An atrocity has taken place unparalleled in the history of man. Major League Baseball has actually been asked by the District of Columbia City Council to PAY for one half of their $600 million dollar publicly funded stadium. As soon as the amendment - proposed by DC Council Chair Linda Cropp - passed by a 10-3 margin, baseball's owners gnashed their teeth, sports radio hosts swallowed their tongues, and the saints wept for the Washington Nationals, a team that now may never be.

A shaken Mayor Williams, the brilliant dealmaker who manipulated Major League Baseball owners into accepting a $600 million welfare check, stormed out of the Council Chambers behind a cabal of police officers to avoid answering reporters questions. He later portrayed his honeyed political skills by calling the DC Council members in opposition to the stadium "jackasses." The Mayor also found time this past weekend to make his case nationally on Fox News: a brilliant place to appeal to the legions of Republican DC residents - 9% of whom voted for President Bush this year,

Thank goodness we have a vigilant and objective press corps to cover such matters. The Washington Post, with a cover picture on their website of a little girl forlornly holding her Washington Nationals pleated skirt, has led the way in providing a balanced understanding of Cropp's evil.

Top Post baseball columnist Thomas Boswell accused the council chair of "dark deeds", saying "Cropp blew to smithereens the deal that MLB thought it had in place with Washington to build a ballpark... The bits of charred ash and shattered fragments that you see falling from the sky are the remnants of the destruction that Cropp wrought."

Lead Metro Columnist Marc Fisher wrote, "Linda Cropp's late-night bombshell eviscerating the deal with Major League Baseball immediately restores Washington's status as America's laughingstock."

A local sports radio host said, "Now I understand why they don't allow these people to vote."

Business leaders had also stepped up to make sure there is a civil and honest debate about what is in the best interests of the city. This was on display at the MCI Arena Wednesday where Ms. Cropp's picture was put up on the jumbotron to give all the fans a chance to boo.

Baseball attempted to put Ms. Cropp and the elected council's request in perspective. "It's disgraceful. Baseball has been accused of a lot of things in the last 100 years," said an MLB spokesperson. "But never anything like this. If Cropp thinks she's going to do that and [still] get a team, she's making a horrible mistake."

The monstrous Cropp has the temerity not only to stand up to Major League Baseball, but also to do so while in possession of a uterus. Even though both men and women on the council oppose the stadium giveaway, it is Cropp's existence as a woman that has added insult to injury. Boswell wrote "Apparently, hell hath no fury like Cropp when she feels that she has been spurned by baseball." Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon described the entire situation as "[A]kin to finally agreeing to a date with somebody who has stalked you for five years, then being stood up." Sports Radio has thrilled its commuter audience by letting us all know that Ms. Cropp deserves to be "smacked."

Granted the media frenzy hasn't included pesky tidbits like the fact that 70% of people in the District oppose public stadium financing. Or that the Mayor has promised to evict people if their South East DC homes stand in the way of the Stadium. Or why it would bother all District residents, whether we love baseball or not, to spend $600 million in a city where the only public hospital was shut down, where libraries have slashed their hours, where schools teeter in disrepair, where rats control the sidewalks, and where potholes dot the streets.

It also hasn't made clear that Cropp is hardly Fannie Lou Hamer. She has been a leading lobbyist for baseball, not an opponent. Also, when council members persuaded the mayor to use the raise in business taxes to give $45 million for libraries and $30 million for school computers Cropp, responding to concerns from business leaders, "persuaded the council to strip the $75 million from the [stadium] legislation."

Her change of heart hasn't come from any pretensions of good will, but the influence of what is being referred to as "the mob" - aka the vocal opinion of a majority African-American city. Cropp said yesterday that her phone has been ringing off the hook with angry calls. But she added that most of the calls have come from the 301 and 703 area codes. "It's the suburban area, people from Maryland and Virginia who do not have to pay for the stadium," Cropp said.

Fortunately, this popular outrage from an inspiring coalition of bored suburbanites, billionaire business men and their prizefighters in the press has produced a flurry of death threats against Ms. Cropp but that might not be enough to save our beloved Nationals.

To do that, the council will have to rescind their demand. And they return to chambers this Tuesday and again December 28th with "one last chance to get this right."

Hopefully district residents won't take two minutes to call Ms. Cropp's office at 202/724-8032 or e-mail the council at dccouncilmembers@dccouncil.us by Tuesday to stiffen their spines against what they mistakenly see as a brutally parasitic deal. Hopefully they won't feel a ray of confidence at having stood up and succeeded against a stadium deal that we have been told for months is a fait accompli. Hopefully they won't feel - HEAVEN FORFEND - a sense of their own power.

The way of the world has been interrupted! The billionaires did not get their way! How tragic. How beautifully, deliciously, and perfectly tragic.

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