Friday, September 24, 2004

Bring On The Senators, Already

I have no idea if moving the Montreal/Puerto Rico Expos to Washington is a viable plan or not, but I suspect all baseball fans (and the team's players) are tired of waiting for MLB to figure that out.

Deadlines come and go. Seasons come and go. Yet Bud Selig and the boys still cannot decide if D.C. is the way to go. At this point, Bud, there are two options. 1) Leave the Expos in limbo for another season. 2) Move them to the nation's capital and find out what happens next.

I'm leaning towards the second choice. I know some feel moving the team to Washington, D.C. is a losing proposition right now , perhaps they are right. The question for me is "Will the would-be Senators fanbase financially support a bad baseball team (the Expos) in an old park (RFK) for a decade or more?"

If the answer to that question is yes, move the Expos this instant. If the answer is no, make the Expos play another two years in Quebec and give towns like Portland a chance to build a stadium. Two more years would even give the D.C. backers twenty-four months to get their city council to dig up some money for a new ballpark. (Not that I favor public funding, but that's another post.)

At the start of the 2007 season, the Expos should open in their new, hopefully long-term home. No more muffed deadlines. No more Puerto Rico. No games in three countries. Make a decision one year from now, give the new host one year to plan. End of process.

I'd love to see the Senators return, but I'd be just as happy to have the Expos stabilized. Just make a decision already.

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