Hurry Up and Wait

You know, I'm starting to not even want an owner. I mean really, what does an owner bring to the table anyway? The Nats led the NL East by 5 1/2 games without an owner, they made roughly $30 million without an owner, they had Tampa Bay-style feuds between the coaching staff and the front office, all without the help or hindrance of an owner.

And that's all just as well, because the Nats aren't going to get an owner, not this year anyway. Bud Selig announced that a decision would not be made in time for the owners meeting next week, and to add insult to injury, there's not even a timetable for the process. Bud wants to interview all eight ownership groups personally, and his busy schedule of highway on-ramp ribbon cuttings have left him three meetings short.

As galling as that may be, I accept that it's MLB's perogative to monkey with the time frame as they see fit. What I will not accept is the continued credulous repetition of the line that the stadium lease negotiations are somehow inextricably linked to the ownership announcement. Nothing in any agreement between MLB and the city of Washington requires the lease to be formalized before new owners are announced. It's simply another of Bud's arbitrary hurdles. I am convinced that if Bob DuPuy announced that the Nats sale was conditioned on the city procuring a cape of finest dodo feathers for Bud, the press would blame the resulting delays not on MLB's intransigence, but on an extinct bird.