Linda W. Cropp had always wanted baseball. But with less than a week before the D.C. Council was scheduled to vote on a plan to build a ballpark, the council chairman could see things falling apart.
The mayor had increased taxes on business in his stadium proposal, and angry executives were swarming city hall. A Neiman Marcus vice president flew all the way from Dallas, marched into Cropp's fifth-floor office and threatened to pull out of Mazza Gallerie. Others packed a first-floor committee room, where a shouting match erupted between two council colleagues. Cropp's phone lighted up with frantic calls from council members saying they would have to vote no.
Linda Cropp joined Mark Touhey, left, of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, and Mayor Williams in celebrating a team's arrival.
(Lawrence Jackson -- AP)
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By the end of that awful day, the council was poised to snuff out Washington's baseball dream. Only Cropp could see it coming, because only Cropp knew that the mayor had lost her, too.
"I'm very good at counting votes," she said in an interview. "And it was clear to me there were not the votes there to bring baseball to the city."
Cropp, a low-key leader skilled at the quiet art of compromise, began the search for consensus. But this time, Cropp found herself on unfamiliar terrain.
The mayor refused to listen to her concerns, saying any change in the stadium legislation would jeopardize an agreement to bring the Montreal Expos to Washington. Faced with escalating cost estimates, a splintering base of support and an unresponsive mayor, Cropp took the unusual step of publicly denouncing his plan to build a ballpark on the Anacostia waterfront. She championed a much cheaper site, near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.
Instead of forcing the mayor to the bargaining table, however, Cropp's Nov. 5 news conference sparked panic among baseball supporters. Baseball officials had already rejected RFK. Cropp was trying to rescue baseball, but now she was accused of trying to kill it.
As she backpedaled and grasped desperately at alternatives, Cropp acknowledges that her behavior has seemed "out of character" and perhaps a little "harebrained." But during two lengthy interviews, Cropp said she has had a legitimate goal: to avoid a stadium deal that saddles the city with spiraling debt and taxes.
"I was never trying to stop baseball," Cropp said. "But I've been saying for two years if the business community says this is harmful to my business, I will not support it. . . . Contrary to how I've been vilified, if I had not raised the issue, the mayor would not have even known there was a problem."
The strain of the past 11 days has clearly taken a toll on Cropp. At 57, the Democrat is the District's longest-serving elected official. As council chairman, she is second in power and influence only to the mayor. But Cropp has never been under such intense scrutiny. Unlike education, health care and housing -- issues that she said "really, seriously impact the lives of people" -- baseball, she has been amazed to find, has made Washington a little crazy.
At midweek, Cropp looked stressed-out and exhausted as she sat in her wood-paneled office, a formal space she has redecorated in soothing creams and blues. Her usually meticulous lipstick had faded. Her eyes were red. And her voice grew tight with emotion as she recalled a pair of unfamiliar reporters who disdainfully rolled their eyes while peppering her with skeptical questions.
"They kept saying: 'What are you talking about? That makes no sense to me,' " Cropp said. "Just because they don't understand it, am I supposed to stop? I have to keep doing what I think is right."
What Cropp thinks is right seems to have changed dramatically since Sept. 29, when she stood shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and cheered Major League Baseball's return to the nation's capital. Her promise to build a stadium was critical to baseball's return. So her apparent transformation from booster to bomb thrower puzzled even longtime admirers and fueled speculation that Cropp is staking out a more popular position on the stadium to run for mayor.
Her confrontational tactics also bewildered some of her colleagues. A genteel conciliator, Cropp encourages council members to hammer out differences behind closed doors rather than in open session. She persuaded one incumbent this year not to challenge another for an at-large seat, in part to avoid a protracted public feud.
