The Losers
For Owner Also-Rans, There Is No Next Year
Malek's Long Crusade Ends in Disappointment
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Thursday, May 4, 2006
He was the one anointed by the mayor to bring baseball back to Washington. He had money, experience, connections, friends. He had been a figure on the Washington stage for almost four decades. And he loved the game.
Frederic V. Malek went to work, assembled investors, spent a few million dollars and for seven years labored to bring in a major league baseball team that he hoped one day his group might own.
Yesterday, Major League Baseball awarded the Washington Nationals to someone else.
It wasn't exactly a shock. Word had been circulating for weeks that a rival investment group headed by Bethesda developer Theodore N. Lerner was leading the one led by Malek, 69, and his partner, Washington businessman Jeffrey D. Zients, 39.
Running third was the syndicate of Indianapolis media executive Jeffrey Smulyan.
Still, Malek, chairman of the District-based investment firm Thayer Capital Partners, had the backing of a diverse group of investors that included former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, former Fannie Mae chairman Franklin D. Raines and former presidential adviser Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Plus, he had put in the sweat and the effort, and if anybody deserved the team, his friends said, it was Fred Malek.
He and his fellow investors are believed to have laid out about $2 million, part of which the city must reimburse, according to the group.
Malek's organization, the Washington Baseball Club, didn't want to say much yesterday about the outcome of the ownership derby. After agonizing months of waiting, the club, which now seems likely to disband, was disappointed but gracious.
"We always felt that local ownership was a priority for the team, and we believe MLB has selected a good, strong, local family to lead the Nationals," the group said in a statement. "We congratulate the Lerners and pledge our full support to ensuring that baseball is ingrained into the fabric of this City."
Smulyan -- 58, former owner of the Seattle Mariners, whose company, Emmis Communications, owns dozens of radio and TV stations in the United States and Europe -- said he, too, was disappointed. "But I respect the decision," he said. "I wish the Lerners . . . all the best."
Asked why the Lerners won out, he said: "I just don't know. . . . That was the decision that was made by the commissioner, and I respect it."
