In the wee hours this morning, the DC Council approved a lease for the new stadium to be built, at an unknown cost, for an unknown owner, for an unnamed team (the new owners can change the name if they like). DC is dealing with MLB, an entity that proudly and loudly selected DC as a site only after determining that every other site on the face of the planet, and a couple on Mars, weren't as likely to put as much money in the MLB owners' collective pocket.
Now MLB has to actually look at the lease, to see if it meets with their approval. If it does, and based on the pace of this thing, the review may take another 5 years or so, then presumably they'll announce the winning bidder for the team. The process of winning the auction is quite similar to that used to determine most South American elections, and just about as open.
For DC baseball fans, it looks like you'll have a team of some sort, for a while, good news to the over 2 million people that attended games last year. For the MLB owners, call your bank and your broker, poppa will be bringing home the money soon. For the DC players, this season may be a little less uncertain than the last, which was less uncertain than the one before that, so some might call all of this progress.
Unfortuantely, knowing how things always seem to cost more and take longer in DC, I suspect the actual stadium construction will be one nightmare after another as every fool with any political or business connections in DC will be trying for a piece of stadium pie.
(An alternative that would never even be considered: forget the whole thing, take the $600,000,000.00 plus dollars the stadium will cost (really) and build as many youth baseball fields as possible throughout the land. In the scheme of things, this would do far more to promote good things for more people in more places.)
And I'm an optimist.
Original Post