MLB and DC -- a cautionary tale

Once again, I say props to the DC city council who, when shown the back of Major League Baseball's hand decided they weren't going to take it.

D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp asked Major League Baseball to make concessions on a stadium agreement signed in September. Baseball officials agreed. The list of deal-sweeteners delivered to Cropp on Tuesday ranged from self-serving to substantial, such as allowing the District to seek some private financing for the new stadium.

Then the council came to focus on Item 7: If the city failed to build a ballpark for the former Montreal Expos by March 2008, it would have to pay the team as much as $19 million a year to cover lost profits.

From Major League Baseball's perspective, that was a big concession to the city. The stadium agreement places no limit on the city's liability if the ballpark isn't ready by 2008.

To certain council members, however, Item 7 looked like a hoax -- a big, fat thumb in the eye of an unsuspecting city. If baseball were offering to cap lost profits at $19 million, the members said, then $19 million must be exactly what baseball expected to receive all along. Besides, why should there be a late fee of any kind? The city's paying for the whole stadium.

Item 7 wasn't a concession, it was an insult, they contended. Cropp agreed and plunged the deal to bring baseball back to the nation's capital into crisis.

Bud Selig isn't used to be so ill used, shall we say, by a bunch of powerless city council hacks. He bargains with the mayor, not these lesser beings.

Of course, these hacks were elected by District residents in large part because of the sweetheart deal the city gave MLB in the first place (a deal, literally, MLB could not refuse).

This is a classic case of MLB behaving with its usual arrogance, showing no real or feigned concern for the cities they force concessions upon. This time they butted heads with a city council with a collective chip on its shoulder.

The tragedy is that a team in DC, with a waterfront stadium (something the city council opposes as too expensive) might actually succeed, and give people a reason to go to the Discrict in the evening. But now MLB arrogantly strides away and will now suck even greater concessions from the lucky city who gets the booby prize, either Portland or Las Vegas, I suppose. Those are two cities where it would be a miracle for a team to succeed. Portland is remote, like Seattle, but with a smaller population base and more expensive real estate. And Vegas. Please. The new Diamondbacks. And let's not even get started with the irony of a major league team playing in a city founded by "known gamblers."

So DC and MLB are both losers in this contretemp.