Monday, November 14, 2005

Jerry Reinsdorf: Enemy of the People

It appears that one of the last snags holding up a stadium deal is a disagreement over whether the new owner will guarantee the District $6 million in annual rent at a new ballpark. According to the Post, Jerry Reinsdorf is refusing to put the provision is the lease agreement, even though it's a pretty standard clause in these types of lease documents. The District's demand doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider that the City is paying most of the $535 million cost of building the stadium.

This is a big deal because baseball is holding up the sale of the team pending the execution of the lease document. In other words, baseball seems to be holding up the sale, in part, over this $6 million issue. If so, it's both an incredibly petty position by baseball and another example of how the league is holding the Nationals' future hostage.

Baseball needs to get off the dime now and get this deal done.

2 comments:

Nate said...

Maybe somebody should suggest to Tom Davis that he take a hard look at the role MLB's anti-trust exemption played in the steroid scandal.

Erik said...

I'll leave for a later post a more detailed discussion of the antitrust exemption, but the exemption is indefensible.