Hell Hath No Fury Like A Franchise Scorned
"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect." -- George Carlin

DC Baseball continues to be an enigma. One blundering moment of stupidity follows another in seemingly predictable patterns and colours yet somehow, something new always happens to jump out at it.

It started with the Selig decision to wait on making a decision. That allowed enough time to pass so that there might be an appropriate handicap to appease Oriole's owner Peter Angelos. That and the decision to put his competition in the slum of a dangerous city instead of an easy Beltway-accessible Northern Virginia suburb.

Then, a move was finally decided and yet, there was no ownership. No one to name the team, no one to budget the team, no one to consider trades and free agents.

Then the owner's ownership cabal decided, hang on, it might be a good idea to at least have a general manager for this team with no name and no confirmed budget because there is no real ownership. So they announced Jim Bowden as the new interim GM.

Bowden said he did not know what kind of budget he had to work with, but he expected it to be more than the $41 million the Expos spent last year. According to a person close to the situation, the Expos are hoping to increase their payroll by $15 million.

But they weren't really sure. Hmmm. How much money will we have to spend? Certainly other than who will own the team, how much they'd be willing to spend is another pressing issue. After all, how in the world will Scott Boras ever be able to find out if some collective of kazillionaires is coming forward to buy the DC Baseball franchise and represent another market to blackmail and extort from.

Then of course, there is still the issue of what the hell will they be called?

What do you call a team that doesn't really exist yet anyway?

You might want to call them The Washington Wishful Thinkers because now all the tinkering and inertia has finally ripened still stranger fruit as the previously unknown player in the game of destroy baseball in DC, DC council chairman Linda Cropp, decided she too wanted in on the fun.

After the fact, Cropp has announced there will be no Anacostia riverfront stadium as promised and agreed to. She says build it instead near the RFK Stadium site. Who cares will they build it, one might think, if you build it, they will come, yaddayadda. Problem is, the agreement was the Anacostia riverfront stadium and Major League Baseball officials have made it clear they have zero interest in a site far from downtown.

The WP reported that Cropp, according to two close friends who spoke with her at length about her decision, felt that if she was going to be a realistic contender for mayor, she had to move now to align herself with the anti-stadium feeling in town. And if that meant losing the Expos entirely, so be it.

Align herself with the anti-stadium feeling in town? What kind of feeling is that for a town luring MLB to it's grim environs?

Well, apparently, there is one. And none other than council member-elect Marion Barry, rearing his cracked up head from the ruins of his political career, has found the head to place upon his political pike and that head is the anti-stadium issue.

So now, while people still senselessly pick over the carcass of bad names to name their new team with, (really - "Senators" for a city which has no representation in the Senate? - "Nationals" for a city that voted by an overwhelming margin against Bush and clearly does not hum the same tune as the majority of the country?) even as the debate goes on, the debate now shifts to the more important issue: will there even BE a team to name?

Well orchestrated. The competition for who can foul the franchise more, the Commissioner of Baseball or the city itself, has begun. May the best side win.

*****

One thing you could say about baseball in DC that you couldn't say about the Mets at the beginning of the week was, at least they have a manager.

Well, it's official. We won't have Art Howe to kick around any more. Instead, we've got a 50 year old ex-Yankee who claims to have rooted for the Mets as a kid. Better still, he doesn't have ANY managing experience. Not in the Major Leagues, not in Single A, not even in the Little Leagues.

The one thing that immediately jumps out at me is the wisdom that at least Omar Minaya and the Wilpon Idiot Collective weren't allowed the opportunity to hire Wally Backman before it was too late. They dodged a bullet there. They didn't have to wake up this morning with huevos rancheros on their faces like the muppets running the Diamondbacks. And they can even push forward the notion that they aren't the dumbest run team in baseball anymore. But poor Wally Backman. Not only did he get fired in a George O'Leary sort of record time, but now, he might even be facing jail time.

Another thing to consider: last year saw another ex-Yankee coach hired as a first time manager; Lee Mazzili. With questionable talent and a weak-knee'd pitching staff, Mazzili was able to manage to eke out a 78-86 record which isn't really .500 respectable but wasn't bad enough to get him fired in the first season. Hell, some people even think he did a decent job, under the circumstances. But even someone as managerially challenged as Art Howe lasted more than a season, so Mazzili surviving his first season isn't exactly laudatory praise.

Basically what you get with Willie Randolph is some breathing room. No one knows how he manages yet since he's never managed, so no one can point out his losing seasons or his World Championships as any portend of his managerial ability. There isn't a blip in his history to suggest he will fail, win or even just maintain the rule of Met mediocrity. So his critics are still like larvae waiting to come to life.

At the moment, he has the virtueous upside of being from New York itself, from being the first Afro American manager in New York, reasonable, young and accustomed to the heat of the New York media.

Well, he isn't either of my first two choices, Valentine or Piniella. Piniella, by the way, is also a former Yankee who was hired as a manager with no prior experience. But he isn't Wally Backman and he isn't Art Howe and he isn't Jim Fregosi either. That's a pretty good start.