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Channel 9 is reporting that the Emperor Selig and his dark minions have chosen the Lerner family to buy the Nationals, that an announcement will come Friday, and that the Lerners will take control of the team in May.

Emperor Selig's second-darkest minion, Bob DuPuy, known for promising to name an owner by Opening Day 2005 and most recently for promising the Congress of the United States that a new owner would be named by April 21, issued a statement denying that any decision has been reached. DuPuy said:

There has been unfortunate speculation rampant in the media in Washington, D.C. today that Commissioner Selig has selected one particular group to acquire the Washington Nationals and that a press announcement would be made on this Friday to announce the selection. Those rumors are baseless. No decision has been made to date. The Commissioner and I continue to meet with representatives of the groups and there will be an official announcement when the decision is made.

BallWonk believes one of two things is true. First possibility: Selig really has made a choice, and he's sending second-darkest minion DuPuy out to lie in a vain attempt to make the real-time announcement a surprise. Really, Bud, this is Washington. Nothing worth knowing is a surprise when it's officially announced.

Second possibility: The ever-tricky Malek-Zients group has engineered a back-channel leak to make it look like the Lerner family has jumped the gun in a desperate attempt to discredit the Lerners at the last minute and tilt the decision to their own faltering bid. Remember, Fred Malek eats puppies for fun, and he started his career as Nixon's willing executioner. And note that Indiana Jeff says he has heard from reliable, non-MLB sources that Lerner has won the Nationals. His source would almost have to be a partner in another group, and if reports about which groups are still in the running are accurate, then only a source inside the Lerner or Malek groups would know which of the two has been chosen.

Features of the new ballpark design include upper-deck seating for plebians, a luxury box for the emperor and his family as well as special seating for senators, and extra straw on the gladiators' clubhouse floors. In order to keep the project under the $600 million cap, there will be only two bathrooms on the upper deck.

Governor Williams will unveil the design officially today.

Page 101

You pour yourself a tall glass of bourbon and figure you will have time to call Selig tomorrow. You feel like you just got swept in the World Series. By Kansas City.

Then your cell phone rings. Not many people have that number; it must be important. Maybe it's Selig. "This is Bob DuPuy," you say.

"Bob, it's me, Linda Cropp," says the tired, nasal voice on the other end of the line.

"Linda. Hi. Look, can we talk later? I'm really not in the mood right now," you say, gently swirling the bourbon in your glass.

"I know, Bob, but I have great news. I called the Council back together, and we've agreed to the lease with our own spending cap added on. Isn't that great?" You can hear Linda giggling as she talks.

"What kind of spending cap?" you ask.

"Oh, $600 million total, or maybe $630, or $680, or something. We're not really sure. Who can tell what the dollar amounts are in DC legislation? We're not exactly accountants, you know. Except for Vincent. But the good news is we've got a lease, we're building the ballpark, and the CFO will start selling the bonds tomorrow, unless we screwed up the spending cap language and we have to do it over next month. So we're ready to have that big groundbreaking ceremony with the new owners as soon as you name them."

You sigh.

"Oh, and Bob, you do remember that I'm running for mayor, and the annual limit on personal campaign donations is $1,000."

You sigh again.

"Well, Bob? What do you say?"

What do you tell Linda Cropp?

If you tell her it's a deal, turn to page 125.

If you tell her you'll let a judge sort out the lease now, turn to page 78.

If you tell her the deal is already dead, turn to page 90.

We have a lease!

Whew. BallWonk really did not want to have to go through this all over again in Virginia.

Former mayor-for-life Marion Barry is due to be sentenced today for tax evasion. If the judge isn't going to send him to prison, which prosecutors might not ask for, BallWonk begs the court: order the man to stop wearing that Nationals cap. In fact, judge, please order him to start wearing a Phillies cap at all times in public. That would be justice.

Congratulations to Adrian Fenty for managing to save the taxpayers of DC zero dollars! Also for nixing around $4 billion in new general-fund tax revenue over the next three decades!

But back to the important stuff. Like, "RC's brother's actual name is Royal? Can we sign him instead?" Actually, Royal is Royce's older brother, the Mycroft to RC's Sherlock. And he was a stand-out player on the 1992 Columbus Clippers, the 72nd best minor league team of all time.

Update (8:45 pm): And a vote, 8-5 against (Brown went with the antis). Which is to say, there will still be a ballpark, but all of baseball's concessions to date go away like horses turning back into mice at midnight. Oh, and the District will be on the line for cash damages, plus the Nationals will get to play in RFK without paying the city rent for a year or two. Smart move, DC Council! That'll show the fat-cat baseball barons. Why, if you shoot off your other foot, then they'll really be impressed.

