Ex-Redskins Join Virginia Baseball Group

Monk, Mann Among Diverse Crowd of Recent Investors

The Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority displays a model of its proposed ballpark. Major League Baseball could decide on the bid's fate next month. (Linda Spillers -- AP)

Former Washington Redskins teammates Art Monk and Charles Mann are among seven new partners in the investment group hoping to bring a baseball team to Northern Virginia.

The two, who won two Super Bowl championships with the Redskins in the 1980s and 1990s, are now entrepreneurs and the founders of Axia, a credit card processing company based in Vienna.

The former players, both black, are among a number of new partners, including several minorities, who have joined Virginia Baseball Club, the partnership led by William E Collins III. Collins has been trying to bring baseball to Northern Virginia for 10 years and recently pledged that 20 percent of the ownership in his enterprise would be minorities.

Both former Redskins are friends of Collins and have done business with him since they started their venture several years ago. They said yesterday in separate interviews that they were not only excited about helping Virginia attract its first major league sports franchise, but were beginning to fulfill a long-term dream.

"I think in the heart of every athlete, there's a desire one day to be an owner or to be part of an ownership group," said Mann, 42, who lives in Great Falls. "It would just please me no end to be in the owners' box" at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where the Northern Virginia team would play until a new ballpark opened in the commonwealth.

"I would probably have to pinch myself a few times," he said.

The two former players had not made a public announcement of their entry into the Virginia Baseball Club but had attended several recent events -- including a Crystal City luncheon yesterday -- promoting the $400 million ballpark that the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority wants to build. Yesterday's luncheon site overlooks two of five proposed locations.

The group is competing against counterparts in the District and Portland, Ore., to become the owners of the Montreal Expos, which Major League Baseball is considering moving next year. A decision on the team's new location could come as early as next month, and three members of baseball's relocation committee will meet separately with D.C. and Northern Virginia officials tomorrow. Baseball officials also are making contingency plans in case a permanent move is delayed.

Mann and Monk join about a dozen other partners in the Virginia Baseball Club, which is based in Merrifield. The other new partners are Tien Wong, an Asian American and former owner of CyperRep, a local tech company; Babak Habibi, an Iranian native and chief executive of a Northern Virginia-based Internet networking company; and Paul Opalack, chief executive of Noblestar Inc., a Reston-based company. Sports lawyer Jim Falk and William Dean, the head of M.C. Dean, a local electronic securities company, also recently bought into Collins's group, officials said.

Mann and Monk are the only former professional athletes in the investment group. Neither they, nor others in the group, would say how much Monk or Mann were contributing, although one official said that it was "a significant investment."

"We've always had a goal of making this a diverse partnership," said Jerry Burkot, a spokesperson for the Virginia Baseball Club. "But we selected them because they are good people . . . who have been a part of the community for a long time -- not because they are minorities."

The Washington Baseball Club, which is also hoping to bring the Expos to the District, has long had minority investors, an official said yesterday. Four of the nine partners are black, including Frank Raines, chairman and chief executive of Fannie Mae, Washington insider Vernon Jordan, former Disney executive Dennis Hightower and former Redskins cornerback Darrell Green.