Fans Go to Bat for State Control of Baseball

Sure, they’re not striking this time. But what about the next time big league baseball goes into a strike snit?

A quartet of California baseball fans--some love the Mets, some love the Dodgers--think they have the answer. They’ve begun the process toward circulating a statewide initiative for the state to buy all five California pro baseball teams and have them run by a state Department of Baseball. And they’re hoping every other pro baseball state will follow suit.

ASAP, the Assn. to Save the American Pastime, wants the state to authorize issuing $2 billion in general obligation bonds to “take control, including ... through eminent domain, of the five Major League Baseball teams located in the state of California ... and operate and manage such teams.”

Which means every Californian would own a piece of the Padres, Angels, Dodgers, A’s and Giants.

The group’s leader, Nick Morosoff, who came west from New York 10 years ago, said ASAP is a foursome of baseball fans frustrated with the dysfunction of the nation’s game.

“We firmly believe certain goods and services are so dear to the people that responsible government should be responsible if the private sector displays itself unable to offer [those services] in such a manner that they be continuously available; then it’s the government’s responsibility to step in and operate the system itself.”

If you hadn’t guessed by now, Morosoff is a lawyer, and he and his friends came up with the idea after some heated baseball discussion over beers--or maybe they were gin and tonics.

The parallel he draws is to parks: “If we wouldn’t let labor disputes shut down Yosemite, we shouldn’t let labor disputes shut down Fenway Park or Dodger Stadium.”

The state has about a month to analyze the lengthy and legalistically detailed ballot proposal before Morosoff and his pals can begin collecting the 490,000 signatures they’d need to get this on the ballot.

And as angry as fans are, Morosoff thinks the eminent-domain estimate for all five teams might go as low as $1.25 billion total. “Part of the owners’ strategy is, ‘Oh, we’re so poor,’ ” he says. “What’s fair value for a team losing money?”

Bush Had On His West Coast Face

When political reporters recently made much of the fact that President Bush had not mentioned struggling GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr. in two public appearances in California--but had touted California Republican Reps. Richard Pombo and Doug Ose--White House political operative Karl Rove insisted by way of explanation that it’s because Bush draws a “bright line” between campaign events and official ones. Simon aides said it’s because Pombo and Ose are incumbents.

But an Associated Press search of White House archives showed that

Apropos of Bush’s California hopscotch, the Stockton Record reported that the city spent a hefty bit of change sprucing up for the First Visitor, the first president to come to Stockton in half a century: roughly $10,000 for planting flowers, painting railings and tidying up the Civic Auditorium, on top of the cost of extra police and overtime, Secret Service requests for carpeted walkways, a temporary lounge with couch and cable TV, and extra phone lines.

While Bush was in Stockton, he sang the praises of his agriculture secretary, and the San Francisco Chronicle said Bush declared, “It made sense to find someone from this part of the world ... so I picked a lady from Compton, Calif.--Ann Veneman.”

Veneman grew up on a Ceres peach farm; Compton’s most lucrative crop has been rap.

Burton Hurtin’ Without His Mojo

California Senate leader John Burton is losing his Mojo.

Not the preternatural lost-and-found mojo powers of Powers, comma, Austin, as in the film, but rather his good Republican right arm, Redding state Sen. Maurice Johannessen.

Johannessen’s nickname is Mojo--Mo for Maurice, jo for Johannessen. Got it? But Mojo will have to go-go, forced out this year by term limits. Johannessen has given the liberal Burton a vital vote to pass a state budget these two years past, making both men the subject of many “Mojo” jests.

This, of course, has not gone down well with Johannessen’s conservative colleagues, who booted him out of their club (the Senate Republican caucus) and stripped off his virtual epaulets. (Johannessen, who insisted he had his party leaders’ blessing, responded to the schoolyard tactic with a schoolyard response: “Nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah.”

This probably won’t happen next year when Grass Valley Republican Assemblyman Sam Aanestad is expected to succeed Johannessen. Aanestad’s stuck to the party line like flypaper, leaving people wondering what Burton will do for support on his right flank.

Points Taken

* It’s almost always dangerous to label anything the first, the biggest, the best and the like, so take this as a challenge rather than as a fact: Democrat Gerrie Schipske, running in the 46th Congressional District against Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher, says her campaign has politics’ oldest volunteer: 94-year-old Ruth Darling, who was born well before women got the vote, and who cast her first presidential ballot for Franklin D. Roosevelt when he ran against incumbent President Herbert Hoover in 1932. Can anyone top that?

* A series of e-mails titled “Reasons to Secede From Los Angeles” lists among its complaints Reason No. 9, that at a hearing of a Los Angeles City Council planning and land-use committee, a board member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. was treated in a “rude, insolent and brusque manner.” Fair enough, but what does this have to do with secession? Doesn’t everybody get treated in that fashion by the bureaucracy, regardless of ZIP code?

* They’re nonpartisan races, but that’s not stopping the Orange County Republican Party: In a total of six nonpartisan elections around the county, it is endorsing the candidates who are registered Republicans: for Irvine mayor and two City Council races; two Garden Grove City Council seats; and a Superior Court judgeship.

* Right county, wrong lawyer: It isn’t Sacramento County’s D.A. who’s endorsing Gray Davis, as this space noted last week, but a Sacramento County deputy D.A. who’s endorsing the governor. The D.A. herself, Jan Scully, is a Bill Simon supporter.

* What a difference a few months make: In the March primary for Orange County clerk-recorder, Irvine attorney Bruce Peotter’s ballot designation was “corporate clerk.” Now, after fighting with officials over trying to make himself a “corporate clerk-recorder” on the November ballot, he’s settled for “recording documents executive.” His opponent, Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, is a “mayor/businessman.”

You Can Quote Me

“If you put this in Judeo-Christian terms, we would have to preserve every site where anyone ever prayed.”

Irvine Republican Assemblyman John Campbell, objecting to a measure approved by his colleagues that would give California’s Native Americans a chance to protect their sacred sites.

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Separated at birth, yet again: White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, left, and Rich Perelman, left in photo at right. Perelman was one of the people behind an unsuccessful bid to get the Summer Olympics back in Los Angeles in 2012. Fleischer hopes to help his boss, President Bush, land another four years in Washington.

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes .com. This week’s contributors include Mark Z. Barabak, Jean O. Pasco, and Julie Tamaki.