Update (7:50 pm): Speaking of Royce Clayton, BallWonk proposes that his nickname be RC. Because Royce is to Cristian exactly as Royal Crown Cola is to Coke: Same exact ingredients, tastes just as good with lime juice and a shot of rum, but it costs a lot less. And truthfully it would be great if we could substitute RC for Six-Three and get the same performance for a fraction of the cost, but that's not what's happening. Instead, we get RC and we still have to pay $4 mil a year for Six-Three. Only once this century has RC put up hitting numbers better than Six-Three's career average -- but not much better -- and the guy's more than half of Frank's age.

Update (7:45 pm): Figures. Cropzilla said she wanted to be back from recess no later than 6:30, but 75 minutes later the Council chamber is still empty. Maybe they're waiting for Barry to wake up again. Or they're not coming back until they figure out exactly what Royce Clayton gives the Nationals that we didn't already have in Six-Three, in which case this could take a while.

Update (5:55 pm): After having explained to the Council how voting works, and why she wanted to table the lease in order to discuss the emergency bill first, Cropzilla got her motion to recess until about 6:30. Jack Evans, meanwhile, was on the phone, probably telling the mayor, "My God, Tony, these people don't know how voting works, or what a motion does. Plus I think Barry is high, but not crack high, more like pot high. And I think Fenty is going to bite Vincent's ear off."

Update (5:45 pm): The Council, in the midst of considering a motion to table the lease until the end of the day's business that most members don't seem to understand, has gone through two rounds of speeches. The speeches show at least seven firm votes against the lease if it comes to a vote today: Fenty, Catania, Schwartz, Barry, Graham, Mendelson, and Gray. However, Croppzilla is now in the process of explaining to the rest of the Council just how voting works, which might change things.

Update (4:45 pm): Vincent Orange just promised that there will be a CVS pharmacy on the corner outside the new ballpark in case fans need to medicate headaches after the game. Which makes BallWonk raise a point of personal preference: Does that mean Councilman Orange expects Trader Jim to still be the GM in 2009?

In the immortal words of Caveman Bill, "When will the hurting stop?"

Today, maybe, when the DC Council votes on the stadium lease. Or maybe three years from now, when the ballpark is finally built, and there are finally no more ways for the Council to screw things up.

After more than a year of stadium fatigue, which has threatened to become terminal, BallWonk praises DC Council Chair Cropzilla. She reportedly told the rest of the Council what pretty much everyone in the city, on all sides of the ballpark issue, wants to say: "I'm sick of this. Every time we move somewhere, you keep adding something else. I'm sick of it. I want you people to either vote it up or vote it down."

Cropzilla smash!

Actually, voting it down would probably be the best option for everyone. Because if the Council votes the lease down, then the whole mess will go to arbitration, where the arbitrator will have little choice but to impose a lease with whatever terms Emperor Selig and his dark minions ask for, by about July, and that will be the end of things. But if the Council passes the lease, then every time a construction worker drops a rivet some grandstanding DC pol will threaten to reopen the lease to ensure that the city doesn't have to pay for the dropped rivet.

So if the Council nixes the lease, we get a ballpark and the city pays out the nose and the Nationals have an owner in place by mid-summer and that will be the end of it. But if the Council accepts the lease, we get three more years of soul-draining machinations from the DC Council while they look for ever more creative ways to screw things up with maybe a ballpark at the end and the city still paying out the nose, and by now Emperor Selig and his dark minions have enough experience to know that they can't just rush out an name an owner and trust the Council to keep its word. We might not have an owner until 2007, and nobody could really blame Emperor Selig for holding onto the team until he sees some I-beams going up on South Capitol Street.

Makes door number one look pretty attractive.

(It's also worth noting that today's "emergency legislation" imposing an even firmer price cap on the ballpark is intended by its backers to close a "loophole" in the lease. What is that loophole? Just this: if the city tells the builder to make design changes that increase the ballpark's cost, the city would have to pay for the design changes. That's not a loophole. That's how a non-communist economy is supposed to work. Have the members of the DC Council ever had, like, jobs?)

The Saturday Post reported that planners are scaling back the design of the Anacostia ballpark to cut costs in hopes of securing that all-important seventh Council vote for the lease.

Two quotations stood out in the story. First, mayoral aide Vince Morris said, "None of the proposed changes to the ballpark design would impact the fan's experience. Everything from seats and soda to sightlines and restrooms would be top-notch."

Which prompted the following exchange:

BallWonk: Which notch?

Vince Morris: Top notch.

Additionally, noted architectural historian and Council member Jack "the un-Barry" Evans hailed the downgraded design, saying, "I want a very basic stadium. We can't build a stadium that costs a fortune out of glass and steel and looks like the Taj Mahal."

Well, no flack, Jack. A stadium built out of glass and steel could not possibly look like the Taj Mahal. Because, you know, the Taj Mahal is made out of stone.

