Insider baseball: why a major league team is headed to Washington

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2001 by Dayn Perry

But its patience was sorely tested in 1972, when the second incarnation of the Washington Senators uprooted to Arlington, Texas, to become the Texas Rangers. Angry lawmakers called for an inquiry, and a House investigating committee recommended that baseball's antitrust immunity be repealed. Fortunately for the owners, the House never acted on that recommendation. But in 1998, after heavy lobbying by the baseball players' union, Congress took a step toward limiting the exemption by unanimously passing the Curt Flood Act, which partially ended the owners' monopoly by giving players the same labor protection enjoyed by other professional athletes. This spooked the owners. So did subsequent attempts by Republicans (Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania) and Democrats (Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon) to limit their ability to finance new stadiums with taxpayer money. Baseball isn't taking any chances. It now spends more money lobbying Congress than all other professional sports leagues combined.

Will Congress Play Ball?

But the owners know that lobbying is no guarantee of protection. Indeed, the day after owners voted to fold two teams, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) announced plans to introduce legislation to end baseball's monopoly. Now, perhaps the only way for owners to protect their monopoly is to move a franchise to the Washington area. Lawmakers don't say this openly. Instead, they couch their demands in more respectable terms. Just last month, for instance, Virginia's senators George Allen and John Warner, and three Virginia congressmen, wrote to Selig calling on him to relocate a team to the region fast. They drew upon the events of September 11 for a handy, if tasteless, rationale: "Baseball will provide a boost to the region's morale as well as stimulate sectors of the regional economy that have felt the greatest impact from the terrorist attack."

The Virginia delegation would love to house a baseball team in a sought-after new stadium across the Potomac in Northern Virginia. District big shots, of course, would prefer the team to come to the city. Since D.C. has no voting members in Congress, the arm-twisting has fallen to a group of D.C. businessmen that includes AOL co-founder James Kimsey and Fannie Mae CEO (and former Clinton OMB director) Franklin Raines. The net worth of this group of potential owners: $2 billion.

At the group's head stands that classic Washington insider, Fred Malek, forever to be remembered for his role in the Watergate scandal. Although deputy director of the infamous Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) in the early 1970s, he escaped prosecution, but couldn't avoid political exile. Malek returned in the late 1980s as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee, only to find his past still dogging him. When it came to light that he had compiled a list of Jews working for the Bureau of Labor Statistics--the "Jewish cabal" that obsessed Nixon--Malek was forced to resign. He kept busy through tours of executive duty with Marriott and Northwest Airlines, and as the manager of the Bush-Quayle campaign in 1992.