Baseball in D.C.? It's Almost Too Good to Be True

Disbelief, even more than joy, is the universal response in the Washington area to the arrival of the Expos.

This past week, baseball world views that had been embraced for a third of a century were suddenly demolished. Assumptions about what was possible -- not in our fantasy lives but in reality -- have been decimated or fundamentally altered. Hopes, in some cases handed down from one generation to another, have materialized so suddenly that they seem like some macabre trick.

When a pattern of facts has been continuously reinforced for 33 years, then the communal story that emerges -- the saga that each of us tells to the other -- eventually carries an almost mythic weight and certainty. The subtext, whether we bring it to consciousness or not, is: We obviously deserve baseball, so we will fight for baseball, but we will not get baseball.

How very strange it feels when, in a matter of weeks, your peculiar form of clinical dementia suddenly becomes officially sanctioned reality. For example, on Friday night, in Camden Yards of all places, I encountered Washington Senators historian and bring-back-baseball zealot Phil Wood. We shook each other's hands even as we also shook our heads.

"Does this feel weird or what?" he said. And that summed it up.

What can Washington baseball fans -- the abandoned, the mocked, the spurned, the poster children for fanatic delusion who are now on the verge of being declared total winners by a knockout -- do to get a grip on ourselves?

My personal, but only partial, solution is to write a few "thank you" notes. As we congratulate those who are responsible, perhaps our delight will grow and the dumb disoriented expression so many of us wear will gradually be replaced with the disgustingly gleeful grin that we deserve.

First, we must thank Peter Angelos. If he hadn't single-handedly demolished his own Orioles franchise over the past seven years with meddling mismanagement, turning his diamond "jewel" into fake zirconium, then baseball moguls would never have risked damaging it. However, once Angelos busted his Camden Yards money machine, there was nothing left for his fellow owners to "save." Attendance said it all. The Orioles went from 45,496 in 1998 to 30,298 in 2003! Putting sand in the hot dogs and Tabasco in the beer wouldn't alienate that many entrenched fans.

Then, Angelos topped himself by becoming Washington's best public-relations flack! Every time he screamed that losing D.C. would disable his franchise, other owners thought, "Wow, Washington must be a fabulous baseball hotbed for so many people to travel so far and pay so much to watch such a crummy team just because they love our sport so much."

So, thanks, Peter. We could never have done it without you.

We also need to show some respect to Commissioner of Baseball Bug Selig, though maybe not an actual "thank you" note. If things had been close to equal, he'd have preferred to put the Expos in Colombia before the District of Columbia. But all his half-wit alternatives to D.C. turned out to be comically untenable. By recent months nobody bothered to take nose counts on those towns anymore. Instead, they just measured the volume of laughter when the names were mentioned.

Portland, Ore. (Snickers.) Las Vegas. (Pete Rose for general manager?) Monterrey. (Well, at least it's close to Pebble Beach.) Norfolk. (Bud, is Leno doing your standup material?) Loudoun County. (Stop it. You're killin' us. Is this really a Letterman List?)

Selig's real contribution to our new team was a piece of ingenuity worthy of a fine CEO. He transformed a problem into a precedent. "We now have the Selig Doctrine for reimbursing existing franchises that are financially damaged by a relocation or expansion," said a highly placed industry source. "It's an important new precedent for the sport."

In the thank you parade, several less-visible people likely will be forgotten but shouldn't be. Paul Wolff and Steve Porter, prominent lawyers who are now minority partners in the Washington Baseball Club, have worked for a decade on D.C. baseball. You name the job, the study or the project related to this quixotic quest and they've had a hand in it. They also helped find and meld the cast of far richer moguls, like Fred Malek, who are now the main players in the WBC, the leading D.C.-backed candidate to buy the Expos.