In Baseball Melodrama, No Shortage of Critics
Latest Twist in the District's Stadium Deal Generates Advice, Complaints, Predictions

By Robert E. Pierre and Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Washington Nationals put money in Rodney Smith's pocket this year as he rang up sales at his Capitol Hill athletic store for jerseys, T-shirts and license plates with the team's insignia. But as the price tag for a new stadium kept rising, Smith soured on the deal.

"We really don't have baseball -- baseball has got us," he said.

It's comments from constituents such as Smith -- in phone calls and in person -- that have emboldened several D.C. Council members to oppose the stadium lease and prompted Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to ask this week that the council delay action.

The latest sudden twist in Washington's seemingly endless baseball soap opera yesterday produced an eerie replay of the emotions that flared a year ago when the council narrowly agreed to build the stadium. Some residents were angry at baseball officials for not chipping in more money. Others were frustrated with District politicians for squandering an opportunity to build a ballpark in near Southeast that would be part of a larger retail and entertainment district.

"They've lobbied for a team for 25 years," said John Reilly, 53, an accountant who lives in Georgetown. "And now they're going to let it slip through their fingers."

Reilly said he sympathized with the mayor, who worked feverishly to find the District a team only to be undermined by a range of political and community forces. "Anthony brought a bride to town, and all the cousins asked why wasn't she taller, or prettier or a better cook. You know what? You got what you got."

But with the cost of the stadium project now estimated at $667 million, Smith said he's glad that the council is questioning whether the deal negotiated by the city and Major League Baseball makes sense. He said that he's watching closely to see where council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), considered one of the swing votes, will stand on the issue and that he'll remember come election time.

Brown said he's well aware of the scrutiny. The large number of e-mails, phone calls and face-to-face comments he has received from residents across the city are essentially telling him the same thing, he said: Baseball, yes, but not at any cost.

"Everyone seems to want baseball here, but they tell me you can't have an unauthorized amount that you can spend," said Brown, who was elected in November 2004 on an anti-stadium agenda. "We have set a limit on how much we can borrow but not on how much we can spend. No one else has done that. . . . We have a bad deal. The question is how do we deal with this bad deal."

Quintin Young Sr. and Bay Samuel said the council ought to ditch the idea of a new stadium. The two men were at the Elks Lodge on Good Hope Road SE in Anacostia, resting after delivering toys and food to needy families. The city has too many other needs that are more pressing, the men said -- schools, recreation, the homeless.

"I love having the team," said Young, who attended several Nationals games at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium last season. "But we've already got a stadium. Everything is already there."

A couple of doors down at the Pretty Boy Association, a business that sells clothing and sponsors self-improvement workshops, Chamarkco Amin, the president, said the city needs to quit messing around and approve the deal.

"They're going to get the money back," said Amin, 33, who grew up in the District. "It's an investment. I don't even like baseball, but income and revenue need to be brought back to the city. Everyone goes to Maryland and Virginia."

Harmon Burns, 53, an Alexandria resident and Nationals season ticket holder who runs a chain of parking lots, said that although baseball officials are wrong to insist that the District pay for any cost overruns, the benefits to the city will outweigh the costs in the long run.

"It will do what the MCI Center did for Chinatown," Burns said as he ate lunch at J. Paul's, a tavern in Georgetown. "The question is, in 30 years, what kind of money will it bring in? I think it will be a lot."

Bob Murphy, a lawyer who lives in Rockville, said District leaders are in a tough position.

"The city council has so many competing interests; they've got a wider constituency to worry about," Murphy said as he ate a bowl of chicken soup at the downtown ESPN Zone restaurant. "Major League Baseball has one constituency, and that's the owners."

He dismissed the negotiations as a "comedy of errors. I'm kind of embarrassed by it all. It doesn't look like the District and Major League Baseball can get it done."

Some have tuned out the whole affair.

Paul Arnold, 32, who lives just south of Petworth in Northwest, has followed the ups and downs of the baseball deal, the bluster from the opponents, the cheerleading from the proponents, and he's convinced that a new stadium is inevitable no matter what anyone on either side says.

"It's a done deal -- they will build a stadium no matter how much it will cost, no matter how many people don't want it," he said, counting himself among the opponents as he sipped coffee at a diner on 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan. "Look at the people who are for it: Mayor Williams, Colin Powell -- half of K Street takes their clients there."

The money, he said, could be used instead to hire police officers, improve trash collection. "You could use it for anything," he said. "God bless these protest types, but I don't think they accomplish anything."