For Owner Also-Rans, There Is No Next Year
Malek's Long Crusade Ends in Disappointment

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
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."

During the competition, reports flew that Malek's group had done too much lobbying, that the Lerner group wasn't diverse enough, and that Smulyan was an out-of-towner.

Malek and Zients have both said owning the team was an opportunity to do a civic good. "We're not just some guys who want to own a baseball team because it's a nice thing to do in life," Malek said. "We feel it's a civic undertaking."

Malek, who lives in McLean, was recruited with the blessing of the mayor in 1999 to lead an effort to bring back major league baseball. Struck by the absence of a team and the decline of a sport he loved, he agreed.

Four years ago, he was approached by Zients, who had just stepped back from two successful research companies he had been running. A native of Kensington and ardent baseball fan, he was interested and had money to invest.

He and Malek pledged equal, unspecified amounts toward the team and were joined by other high-profile investors, including Powell, Raines, Jordan and former Redskins great Darrell Green.

Malek is known for his work ethic and is also a fitness nut who still likes to challenge colleagues to pull-up competitions. A former Green Beret who served in Vietnam, he keeps in his office a portrait of Gen. Sylvanus Thayer, the 19th-century father of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the man for whom Malek's company is named.

Malek is also director and former president of Northwest Airlines. He is chairman and chief executive of Thayer Hotel Investors, which owns and operates $2 billion worth of hotels across the country. He was president of Marriott Hotels for most of the 1980s and is a former owner, along with President Bush, of the Texas Rangers.

He is a respected figure in Republican circles and is close to the Bush family.

He declined to speak at length yesterday, saying his baseball crusade "was highly rewarding" and a "wonderful thing to have done."

"Would we have liked to have been the owners?" he said. "You bet." But baseball is back in Washington. He asked, "How can you complain, when your primary goal was accomplished?"