This is definitely not the closest that Washington has come to getting a major league team to return to the District. In early 1974, Topps ran off baseball cards of 15 San Diego Padres, including Willie McCovey and Glenn Beckert, with their team designation as "Washington Nat'l Lea." Now that's close.
Also, things seemed pretty serious the day the late Jack Kent Cooke told his secretary to get the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates on the phone. "So, how much do you want for that team?" bellowed Cooke as I listened.
| _____ Baseball Returns to D.C. _____
• Bud Selig announces that the troubled Montreal Expos will move to Washington, returning baseball to the nation's capital for the 2005 season.
• While the Expos aren't very good now, they have loads of potential.
• News Graphic: Time to settle down
• Q&A on the new team
• Graphic: Meet your Expos (PDF).
• Survey: What should we call D.C.'s new team? | Discuss.
• After having RFK to itself for eight years, D.C. United will share.
• Details sketchy on how regional sports network would operate.
• There was a time when the Expos were the envy of all of baseball.
• News Graphic: Coming full circle.
• D.C. region has suffered through an endless number of close calls.
• City officials, led by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, gleefully celebrate the end of a generation of frustration.
• District's offer described as very generous.
• News Graphic: Stadium strategy
• A majority of the D.C. Council supports the mayor's stadium plan.
• When the hoopla dies down, will D.C. still have baseball fever?
• In Virginia, some blame Gov. Warner for failure to lure Expos.
• More than 50 years ago, it was Baltimore that needed D.C.'s help.
• Orioles management had little to say Wednesday about the news.
• Expos final home game is marred by unruly fan behavior.
_____ Post Columnists _____
• Thomas Boswell: We are finally getting exactly what we wished for.
• Sally Jenkins: D.C. is getting a bad team and a potential financial mess.
• Michael Wilbon: There are only four choices for the name of the new club.
• Mike Wise: Talk to the old Nats, you realize baseball never left.
• George Solomon: Finally, Shirley Povich is looking down and smiling.
• Marc Fisher: Baseball's challenge is to connect with the black kids.
_____ Multimedia _____
• Video: D.C. residents have mixed feelings about the relocation.
• Video: D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams makes the announcement.
• Video: In 2003, a D.C. official details improvements to RFK.
• Video: The Post's Garcia-Ruiz on what still needs to be done at RFK.
• Audio: Ex-Senators announcer Ron Menchine on the proposed move.
• Audio: Ex-announcer Bob Wolf says D.C. team, Orioles can thrive.
_____ Live Online _____
• Post's Tom Heath was online Thursday. Read the transcript.
• The Post's J.J. McCoy took questions before Wednesday's announcement. Read the transcript.
_____ On Our Site _____
• The District has been without major league baseball for more than 30 years. Look back at a visual history of the Washington Senators.
• Eighty years ago, the Senators won their only world championship.
• What's your opinion?
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Once upon a time, the Houston Astros looked like a near-lock, too.
Nevertheless, the Expos are so close to coming to the District right now that, if you were Charlie Brown, you'd be absolutely, positively certain that, this time, you were going to kick that miserable football before Lucy could pull it away.
At the moment, the Expos buzz is so loud you're lucky not to get knocked over by the volume.
"We believe we're down to the last inch in getting the [baseball] relocation committee to recommend the District as the home for the Expos in '05" at Thursday's Executive Council meeting, District Deputy Mayor Eric Price said yesterday.
"An 'inch' might be too close," said Bob DuPuy, baseball's second-highest-ranking official, "but discussions have been very productive [recently]."
According to numerous sources, the District will find out whether it gets the Expos by Oct. 1, though the earlier part of next week is more likely. "That's the right timeline," said a highly placed baseball source.
Yesterday, the District and baseball finally agreed on a site for a new ballpark: at M Street on the Anacostia waterfront. That is a huge hurdle cleared.
"Now we have to get a better name for that site than 'M Street,' don't we?" Price asked.
Tomorrow, baseball's Executive Council, which includes Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, will meet in Milwaukee. The relocation committee will tell the Executive Council that the District is clearly the most viable place to move the Expos. That's not the same as giving an order. It's a committee report. But it is a conclusion reached after years of agonizing analysis by an influential committee packed with those closest to Commissioner Bud Selig, including his daughter who owns the Brewers, his right-hand-man DuPuy and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Selig's closest ally through two labor strikes.
The relocation committee may not speak for Selig. But it's very close. And, in the matter of the location of franchises, commissioners have almost always been the only vote that counts. "Very little goes on in our industry that the commissioner is not directing," said a highly placed management source.
Bud has finally given the relocation committee its cue to speak. And they're "an inch," or slightly more, from saying "Washington," loud and clear.
What happens after that is subject to conjecture. Some think sweet reason will prevail. "If you know how Bud does business, there will be fulsome discussion by everything. Views will be shaped and evolve. Then we'll see what happens from there," said an industry source.
