The Montreal Expos are owned by Major League Baseball and are going to leave Montreal. Where will they go? Cities are competing to offer MLB the best package. In the running are Las Vegas, Portland and Washington, DC. Washington DC is by far the largest metropolitan area without a major league team. The choice should be easy. But Baltimore is nearby and Orioles owner Peter Angelos doesn’t want DC to get a team. He will lobby against any DC location.
Now a group in Northern Virginia is making its case for putting the team there rather than in DC proper. The stadium would be near Dulles airport. The big selling point for this location? The Maryland suburbs are MORE than an hour away during rush hour, so that means that a Dulles team wouldn’t steal fans from the Orioles. After all, who would want to drive more than an hour for a 7 o’clock first pitch. How weird is that. Here’s a group making the case for its location by bragging that there are nearby customer who WON’T come. They even promise to call the team the Virginia Somethings (Founders?) rather than the Washington Senators. Here‘s their graphic making the point that ran in today’s Washington Post:
There’s only one problem. The Orioles are also more than hour away from a lot of those Maryland suburbs. But it’s a nice try.
