Washington Sizes Up Expansion Competition

As the National League prepares to make its initial evaluation of candidates for the two teams it will add in 1993, baseball news again is being made in Washington on a daily basis. But for all the smaller developments involving the groups led by real-estate developers John Akridge and Mark Tracz, only one issue really matters:

Will Washington get a team?

The city is the largest media market without a major-league team. Washington’s average household income is among the highest in the nation. There’s a subway system with a station at an existing stadium. Both of Washington’s prospective ownership groups are well-financed with local money. And since the groups are proceeding separately, they are giving the National League a choice between RFK Stadium, where Akridge’s group would like to locate a team permanently, and a new stadium in Northern Virginia, where Tracz’s group would like to move a team after initially playing at RFK Stadium.

Yet Washington seems widely viewed as anything but a front-runner. The other major contenders are Buffalo, Denver, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa-St. Petersburg. A group representing Charlotte, N.C., is making a bid. Groups representing Nashville and Sacramento also met Tuesday’s deadline for submitting a response to the NL Expansion Committee’s questionnaire and a $100,000 deposit on the $95 million entry fee. A group in Vancouver has asked for a 30-day extension.

The groups that responded are scheduled to make presentations before the NL Expansion Committee in late September or early October. Douglas Danforth of the Pittsburgh Pirates chairs the committee, whose other members are NL President Bill White, John McMullen of the Houston Astros and Fred Wilpon of the New York Mets. The committee is supposed to announce a short list of finalists by the end of the year.

Assuming Washington’s prospective ownership groups have their finances in order, it would seem likely one of them will make the initial cut. And if that happens, so might baseball in Washington.

“I think Washington is a viable candidate for National League expansion,” said former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, whose keen interest in Washington was no secret when he was commissioner. “I think it is competitive with anybody seeking a team. Florida, Denver, Buffalo, Phoenix -- anybody.”

Washington attorney Stephen Porter agrees. But Porter, a former legal counsel to the District of Columbia Baseball Commission, is investing in a group from St. Petersburg.

“I think Washington is just a wonderful market,” said Porter, one of the owners of the Class A St. Petersburg Cardinals, a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate. “But I saw an opportunity (in St. Petersburg) and think the market is very strong for baseball there.”

Even Sovran Bank President Robert Pincus, who has been helping Akridge form his group, understands the power of the Florida market. “We feel the state of Florida is a lock” to be awarded a team, he said.

That presumably would leave Washington in competition with Denver, Phoenix and Buffalo. Denver and Phoenix have been struggling to solidify prospective ownership groups. Buffalo, which has frozen-food magnate and Class AAA Buffalo Bisons owner Bob Rich Jr. entrenched as a prospective owner, faces potential problems concerning market size.

As a result, Washington may not be in such a bad position.

In Denver, real-estate developer and Class AAA Denver Zephyrs owner John Dikeou always had been viewed as that city’s answer to Rich. But Dikeou encountered financial problems, and in July he bowed out of a majority ownership role.

After Denver-area voters on Aug. 14 approved a referendum on a small tax increase to finance the construction of a baseball stadium, Colorado Gov. Roy Romer stepped into the breach by appointing an ownership-search committee. The committee produced New York businessman Mike Nicklous and former Boulder, Colo., attorney Steve Ehrhart, now commissioner of the Memphis-based World Basketball League.

Whether they constitute the local ownership baseball usually requires remains a question. At a Friday news conference, Romer announced the Nicklous-Ehrhart group had received commitments from a number of local investors, including the Coors Brewing Co.; Greeley, Colo., meat-packing company owner Charles Monfort; the Rocky Mountain News; and several out-of-town businessmen who own vacation homes in Vail, Colo. Three more local investors were named this week, bringing the group’s equity commitment to more than $75 million.

Another group, led by Denver businessman Cary Teraji and involving former major leaguers Doug DeCinces, Ernie Banks and Hank Aguirre also submitted an application Tuesday.

