For those of you who don’t care about politics and for those of you who don’t care about Major League Baseball (MLB), the two are about to come together permanently due to the location of the Washington Nationals baseball club and Major League Baseball. . League’s Baseball is looking for its first team owner, which is expected to be announced over the next week or so.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig has promised for more than a year to sell the Washington Nationals, formerly the Montreal Expos, to an owner who agrees to pay MLB $450 million for the club. The Nationals have been collectively owned by the other 29 MLB teams since February 15, 2002, when then-Expos owner Jeffrey Loria sold the team for $120 million. Then after three seasons, the club relocated to Washington, D.C., changing its name to the Washington Nationals in 2005.
But the history of the negotiations goes back to when Bud Selig placated Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who refused to budge on allowing another major league franchise to exist within a 100-mile radius of Baltimore. The details of what Selig whispered into Angelos’s ear to allow the relocation to go ahead have never been confirmed, but all Nationals fans need to do is try to find a televised game. They will mostly be unsuccessful, as Angelos, which controls the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), and Comcast Broadcasting are still arguing over TV broadcast rights to Nationals games. Only a handful of Nationals games now air in DC, with 90% of the revenue going to Angelos. MASN was created by MLB to keep the deal with the Nationals going forward, but watching games on TV remains an ongoing problem for fans.
Without a television and broadcast partner, it will be up to the new owner to try to secure broadcast rights for the Nationals, including broadcast revenue. But before that can be addressed, Selig must finish his assessment of what were originally eight different groups vying for the team, now narrowed down to the bottom two or three contenders, depending on which newspaper or sports pundit he listens to. .
After months and months of negotiations with the DC City Council to finalize the lease for the new stadium, which is expected to be ready for the 2008 MLB season, the Commissioner decided not to include the new property in the lease. . But meanwhile, the cost of the stadium over the past year has risen from an estimated $537 million to $611 million. And it was just revealed that the cost could be $10 million more if the city wants to meet the latest green building standards.
But all potential owners right now have to worry about being politically correct and making all sorts of promises to MLB, as well as Washington, DC lawmakers, to secure the team. The Nationals are now going to be used by MLB as the poster child to recruit the black community back to baseball. However, the way it is being done will likely fall on deaf ears to the very ones MLB is supposedly trying to reach.
Where is all this going? Well, believe it or not, Bud Selig wants to include in his legacy as the MLB Commissioner who reinvigorated African-American athletes back into baseball by insisting on a team owned by African-Americans, and one that must have direct ties to Washington, D.C. .
But whether the ties are to the Washington, D.C., residential community or to the White House and Capitol is questionable, as the list of investors looks more like a group of political action committees than potential baseball team owners. Look below the surface and you’ll find that the campaign to own a baseball team in DC mirrors that of running for political office.
Bud Selig has made it clear: Rich whites don’t need to run. However, the idea that wealthy blacks will attract black children and youth to be interested in baseball is shortsighted. Black community leaders don’t need to buy a $450 million baseball team to show devotion to their community and spark interest in baseball. That money could have been spent on developing city recreation areas, better Little League development, building parks with baseball diamonds by creating more open space, encouraging physical fitness in public schools, and purchasing blocks of tickets for DC kids to attend MLB games on a regular basis. in Baltimore or in Washington, D.C.
Just as most American voters care not about who is on White House staff but about White House public policy issues, the black community in Washington DC will not increase their interest in MLB because a group of Rich politically powerful and connected African American men own shares in the team. And just like the disconnect on Capitol Hill between the US Congress and its constituents, there is a potential disconnect between the team’s investors or board members and the very fans they are expected to enlighten.
For example, the three remaining alleged groups of equipment bidders are the Lerner-Kasten Group, the Smulyan Group, and the Malek-Zients Group. Not all of them are perfect enough for Selig, though, who MLB pundits have said he needs a group that has significant investment from black Americans as well as local ties to Washington, DC. Though each group dominates business and is politically connected, it has weighed on Selig in making a decision.
Jeff Smulyan, former owner of the Seattle Mariners, heads a group of prominent Washington, DC-based African-Americans including former Washington Redskins Art Monk, Calvin Hill and Charles Mann; train US Attorney Eric Holder; the president of Radio Uno, Alfred Liggins; and local banker, Dwight Bush. Smulyan also owns Emmis Broadcasting, which could prove useful in negotiations for broadcast rights to the Nationals. But the knock on Smulyan is that DC politicians have dubbed him an “outsider” since he doesn’t currently live in the DC area. However, Smulyan’s black investors would comprise a 45% stake in the team.
The Lerner Group, headed by real estate developer Ted Lerner, last week joined Stan Kasten, who had been bidding separately on the team. Kasten brings with him a 17-year career as the former president of the Atlanta Braves. He also remains friends with Selig. Ted Lerner has developed numerous malls in the DC area and allegedly played a role in attracting the Expos to DC. He brought a number of local African-American investors on board, albeit a bit later than the other groups. That is why he has been criticized by the DC City Council, including the MLB. His group includes Rodney Slater, former Secretary of Transportation for President Bill Clinton; Doyle Mitchell, CEO of locally owned Industrial Bank, NA in the DC area; CBS NFL announcer James Brown; and BET executive Paxton Baker.
And the Fred Malek-Jeffrey Zients contingent offers the most political capital of any group. But if one isn’t looking to end up on Capitol Hill, one could argue that these are politicians and not inner-city Washington, DC, community leaders. Investors include former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Howard University President H. Patrick Swigert; Vernon F. Jordan, former legal counsel to President Clinton; Anthony A. Lewis, president-elect of the DC Chamber of Commerce and president of Verizon Communications in DC; and local businessman, George Haywood. Malek was a major figure in the Republican Party for more than 30 years, having worked in the Nixon White House, was an associate of former President George H.W. Bush, and was instrumental in securing President George W. Bush’s former ownership of the Texas Rangers.
Selig’s final decision comes down to a combination of power brokers, media moguls, and financial investors who hardly represent the interests of working- and middle-class residents of the DC metro area. These particular African-Americans may not be any more connected to the interests of DC’s black community than the white collaborators who initially brought the Nationals there.
In summary, the following numbers should perhaps be more meaningful to the MLB Commissioner than the count of African-Americans on a Board of Directors: In 2005 there were a total of seven minority club managers in MLB, which dropped to five after that Lloyd McClendon of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Tony Pena of the Kansas City Royals were fired. Ken Williams of the Chicago White Sox remains the only African-American general manager in the game. And in the last thirty years, MLB has lost more than two-thirds of its black players. In 1975, nearly 30% of all MLB players were black. Today, Black players make up less than 10%, while Latino players make up over 30% and Asian players make up around 3%.
Instead of making it look like MLB is doing something to reintroduce baseball to black America by changing the color in the boardroom, they need to start from scratch, rather than from the top down. That starts with the promotion of more black coaches to managers from the minor leagues to the big leagues. As the past decade has shown, MLB has greatly increased its dedication to signing players from Latin America and, more recently, the Far East.
But if MLB expects to continue to be called America’s Pastime, it will have to do a much better job recruiting here at home, where there are still many great athletes from the black community. But you won’t find them on Capitol Hill or in ivory towers, but in their own backyards.