Analysis : Baltimore Can Breathe Easier Now, but Washington Is Still on Hold

Baltimore can breathe easier now. Washington must keep holding its breath.

The Orioles--with new owners, new players and new hopes--are the talk of the winter meetings in Atlanta. The D.C. Baseball Commission--with its same old problems, plus some new ones--is still the stepchild of the sport, sitting alone at those same meetings, wondering how to get a split second of attention.

First, let’s consider the Orioles’ good fortune. They’ve been sold. But they will remain the same. Probably exactly the same. That’s because team president Larry Lucchino, who was Edward Bennett Williams’ right-hand baseball man, still calls the shots. Williams’ widow, Agnes, knew Lucchino was her husband’s choice to run the franchise.

She has honored his wishes, perhaps even at the cost of additional dollars. Last summer, Williams almost swapped the Orioles to USF&G;, the Baltimore-based insurance company, in exchange for USF&G; stock. With such a stock deal, Williams could have saved enormously on capital-gains taxes.

At the time, it was widely believed in baseball that USF&G; did not want to buy with strings attached--i.e., it didn’t want to feel any long-term obligation to retain executives like Lucchino, General Manager Roland Hemond, farm director Doug Melvin and Manager Frank Robinson whom Williams had put in place.

Williams never signed what looked like a terrific deal--one final EBW coup. Now, we can speculate why. He held on to the team because he felt loyalty to his key employees. And, perhaps, he wanted to give his ideas for rebuilding the team a fair chance, too.

After the 1987 season, Williams finally dismantled the disaster he’d helped create over the previous four years--a club full of high salaries and high anxiety. Williams put new faces--Hemond, Melvin, Robinson--in charge of reviving old Baltimore principles of the 1966-83 era. Build slowly and from within. Think long-term, not quick fix.

The trade of Eddie Murray to the Dodgers last Sunday was the final dramatic phase of this restructuring; it was the last piece in the new ownership puzzle, too. Just 16 months ago, Fred Lynn, Mike Flanagan, Mike Boddicker and Murray were all still Orioles. Now they, and most of their salaries, are gone--traded for prospects. Subtracting those salaries (more than $10 million) contributed significantly to the $70 million purchase price the Williams family received.

If Baltimore fans have a gripe, it is with the urgency that attended the Murray trade. Were the sale of the team and the dumping of Murray’s contract connected? Did the Orioles water down their demands--dropping Dodgers pitcher Tim Leary from their trade package--just to expedite a trade-at-all-costs? In so doing, they certainly added several million dollars to the team’s price.

As presently constituted, the Orioles are in effect, 1) an expansion team and 2) a virtual money-printing machine. The combination of a low payroll and a new stadium in the Inner Harbor for 1991 ought to guarantee that the Orioles’ new owners make serious profits in the early ‘90s.

While Baltimore’s rookie owners bask in the prospect of profits and Baltimore’s fans give thanks for the ironclad 20-year lease Williams signed before his death, Washington faces another Christmas with coal in its stocking. Any member of the D.C. Baseball Commission who doesn’t become a manic-depressive has a cast-iron psyche.

For example, on Monday night, the D.C. gang had a little party to fete baseball brass. “We rented a pretty good size room for 7:30 p.m.,” said commission member Robert Pincus. “So far, it’s 7:45 p.m. and there’s one person in the room. Me.”

At the moment, the subject of baseball expansion is both crystal clear and completely opaque. It’s inconceivable that baseball will not expand into the Sun Belt in the ‘90s, just as it opened up the West Coast 30 years ago. If California has five teams now, does anybody think that Florida and Arizona, combined, won’t have three teams 10 years from now? The question is, when baseball gets to 32 teams, and it will, who’ll end up sitting in the other musical chairs? For instance, Buffalo is on the rise because of its great Class AAA attendance while Denver is fading because of its bad economy.

And Washington? We keep shooting ourselves in the foot because nobody knows what to make of us.

We say we have fabulously rich potential owners. Yet the only one who’ll publicly stump for a team--Jack Kent Cooke--is unpopular in baseball and unlikely ever to get a franchise. James Clark and Oliver Carr--who would appeal to baseball as owners--are civic-minded but silent; they have no front men to represent them and beat the drum.

Commission Chairman Frank Smith believes that an ownership group with highly visible minority members, for instance Sugar Ray Leonard, might be the “lever” that Washington needs to get a team. Help the sport solve its Al Campanis Problem. Smith has talked with Leonard, who’s interested but noncommittal, yet no such group has been formed.

Smith also believes the time may soon come when the commission should re-evaluate whether Washington should try for a Triple-A franchise, like Buffalo and Denver. Get a foot in the door. Be a part of the sport, not just a petitioner. Other commission members think this is a terrible idea; poor fan support for a bush league product might give Washington another black eye.

Commission member Pincus is convinced that baseball executives have no idea whatsoever what the Washington of 1988 is all about. So, he’s brainstorming to prompt members of baseball’s Long-Range Planning Committee to come to the capital to taste the red-carpet treatment from prominent Washingtonians, then meet privately with potential owners, perhaps Carr and Clark. Good idea. Good luck.

Still, Washington’s image in baseball is one of confusion. As a final case in point, take this week’s pratfall. Take William Penn Mott Jr.

Please.

He’s the new director of the National Park Service. He wants people to notice him. So he’s trying to throw a bureaucratic roadblock in the path of the stadium that Cooke wants to create for the Redskins. Cooke says he’ll build the city a 78,000-seat park-- essentially for free. That, in turn, would bolster RFK Stadium for baseball and obviously help the capital’s expansion chances.

So what does Mott do? Citing nothing more specific than “legislative mandates, legal constraints, existing facilities and agreements,” he opposes the use of Langston Golf Course or a filled-in portion of the Anacostia River to provide parking for Cooke’s stadium. You’d think the swampy good-for-nothing banks of the Anacostia were a prime Montana trout stream.

Just what we needed this week. Thanks a Mott.