seat stadium at any of four sites near downtown.
The gambit worked. But Reinsdorf continued to press every advantage. Baseball officials kept talking to other locations, including Northern Virginia.
Convinced they were fighting to keep alive their bid, D.C. officials gave Major League Baseball "the sweetest of sweetheart deals," in the words of one prominent baseball executive. The team would get a free ballpark, the right to choose its location and nearly all the revenue, including tens of millions of dollars from naming rights.
News of the deal "spread through baseball like wildfire," said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It really was too good," he said, laying the foundation for a public backlash.
On Sept. 29, baseball officials announced that the Expos would open the 2005 season at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Thousands of people rushed to sign up for season tickets. Seven council members, including Cropp and Schwartz, stood onstage with the mayor at a celebratory rally and sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." They represented a council majority. Approval of the stadium legislation seemed assured.
But the mayor underestimated the council's concerns about the deal, and none of the politicians anticipated such strong community opposition.
The baseball announcement came just two weeks after Democratic voters threw out three council members, replacing them with former mayor Marion Barry and two other candidates who campaigned against the new ballpark. The city had agreed to approve the legislation by Dec. 31, before Barry and the others take office. Suddenly, baseball began to feel like an end run around the voters.
Barry vowed to undo the deal, calling it a giveaway to millionaire baseball owners. Activists held angry protests, demanding to know why Williams was raising business taxes for a ballpark but not for deteriorating schools. A Post survey of District residents found that 69 percent of them said city funds should not be spent on a new baseball stadium.
Instead of quelling the uprising, Williams flew to a trade mission in Asia for 11 days. In his absence, the debate became "about something more than baseball," council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) said. He said Williams could have solidified a majority council vote for baseball in September by selling his vision to the public.
"Instead, he allowed a different politics to take over -- the politics of unhappiness about all the ways this government is not sensitive to the people," Mendelson said.
When Cropp tried to sell the stadium plan, she received a hostile reception at several civic association meetings. Then the city's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, announced that in his view, the mayor's office had underestimated the cost. Williams proposed increasing the business tax, and a line of panicked executives formed outside Cropp's door. Cropp begged Williams to help fix the problem, but the mayor waved her off, she said.