Phoenix seemed to have lost its benefactor, Lake Placid, N.Y.-businessman and Class AAA Phoenix Firebirds owner Martin Stone, at the beginning of August when Stone balked at the size of the entry fee. He said the fee would make his initial start-up costs as much as $140 million -- a figure he considered prohibitive in part because he projects only $3 million to $3.5 million a year in radio- and television-rights revenue. He has expressed an interest in bidding for the Montreal Expos if owner Charles Bronfman makes them available to U.S. interests, but last week said he would go forward with his application for Phoenix.

Meanwhile, the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sports Authority decided to take no chances. It announced it would respond to the questionnaire, and obtained permission from the NL to do so without the backing of a prospective ownership group.

The possible availability of the Expos also has interested Washington’s Akridge and Buffalo’s Rich.

“No city is perfect,” Kuhn said.

Kuhn added he has spoken with many baseball people in recent months. “Do they (baseball’s owners) have a closed mind on Washington? No,” he said. “Is is it possible people were just being polite to a former commissioner? Yes. But I think I can read their real responses and understand them.”

Their responses probably resemble that of Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. “I’m sure Washington is going to be given fair consideration,” he said. “But somebody is going to ask them to explain how it has changed since it has failed twice in the past.”

On the surface, Washington’s major-league baseball history is not pretty. The other cities now campaigning for a team haven’t had a team to lose. Washington had two. It lost both. The original Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961. The replacement Senators moved to Texas in 1971. One can argue about the circumstances behind those departures; but the hard facts remain.

Then there is the letter O, as in O’s.

Peter Bavasi spent more than 20 years as a baseball executive before leaving the sport in 1987. He was involved with the start-up of the Toronto Blue Jays when they entered the American League in 1976. He was set to become the general manager of Washington’s team in 1973, but then-San Diego Padres owner C. Arnholt Smith made a last-minute change and decided to sell the team to Ray Kroc instead of a Washington group that included Bethesda, Md., dentist and businessman Robert Schattner, the late Joseph Danzansky and the late Marvin Willig.

Bavasi has been watching the latest expansion developments closely. And Bavasi refers to the Orioles as Washington’s “geographic impediment” -- as in, “Frankly, I think the geographic impediment is the only thing” standing between Washington and a major-league team. But it’s a powerful “thing,” regardless of Orioles owner Eli Jacobs’s statements that his club will remain neutral on Washington. Other baseball owners are reluctant to make decisions that will adversely affect existing clubs.

“Geography cuts both ways,” Bavasi said. “You have the impact of a Washington expansion team on Baltimore and the impact Baltimore has on this fledgling franchise. You have to ask, ‘Is the Baltimore-Washington area capable of supporting two clubs -- one that is established and one that will have to establish fan acceptance and a media following?’ The Orioles are marketed very effectively in the Washington area.”

It is important (to the Orioles) from a marketing standpoint and important from a television standpoint.

How important?

Tom Villante is a New York sports-marketing consultant who was Major League Baseball’s executive director of marketing and broadcasting from 1978 to 1982. Among Villante’s clients are the Orioles. They hired him in 1983, about four years after the late Edward Bennett Williams, a Washington attorney, purchased the club.

“In all the marketing meetings I’ve had with the Orioles, the attention paid to Washington and its environs ... well, they certainly spend a lot of time on it,” he said. “Everything they do, Washington is a very important part of it. The site of the new stadium (in Camden Yards) was selected with Washington fans in mind.”

Asked about the effect a Washington franchise might have on the Orioles, Villante talked about the obvious potential for lower attendance (the Orioles say about 20 percent to 25 percent of their attendance comes from the Washington area). But he also raised the issue of a potential reduction in the size of the Orioles’ radio and television audience. A smaller audience and access to fewer potential advertising dollars could mean less revenue for broadcasting rights. And with salaries continuing to skyrocket, baseball’s owners are becoming increasingly concerned about the ability of teams in small media markets to remain competitive with teams in large media markets.