Fig. 1: Steel and glass building

Fig. 2: Taj Mahal

(Unspoken in the story was the Friday deadline for public notice of a new lease in order for the Council to vote on it in February. If a new lease is not negotiated by the end of the week, the scheduled March groundbreaking will be delayed, making it significantly likely that the stadium will not be ready in 2008. That would mean another year in RFK, increased construction costs, and millions of dollars in contractual damages owed to Major League Baseball. The Council says it wants to control costs, but it is also deliberately acting to expose the city to tens of millions of dollars in punitive liability. Are we really such fools here in DC that these are the city's 13 smartest and most responsible people? Or rather, the city's 12 smartest and most responsible people, and Marion Barry?)

Well, gosh, Linda, why not just move the new stadium to the parking lot at RFK Canyon National Monument and save $200 million?

1. Much of the savings simply won't appear. Prices of most non-wood construction materials are undergoing double-digit inflation right now. Moving the ballpark to RFK will set the project back by at least a year, and a year-long delay in project completion means a 10-20 percent increase in construction costs.

2. More of the savings will fail to materialize because the money has already been spent. The District has purchased some of the properties on the ballpark site already from owners who were willing to sell voluntarily. That's money the District will not get back; if there is one thing DC is good at, it's holding on to land it has no real interest in owning. In addition, some money already spent on architectural and construction planning will be lost when plans for a different ballpark at a new site are drawn up.

3. Most of the "private financing" will disappear if the ballpark is moved, nearly doubling the up-front cost of the ballpark to the city.

4. Private developers have already begun buying property near the ballpark to build retail, commercial, and residential developments. Without the ballpark, that corner of DC will continue to look like this:

5. None of that redevelopment investment is going to happen around a new ballpark at RFK. If it was going to happen, it would have happened decades ago. Even with a new ballpark, that neighborhood will always look like this:

6. While we're on the subject, here's how the big plans for development and urban renewal worked out in Minneapolis, where they built a ballpark near an armory on the poor residential fringes of downtown:

7. Not that one necessarily expects integrity of politicians, at least not inside the Beltway, but it hasn't even been thirty days since Linda Cropp told the press that she would not let the ballpark be moved from Anacostia, no way, no how. As bad as baseball's two-facedness is, Emperor Selig and his dark minions only disgrace themselves when they behave dishonorably. But when Linda Cropp and other representatives say one thing one week but do something else the next week, they discredit the public in whose name they speak.

So moving the ballpark to the Bobby's parking lot will increase construction costs, double up-front city expenses, waste millions of dollars the city has already spent, throw away a chance to redevelop a blighted neighborhood, discredit the city to potential future private partners, and turn a $535 million urban renewal investment into a $480 million corporate giveaway with little benefit to the city. Great plan, Linda! You too, Carol, Vincent, and Marion.

There is a word chess players use to describe the point when your position is as good as it's going to get, and any move you make will make you weaker. The word is zugzwang. Actually, that's one of the great things about baseball: We don't have to import German or French words to describe complex concepts; we can just call a can of corn a can of corn and be done with it.

(Although baseball has its own zugzwang moments, such as when, late in the game, a manager pinch-hits a lesser hitter for a good hitter to get a righty-lefty advantage, sticking the team with the lesser hitter if it scores the tying, but not winning, run; or such as when a team with a thin bullpen uses its best arm to hold a tiny lead in the seventh or eighth and then has to rely on a lesser reliever for the save.)

Anyway, it now seems pretty clear that Emperor Selig and his dark minions passed the point of zugzwang over the DC ballpark at least two months ago. If Wormtongue Reinsdorf and his crack team of no-gotiators had any doubt about the inevitable weakening of their position, today's news that Cropzilla has resurfaced should set them straight.

For the price of a $24 million letter of credit, which actually costs Major Leage Baseball zero dollars, Wormtongue and Emperor Selig could have inked the lease in September on favorable terms with no input from the bitter and mercurial District Council. But three months later, thanks to Cropzilla's announcement that she'll let the Council vote on the lease after all, the $24 million letter of credit plus a $20 million contribution toward infrastructure is the minimum baseball will pay. Because Cropzilla knows she can ask, "Or what are you going to do, move the team to Miami?" Knowing that baseball has nowhere to put the Nationals other than Washington, what with the Marlins already negotiating with both Portland and Las Vegas to move to a minor-league park for 2008, the Council is very likely to make new demands. Like guarantees that new owners will help pay cost overruns.

