Business With MLB Goes Beyond Price Tag

Publicly, baseball officials maintained that each of the eight groups remained in the running until the end. But as one investor from a losing group said, "I don't think there was ever a time that we thought there were more than four groups."

The group led by Lerner was one. Local businessmen Frederic V. Malek and Jeffrey Zients, who formed the Washington Baseball Club and were instrumental in bringing baseball back to Washington, led another. Indianapolis media mogul Jeffrey Smulyan, the former owner of the Seattle Mariners, was a third. And Stan Kasten, the former president of the Atlanta Braves, brought strong credentials that included ushering the Braves into their new ballpark.

Even before they launched independent bids for the baseball franchise in Washington, Lerner and Kasten began a long process of feeling each other out, neither with the idea that they would end up working together.

On Dec. 18, 2003, Lerner picked up the phone and called Kasten, just a month removed from his resignation as president of not only the Braves, but basketball's Atlanta Hawks and hockey's Atlanta Thrashers. Baseball was actively seeking a new home for the Expos, but Washington had not yet been selected. Lerner, who had long wanted to own a team and had failed in a bid to buy the Washington Redskins in 1999, liked to talk about baseball, about the opportunities that might be out there for him.

Early in 2004, Kasten and Lerner met at Lerner's offices in downtown Washington. The two sat alone at a conference table. They then spent an hour at Lerner's home just outside the District in Chevy Chase. "Ted asked me about baseball teams, how to buy a baseball team, which ones might be for sale and the business of baseball," Kasten said.

But when baseball moved to the District, Lerner and Kasten were on separate paths. They spoke in October 2004 and met again a month later. For the first time, they talked about joining forces, but Kasten said he was left with the impression that "the Lerners were committed to this being a family enterprise."

Even as they pursued separate bids, Kasten's networking through his nearly three decades in professional sports began to lead to unexpected intersections with the Lerners.

Michael Shapiro, a sports consultant who worked under Kasten with the Braves, was hired by the Lerners to help guide their bid. Last October, Kasten had lunch with a lawyer he knew from his NBA days, Joseph M. Leccese, before Kasten had any idea Leccese represented the Lerners. Fred S. Zeidman, the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, was an investor in Kasten's group; Debra Cohen, one of Lerner's daughters, sat on Zeidman's board.

"We had commonality," Kasten said. "We had a lot of friends and points of intersection."

As spring training approached this winter, members of most groups felt the sale would be imminent. Kasten's group began to believe that its bid, as it stood, would fall short.

"We got to a point that we recognized that we probably didn't have everything we needed," said Rodney E. Slater, secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton and an investor in Kasten's group. "There were clearly others who were probably better positioned."

Lerner's group was one of them. Selig prefers the insular group of baseball teams to have one voice for each of the 30 franchises. Lerner, should his group be chosen, would serve as the contact point for the Nationals. Eventually, as Lerner, now 80, became less involved in the family business, his son Mark would be the point person. Selig respected the way the Lerners had followed baseball's guidelines, avoiding the spotlight even as District politicians clamored that they didn't know the family well enough.