|
|
Contact
Sport
Efforts
to recruit a major league baseball team to
Northern Virginia have run into resistance. But as
Yogi Berra might say, the game isn't over until
it's over.
Attracting
a major league baseball team to Northern Virginia
has been a priority of three different governors and the
General Assembly for almost a decade. But the
process has alternated between a hot tango and a
dance marathon. When Major League Baseball’s
relocation committee missed its own deadline this
month of recommending the move of the Montreal
Expos to a new location – with Northern Virginia
being the lead dancer – it was back to stamina,
not high stepping, for the Virginia Baseball Club,
Inc. and its leader, technology executive Bill
Collins.
The
Commonwealth took the first steps to attract a
major league baseball team years ago by creating
the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority (VSBA) to
make the case for major league baseball and to
begin putting things together for a major league
baseball stadium in Virginia.
In the language of the official mission, “The
Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority shall lead the
effort to design, finance, construct, own, and
operate a ballpark for a Major League Baseball
franchise in
Virginia.”
VBSA
has made the case early and often, especially
since Northern
Virginia
ran a very close second in the last round of major
league expansion in 1995. The National Capital
metropolitan area is the best market without a
major league franchise. There is a strong
bipartisan public-private stadium partnership in
place. A franchise in Northern
Virginia
would draw more fans from
Virginia
and less from the existing base of the Baltimore
Orioles. And there is an interim location -- RFK
Stadium in the District of Columbia
-- ready for immediate use while is new stadium is
constructed.
Major
league baseball took over the operations of the
Montreal Expos in 2002, and has been measuring the
best place to relocate the franchise ever since.
At one point, insiders expected a decision from
baseball’s relocation committee by the All-Star
break. (That’s July 15 for you non-baseball
fans.) Meanwhile, the case for bringing major
league baseball to Northern Virginia
seemed to be growing.
An
updated economic and fiscal analysis released in
January 2003 by George
Mason
University
economist Stephen S. Fuller concluded that a major
league baseball team playing in a new, $300
million stadium would generate $11.5 billion in
total economic impact and $829 million in state
and local tax revenues in its first 30 years of
operation. Alternatively, the study suggested, Virginia
residents would spend over $71 million annually in
the District of Columbia
if a baseball franchise operated from a stadium in
D.C.
Virginia’s
two U.S.
senators and nine of
Virginia’s
U.S.
representatives strengthened
Virginia
’s
case in a July 8 letter to the commissioner of
baseball the week before the scheduled decision.
“Baseball is played and loved in communities
throughout Virginia,
and Virginians are now clearly ready to give their
strong support to a Major League team of their
own,” the congressional delegation wrote.
“According to a recent statewide survey, half of
Virginia’s
seven million citizens are likely to attend a
Major League game in
Northern
Virginia.
Two-thirds of the residents of Northern
Virginia
have expressed that same level of commitment and
enthusiasm.”
Alas,
no decision has been forthcoming from major league
baseball. Insiders suggest the silence as a simple
case of the baseball owners on the relocation
committee missing their own deadline for finishing
their work and reporting. Unfortunately, feeling
snubbed and simultaneously under fire from
opponents of a baseball stadium, the Arlington
County Board of Supervisors voted the same week to
remove the county from consideration as a
potential stadium location. Other jurisdictions
have expressed similar misgivings about endorsing
any stadium plans until Major League Baseball
commits to moving a franchise here.
VBSA
Chairman Michael R. Frey, who also is a member of
the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said that
he understood the Arlington County Board’s
frustration. He also urged major league baseball
to reach a relocation decision “in a timely
manner.” All cling optimistically to baseball
star and philosopher Yogi Berra’s summation of
the game itself, “It’s not over until it’s
over.”
For
all the efforts to document or disprove the value
of a major league franchise playing in a Northern
Virginia stadium – economic rates of return, tax
revenues, contributions to youth baseball, land
use problems, traffic – the real return can’t
be measured in dollars and cents. If you are a
baseball fan, few things are better than sitting
in a ballpark on a warm summer evening. Time,
itself, stands still amid the cracks of bats
hitting baseballs, offers of peanuts, sips of a
cold one and questions from some new fan about a
slugging average, nickname or theme song that
plays whenever a player steps up. How can one not
chuckle, for example, at the Orioles playing
Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” for pitcher
Sidney Ponson – because he is from Aruba,
one big beach?
Virginia
is full of baseball fans and supports eight
professional baseball teams now – from top Class
AAA teams, such as the Richmond Braves and Norfolk
Tides, to the Bristol White Sox, Danville Braves,
Lynchburg Hillcats, Potomac
(Prince William) Cannons, Pulaski Rangers and
Salem Avalanche. At these games, references to a
can of corn, the high cheese or M&M boys have
nothing to do with the food. And a steal, an
assist and fair occur only within a legal context
unique to baseball.
If
you are not a baseball fan, you probably are a fan
of something – another sport, the opera, art
gallery, musical theater, libraries, parks,
concerts, battlefields or museums. You get those
same feelings of familiarity, enjoyment,
entertainment, education and community from visits
to the public places where those events,
exhibitions or performances occur regularly. Most
get a boost, in fact, from experiencing these
things firsthand, and we understand that
facilities and activities have to be there for
those opportunities to occur.
Baseball
and other public activities contribute to our
quality of life. There’s more at stake than tax
yields and returns on investment. Public officials
shouldn’t get lost in what economic John Kenneth
Galbraith used to term “a technical disguise of
the truth.”
Is
public support for the National Air and Space
Museum
annex which opens at Dulles
Airport
in December 2003 a waste or somehow illegitimate?
Not if you are a fan of the space shuttle or an
SR-71 Blackbird. Northern
Virginia,
indeed, all of Virginia,
needs major league destinations, including
baseball. So Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig,
let’s tango!
--
July
28, 2003
|
