" . . . Even those in support admit it's a lemon," he said.
"Mmm-hmmm."
Yesterday's meeting attracted a throng to the council chambers.
(Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)
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" . . . The project cost $600 million two days ago, and it cost $600 million today."
"Mmm-hmmm!"
" . . . You helped keep it from getting worse," Catania finished, addressing Cropp. "But I don't know if we have reduced the cost."
Yet by 2:07 p.m., as council members spoke urgently into their black telephones and staffers delivered notes and papers, Cropp announced, "I did make an agreement with the mayor and with Major League Baseball. So I ask that we leave this intact."
Soon, the votes rang out on the package of amendments Cropp had hammered out with Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Major League Baseball: "Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . No." The official voice intoned, "7 yes, 6 no." The measure passed.
And baseball returns.
Leaks muttered, "It's bad. It's bad." Postal worker Thomas Smith, 58, spit, "A pile of manure coated with sugar is still a pile of manure." And Mario Cristaldo, who works on affordable housing and community development issues in the District, derided the deal: "Many in my community, the Latino community, are really concerned. . . . We need money for other things."
As the red and blue hats filed into the marble hallway, voices echoed and crescendoed.
"I was getting so used to heartbreak!" cried a mesmerized Jeannette Aspden, who had spent Thursday night painting five twin-size bedsheets "SAY IT AIN'T SO LINDA" and then hanging them across three rowhouses in her Capitol Hill neighborhood. Yesterday afternoon, the 58-year-old freelance writer stood in the middle of the hallway, "luxuriating." After attending her first ballgame at age 4 with her grandmother in Philadelphia, she became a fan. When she lived abroad, in Austria and England, between 1976 and 1991, she became a bigger fan of baseball.
"It made me see it as a kind of microcosm of America, only there aren't any women," she began, then laughed and started over. "But there are blacks, Hispanics, white people, tall people, short people, guys who're 18 and guys who're 40" -- all working together, "and it all works out."
And in the spring the air will turn warm, the grass will turn green, and the bleachers will call: Time for catching foul balls, rooting for home runs and skipping work.
