Race for Ownership Of Nationals Isn't Open to Everyone

When the Boston Red Sox, one of baseball's most storied franchises, went up for sale in 2001, a group of New England businessmen that sought to buy the team was considered the hometown favorite, the potential ownership group with just the right political, media and financial connections.

But when the bids were all in, Red Sox Nation was astonished to find that its beloved team had been awarded by Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig to a triumvirate consisting of a Florida financier, a Hollywood producer and a longtime baseball insider whose last stop had been San Diego. None was a New Englander, but all had some prior connection to baseball -- and Selig.

If the controversial sale of the Red Sox is any guide, the auction of the Washington Nationals by its owners -- Major League Baseball's 29 other teams -- could result in an equally surprising outcome. Money, of course, will play a huge part in the decision -- some Nationals bidders have made oral commitments to paying as much as $450 million for the team, which would place the Nationals as one of the most expensive baseball properties ever sold. But there will be other, less predictable, factors.

"MLB has an institutional interest in the quality of the ownership and, irrespective of purchase price, whether they will be good, stable, long-term collegial owners. Baseball is a very small club," said Steve Greenberg, a managing director at Allen & Co. investment bank, which represented Selig's family last year when it sold the Milwaukee Brewers. "Only 30 owners. And you want to make sure the people in it are like-minded for the good of the game."

As with most major sports leagues, what's good for the game is often in the eye of the commissioner and his key advisers -- in this case Selig, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and MLB President Robert DuPuy. Their ideal owner: someone who has deep ties to the community, the long-term financial resources to support a competitive team, the prudence to treasure the franchise as a public trust and, not coincidentally, the savvy to toe the company line when it comes to MLB's operations.

Nationals President Tony Tavares put it another way. "Baseball is looking for a traditionalist," he said.

Selig has said he is committed to deciding on a new Nationals owner by late this month, and the process appears to be edging forward. DuPuy, MLB Executive Vice President John McHale and MLB general counsel Thomas Ostertag are expected to present Selig with an analysis of the eight groups that have already paid $100,000 each for the right to bid for the Nationals when team owners meet in Pasadena, Calif., on Wednesday.

Teams get sold to the people the commissioner likes. Selig helped assemble the ownership group in the Boston sale and approved the sale of the Oakland Athletics to an old friend, Lewis Wolff, who bought the ailing franchise for $180 million. Two other teams that were recently sold -- the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Angels -- went to buyers with ties to baseball. Boston real estate developer Frank McCourt bought the Dodgers after unsuccessfully bidding for the Red Sox and businessman Arte Moreno, who knew Selig from his days as a part-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, bought the Angels.

Washington presents a far different set of circumstances, and not just because the Nationals have 29 owners, who purchased the team, then known as the Montreal Expos, for $120 million in February 2002. Although baseball in general and Selig in particular were reluctant to move the Expos here, the team is now seen as a one-of-a-kind franchise in the nation's capital that will provide "a window into the national pastime," as one baseball insider described it.

Those factors and others, including the team's surprising performance on the field and its success at putting fans in the stands, have combined to make the Nationals one of the most hotly contested sports team auctioned in the last decade.

"There's no franchise that's more important to baseball than Washington," said Peter O'Malley, the former owner of the Dodgers, who helped select several owners as chairman of MLB's ownership committee. "So quality of ownership will be the most important thing. Quality of the people. Absence of controversy. And if I were there, it would be quality and stature in the community. No absentee ownership."

The desire for an owner with deep local roots could be magnified because the D.C. Council has remained split over a plan narrowly approved last year to fund a stadium with mostly public money. Many city leaders, including Mayor Anthony A. Williams and D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp, have called on baseball to pick a local group that will invest in the city.