Tom Davis: Smarter Than Tony Kornheiser
If you’ve been watching the news, you know the House Committee on Government Reform held hearings Thursday on the Major League Baseball steroid scandal, subpoenaing several current and retired players plus Commissioner Bud Selig and players’ union head Donald Fehr. The committee chairman is Republican Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia’s 11th District, covering the central-southern half of Fairfax and most of Prince William County.
Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post and ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption has been adamant over the past few days that Davis instigated these hearings purely out of spite for baseball choosing DC over Northern Virginia as the Expos’ new home. For anyone with knowledge of DC-area baseball politics, this is a patently stupid theory on its face, and it’s rather surprising that a local writer would even consider it. But let’s take a moment to knock it down comprehensively, just for fun.
- First: Davis represents neither of the proposed stadium locations in Virginia.
The early preferred sites for Northern Virginia baseball were clearly in the Arlington/Alexandria corridor, well inside the Beltway on Metro lines. Almost all of inside-the-Beltway VA is part of the 8th District, represented by Democrat Jim Moran. After those sites were rejected, baseball promoters proposed a stadium north of Dulles Airport in Loudoun County, part of Republican Frank Wolf’s 10th District. That location was the one actually rejected last fall in favor of the District of Columbia proposal. - Second: Virginia probably didn’t want the stadium, and certainly didn’t want to pay for it.
The Arlington/Alexandria proposal died very early in the game, due to (a) property owners’ disinterest in selling and (b) NIMBYs. Out at Dulles, people questioned both the traffic load (20,000 more cars on the westbound Toll Road during rush hour?) and the difficulty Maryland residents/potential fans would have just reaching the stadium. On the financial side, VA Gov. Mark Warner (D) stated in September that DC was offering baseball more money than Virginia was willing to give. I think this guy’s view is rather representative of ground-level support for a publicly-funded stadium in 703-land. - Third: Davis doesn’t hate the District!
Matter of fact, Davis is sponsoring a bill to grant DC voting representation in the House. He’s not a kneejerk hard-right, small-government guy; that kind of politician simply can’t get elected in this area with several hundred thousand federal and fed-contract workers. There’s no political hay to be made here in screwing the District.
I honestly don’t see what could drive Kornheiser into thinking this way; he should know better, as a longtime local resident and sportswriter. For that matter, Davis’s ranking Democratic counterpart on the committee, Henry Waxman, is at least as adamant about the issue as is Davis, and Waxman is from California.
What I think is happening is rather simple, and was shown clearly with the morning testimony of three parents who lost children to suicide after long-term use of steroids. Congressmen can’t lose by holding MLB’s feet to the fire on this issue, piggybacking on baseball’s press to be seen doing something for the children. That’s the case whether you’re Davis, Waxman, or Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY), who represents part of Cooperstown. Sweeney told ESPN Radio’s Eric Casilias this afternoon that if MLB didn’t fix its loophole-ridden new drug-testing policy, new hearings would have to be considered regarding the revocation of baseball’s antitrust exemption.
Politicians aren’t known for turning down the opportunity to grandstand. (Speaking of which, it’s a shocker that we haven’t heard more on this from Sen. John McCain than we have.) Baseball gave them an engraved invitation to do so by including what Sweeney, a former NY state labor commissioner, termed a “highly unusual” provision in the collective bargaining agreement’s testing section:
The policy says baseball and the union “shall resist any government investigation by all reasonable and appropriate means including, when necessary, initiation and prosecution of legal proceedings.” Other sections say management and the union will notify each other of any government investigation and suspend drug testing then.
Bad move. And, combined with the public deception on the punishment and the opportunity to stand behind grieving parents, plenty of reason for Congress to flip out, local baseball team or no.
18 March 2005 / 5 Comments / Tags: politics, baseball, nova