Business With MLB Goes Beyond Price Tag

The Lerners, Kasten and baseball officials said the family and the former Braves president came together on their own. Kasten called the origins of the partnership "organic." Still, he said he came to understand that "if I wanted to talk to other groups, [baseball] wouldn't frown on that. That would be fine."

'Overnight Leaders'

During the first two weeks of April, negotiations between the Lerners and Kasten intensified. But at the Wilson building, District officials were growing even more frustrated with the process and with the possibility that the Lerners would be chosen over Malek or Smulyan. Each had more racial minorities in their groups than did the Lerners.

When the Nationals opened their home season on April 11, they lost to the New York Mets in front of a crowd at RFK Stadium that didn't fill all the seats. The frustration over the situation was growing. "We need an owner soon," said outfielder Jose Guillen, whose talks over a contract extension had stalled. "This is too long to be like this."

On that same day, baseball officials began to give hints that the choice would not be the Lerners unless they diversified their group. A story in The Washington Post the following morning said the Lerners were hurting their chances because they were not moving swiftly enough to add minorities to their group. Within several days, Slater and another of Kasten's investors, Alphonso Maldon Jr., met with Lerner's two sons-in-law -- Edward L. Cohen and Robert K. Tanenbaum -- in the Lerners' Washington Square office. Slater and Maldon, both African American, came away impressed.

"The most striking thing about it was the ease with which the family worked together and finished each other's sentences," Slater said.

Within a week, the Lerners and Kasten formally merged forces, consummating more than two years of off-and-on conversations. Overnight, the Lerners had a person with solid baseball experience in Kasten, several prominent African Americans, an African American woman and two leading Hispanics as part of their group. Some had been with Lerner for months, others had been part of the Kasten bid.

Together, in the words of one member of a losing group, they became the "overnight leaders."

In a counter move, Smulyan's group decided to aggressively and publicly push the idea that its heavy African American participation could put the Nationals in a unique position in professional sports.

"The commissioner was interested in making sure the winning group was a diverse one, and it would advance his agenda to reconnect baseball with the African American community," said Eric H. Holder Jr., a former deputy attorney general and one of Smulyan's investors. Holder said 25 percent of the equity in the group's bid came from minorities, and Smulyan was determined to name a black team president. "There was a historical thing that could potentially be happening," Holder said.

Yet on April 24, DuPuy flew from New York to Washington to meet with the new Lerner bid, which now included Kasten, at the home of one family member in Northwest. When the meeting ended, Kasten drove DuPuy to Reagan National Airport.

The next day, the most prominent members of the Malek-Zients bid -- Malek, Zients, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, businessman George Haywood and Verizon Washington, D.C., President Anthony A. Lewis -- boarded Malek's private plane and headed to Milwaukee, where they met with Selig and DuPuy. A day later, Leccese, the lawyer working for the Lerners and Kasten's longtime acquaintance, visited MLB headquarters in Manhattan.

Smulyan wasn't asked to meet with the commissioner again.