So baseball could have had a deal in September for a cost of zero actual dollars. It could have had a deal in October for a cost of $20 million. But thanks to the genius plan of waiting until November, now baseball will be lucky to get away from the bargaining table without committing $50 to $100 million to what was once a free ballpark. And since Emperor Selig and his dark minions decided to conduct the lease negotiations themselves, rather then naming new owners and letting them handle the local politics, whatever extra price baseball now has to pay will come out of its profits on the team sale.

And instead of a friendly, civilized negotiation with the reasonable people at the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission, Wormtongue's delaying tactics have put Cropzilla and the whole rogue's gallery at the Council seats at the table. That's right, Marion Barry is now involved in lease negotiations, thanks to Wormtongue Jerry Reinsdorf. Smart move, Jer!

The latest reports hint that the Nationals will not play in National Guard Field after all. When Virginia's Senator Warner heard that the National Guard might spend $6 mil to sponsor the ballpark, he phoned in his objection. "Not an appropriate use of scarce military funds in a time of war," Warner said.

Then again, the one thing scarcer than military funding during this time of war is military recruits. The National Guard missed its 2004 recruiting goal by about 13 percent, and is on track to miss its 2005 goals by 25 percent. So the last thing the Guard should do is advertise to vast crowds of military-age young men as they attend ballgames next door to the DC National Guard's headquarters.

BallWonk wonders what specific uses Sen. Warner would make of that $6 million for the increasingly under-manned National Guard. Hire Hessians? Give every soldier a second rifle to double his combat effectiveness? Apparently, in a time of war, the military ought not engage in such frivolity as recruiting new soldiers.

So when, instead of the grandly patriotic National Guard Field, we get AOL Park or Raytheon Field or whatever corporate monstrosity we end up with, we can all thank Sen. Warner.

Youppi will not be joining the Nationals in Washington. Which means that we need a new mascot.

Perhaps Esteban Loaiza?

The thing about Youppi is that he's actually quite popular. For a mascot. In fact, Youppi seems to have many more fans in Montreal than the Expos did. Which might explain why that city will have a mascot but no team in 2005. As the only mascot designed by Jim Henson's muppet shop, Youppi has a certain je ne se quois that would have worked just as well for kids at RFK as it did in Quebec.

Still, it is easy to see why the Nationals left Youppi behind. Mascots spend their time in the lower deck, and the seats in RFK's lower deck are orange. Bright, flaming, Youppi orange. The special-ops soldiers the Army isn't sending behind enemy lines in Iran are less well camouflaged than Youppi would be at RFK. If he came to Washington, Youppi would be the first invisible mascot:

We can see the clothes, but where's the emperor?

The only way to make Youppi work in Washington would have been to change his color. But would a non-orange Youppi still be Youppi? This is a profound existential question, and the answer is no. A red Youppi would cease to be Youppi, just as surely as the blue Big Bird on Dutch Sesame Street is not Big Bird at all.

Forcing Youppi to change colors would be like hiring Bizzaro and calling him Superman. It would just be wrong, is what it would be.

So while it would have been great if the Nationals could have kept Youppi and brought him to Washington, it just wasn't meant to be.

What about that new mascot? Well, if Frank Robinson is going to insist on making Esteban Loaiza pitch, then he's out. Hopefully, we can get something like Big Shot in Potomac. Mascots with other things in place of their heads are great. Or maybe a panda bear. But BallWonk's secret dream is that we'll get a furry foam Washington Monument with a Nats uniform.

We could call him Big Mo.

Today's New York Times reports from RFK on the progress of the reconstruction and some of the personalities at the site.

Roger Brossard, who's in charge of rebuilding the field itself, says the ground will drain fast enough to play half an hour after a cloudburst. Good to know.

The story contains one sad note:

One of the glories of R.F.K. is the Washington Hall of Fame, banners on the mezzanine facade containing memorable Washington sports names (Sammy Baugh in football, Walter Johnson in baseball, Wesley Unseld in basketball, Pauline Betz Addie in tennis, and so on).

"Obviously, those beautiful banners will stay," I said, gesturing at the glorious banners.

"Ummm, no," [DC Sports and Entertainment Commission Allen] Lew said, admitting that in a matter of days the banners will be replaced by a ribbon of an electronic message board, displaying advertisements and scores.

That's progress for ya.

The ink is said to still be wet. Reports abound that the Nationals will take to the air on WTEM in 2005. Which is great if you live within sight of the Washington Monument, not so great if you live farther away. BallWonk does - live within sight of the Monument, that is, or at least near a hill from which the DC skyline can be made out - and so WTEM comes in fine at night.

And these same reports say that the team, not the TEM, will choose the radio broadcast team. BallWonk admits to not having listened to an Orioles game in, well, pretty much ever. With MLB's Gameday Audio online service, BallWonk has filled the DC baseball void lo these last years with Twins games galore and other broadcasts not involving the Inner Harbor songbirds.

So who do you want to call Nationals games on the radio?