I think Anthony Williams is a hero in all this. When Virginia wouldn't pony up for the stadium and other cities were vying for the Expos Williams was the one who stepped up to the plate and offered to build the park. I remember the night the city council voted the stadium deal down but Williams and Evans got them back together and got them to agree to the deal.
I'm sure Angelos was threatening to drag the move to DC into the courts and we've seen how that goes. I would bet MLB reluctantly agreed to the MASN deal to avoid everything getting tied up in the courts. Eventually MLB would of had to nix the move because they wouldn't of been able to keep in the courts for years.
I’ll point back to the Post as I recall putting out interestingly-timed cautionary stories for Warner on the bonds right at the critical juncture, which I think played to Warner not wanting anything attached to him leading into his pursuits of further office. The problem was that had he signaled that it was an issue at any previous time, Virginia’s state-established stadium authorityreportedly had other options for pivoting, which resurfaced during the whole lease negotiation issues first and early 2005 and then later in 2006 (when Kaine was governor).
Why I don’t see him as a hero is because he didn’t have the pull that appeared to have been portrayed, which led to compromises and deals with the likes of Evans who could’ve very easily gotten a ballpark at the RFK stadium site which could’ve help keep the team viable rather than this shoehorned Metro-dependent ballpark width a litany of issues as far as viability that would not have been faster than RFK Stadium site. Case in point was the ridiculous claims that the RFK Stadium site could not be used because of national park service and contamination issues, yet the second they were bidding for the Redskins, it suddenly went back on the table.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080129171813/http://www.examiner.com/blogs/Yeas_and_Nays/2008/1/23/ChiSox-owner-Nats-new-site-was-a-mistake“Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who was intimately involved with selecting Washington as a baseball city, had some second-guessing to do Tuesday on where the team will be located.
“Speaking at George Washington University, Reinsdorf recalled how Commissioner Bud Selig asked him and a group of other owners to select a city to relocate the Montreal Expos. “Whatever you do, don’t give me Washington,” he said Selig told him.
“That’s exactly what they did, although Reinsdorf said the decision had “nothing to do with my love for D.C.” (he got his bachelor’s degree from G.W. in the ’50s) but was “strictly business.
“Nevertheless, he said he preferred Northern Virginia over downtown due to its “better fan base.” Then he told the crowd, which included Nats principal owner Mark Lerner, that he “would have requested a different location” in the city.
““We were sold on the idea that there would be enough parking,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s not the case. I would have insisted on [the RFK site].””