“I know it (a Washington franchise) would have an immediate effect in the broadcast area,” Villante said. “It would dampen the value of television rights. The Washington area is now an important part of their network. I don’t know the dollar value, but somewhere between 25 percent to a third of their TV audience, at least” comes from the Washington area.

The Orioles’ vice president for marketing, Marty Conway, confirmed that figure and said a similar portion of the club’s radio audience comes from the Washington area.

Could the Orioles be compensated? Perhaps. Is the Baltimore-Washington area large enough to accommodate two teams? Washington’s prospective ownership groups say yes. They say the presence of two teams in this area would benefit both teams as well as baseball in general.

Florida cities don’t have to face this problem. Neither do Phoenix or Denver. Buffalo faces it to a lesser extent.

Another problem for Washington is one of perception. People who have been involved with previous attempts to obtain a major-league team for Washington have heard them all before: Washington is a crime-riddled city. The population is transient and, thus, a baseball team will have a hard time building a well-rooted fan base. The Washington community can get excited about big events that happen infrequently (eight Redskins home games a year, for example), but becomes blase about events that happen frequently (such as 81 baseball home games a year).

“We were able to answer each of those issues, and I thought we had good answers,” said Schattner, who in addition to nearly obtaining the Padres has been involved with several efforts to purchase an existing team or obtain an expansion team. “The glass is always half empty or half full. For Washington, it has always been half empty.”

Asked what he thought about Washington’s chances of being awarded a team in this round of expansion, Schattner replied: “My feeling always has been there will be baseball in Washington when baseball wants to put a team in Washington.”

It may be that no matter how well represented Washington is -- no matter how solid its ownership group, no matter how eloquently its economic case is stated -- baseball’s owners simply may want to put a team in Florida or Denver or Phoenix or Buffalo more than they want to put one in Washington.

James Clark, a Washington construction magnate, seemed to come away with that impression in 1986, when he was a key part of a prospective ownership group that made what was said to be an impressive presentation to baseball’s long-range planning committee.

Clark said Friday he is not an investor in either of Washington’s current prospective ownership groups. Part of the reason, he said, is that baseball’s owners “were not very encouraging” in 1986.

This time, the answers will have to come from Akridge’s group and Tracz’s group. Both say they are ready. And they will have to be. Their commitment, financial strength and compatibility with baseball’s current owners will be compared very carefully with that of prospective ownership groups in other cities.

Said Akridge: “There are perceptions that have built up, but the facts don’t support them. We don’t have to put a spin on things or gloss over things. We have the facts. The facts are in our favor.”

Said Tracz: “I think the problem is that baseball people might be thinking of Washington the way it was in 1971. There has to be an education process about how the area has changed since the Senators left. We have to talk about the reality of what has happened around the Beltway. I think that’s an aspect baseball has overlooked.”

While Tracz’s group will not have to fight negative images of the city itself, it will have to convince baseball’s owners that Northern Virginia is more than just a Washington suburb, that it also is an entity capable of supplying a team’s fan base by itself. Virginia Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, who is from Northern Virginia, is solidly in its corner. And they will be seeking to build government and business support throughout the commonwealth.

“The balance of power” in terms of demographics “has shifted to Northern Virginia,” Tracz said. “It’s very difficult for old-line people to realize that. But we have to make people look at it (Washington) as a region, not as the city itself.”

Interestingly, Akridge’s group is saying essentially the same thing.

“We have to get them (baseball’s owners) into Fairfax County (Va.) and Montgomery County (Md.) as well as in town,” Pincus said. “Before Metro this was a city, not a region. But this region has grown faster than any other region in the country.”

Pincus said the group “will do what we have to do” to make other baseball owners and fans feel comfortable about RFK Stadium, on which the group plans to make $30 million to $35 million in renovations. Akridge is passionate when he talks about this issue. And when he does so in a one-on-one manner, he can be quite convincing.

“The only way I know is to sit down with the facts and tell people the real story on Washington,” Akridge said. “I don’t believe this race will be won in the press. We don’t have to hard sell. They will know that when we apply, we’re for real.”