Vegas backer still sees progress

Friday, June 11, 2004 | 10:47 a.m.

Teamscape president Lou Weisbach, in town Thursday to conduct more business related to buying the Montreal Expos and moving them to Las Vegas, remains upbeat about the effort and points to an upcoming ESPN news special as evidence.

For weeks, the cable sports television network has been working on an "Outside the Lines" feature on the likelihood, and feasibility, of one of the four major sports someday landing in Las Vegas.

Teamscape and the Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment (LVSE) Co., LLC, have been coordinating efforts to persuade Major League Baseball to relocate the troubled Expos to Las Vegas for more than a year.

"The fact that ESPN is doing a show that's focused on whether Las Vegas is (ready for) a major sports team ... they wouldn't have done a show like that 14 months ago," Weisbach said. "It wasn't in the cards."

The ESPN show had been scheduled to air tonight, but the death of former President Ronald Reagan, an ESPN producer said, required the network's attention. The Vegas show will air next week.

Niles, Ill.-based Weisbach, 55, made a fortune in a promotional products company, which he left five years ago to pursue the coordination of research for disease cures.

"You'll find I didn't say anything that I haven't said to you over the last few months," Weisbach said. "It's very consistent. To me, as it's been from the beginning, it's been a process you measure by where you started and where you are now.

"It's been a 14-month process for us. (The ESPN show) is really all about the time process of putting Vegas in a position to get a major league sports team. That process is continuing along at a very healthy pace. Everything that's been occurring has been positive."

Washington, D.C., Portland, Ore., and several cities in Virginia have been in the running, with Las Vegas, for the Expos, who have been owned and run by baseball's 29 other owners for three seasons.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig wants to settle on a new home for the team within the next month and make an announcement by the mid-July All-Star break. However, Rich Levin, an MLB senior vice president in charge of public relations, has told the Sun to expect a decision "sometime this summer."

Selig, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern and Gavin Maloof, one of four brothers who own the Sacramento Kings and the Palms in Las Vegas, were among those, with Weisbach, who were interviewed by ESPN.

"I have no idea what others will say on the show," Weisbach said, "but the fact that it will be aired on national television is a strong, positive statement. It's what we're all working toward."

Weisbach spent time in New York last week, with LVSE president Robert Blumenfeld, Selig's staff, some of the MLB relocation committee's nine members and/or representatives of Manhattan-based Merrill Lynch, an investment securities firm that might play a major stadium role.

Blumenfeld is a prominent financier who has been a business associate of Weisbach's for 10 years. During the course of the Expos project, Weisbach estimated that he has visited Las Vegas at least every other week.

Since a quarterly owners meeting in New York three weeks ago, information about the progress of relocation talks has been kept at a minimum by baseball executives and officials from the Vegas factions.

"Until we get a team in Las Vegas, it's all about the process," Weisbach said. "Things change daily, but things are going fine. I think the process is working and going well. We'll get it done, it's just a matter of 'when.'

"That's most important. I don't think it's an issue of 'if' anymore, it's an issue of 'when.' That's news, and I think it's good news. There's enough credibility in Las Vegas right now."

Weisbach noted that ESPN concocted the idea for a show, that nobody working on behalf of the Vegas effort for the Expos approached the network.

"I think that's important, too," he said. "When we first started doing this 14 months ago, nobody would have thought about doing a show. There was no reason to."

Will they come?

If attendance trends continue, that might be a resounding yes regarding MLB in Las Vegas.

According to figures through Wednesday's games, the current average attendance of 28,707 would be the highest in three seasons.

In addition, three of the top-seven stadiums, in capacity terms, are in California -- San Diego (87 percent), Anaheim (91) and San Francisco (93). And Arizona and the Giants are two of only four clubs that attract at least 30,000 for home and road games.

San Diego (from 25,062 to 36,544), Anaheim (37,791 to 40,905) and Los Angeles (38,748 to 40,330) have all experienced average attendance boosts from 2003 to this season.

A theoretical National League West, with Las Vegas included instead of Colorado, could make a case for baseball's most intriguing, if not popular, division.

In addition, the Rockies are one of only six teams that draw at least 30,000 (31,890) on the road.

Think just a few of those Rockies, Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks and Giants fans would visit Las Vegas to see their teams, or that Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox followers would revel in making such a jaunt?

Extensive research by supporters of the Vegas project has revealed regular crowds of nearly 30,000 for baseball, with more than half of that coming from the city's impressive tourism industry.

Home, temporary home

If the Expos are going to temporarily play in San Antonio, while a baseball stadium is built in Las Vegas, someone forgot to notify Kyle Kirousis.

San Antonio, along with Monterrey, Mexico, has been mentioned as a possible site for the team while a $420-million, 40,000-seat, retractable-roof stadium is built behind Bally's and Paris Las Vegas.

If Vegas were to get the Expos, play would likely begin here at some point in the 2007 season. Cashman Field, home to the Triple-A 51s, has been unanimously ruled out as temporary housing.

San Antonio, and the Alamodome, recently missed out on playing host to the Big 12 Conference's basketball and football championships.

Kirousis, the Alamodome booking agent, said Wednesday that a former San Antonio mayor tried to stir up such talks about six months ago.

However, that subject went nowhere and hasn't been broached, to the best of his knowledge by anyone, since.

"No new developments," Kirousis told the Sun.

Anchors aweigh

Although the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va., continues to report that Washington, northern Virginia and Las Vegas are the leaders in the competition for the Expos, the group there isn't shying away from the battle.

The Norfolk Baseball Co., headed by William Somerindyke Jr. and Jason Osborne, has coordinated a public ticket drive for season-ticket and luxury-suite deposits, and it hopes to incorporate the Navy in its plan.

Norfolk is home to the largest naval base in the world.

A $292-million battleship gray stadium, with twin gun turrets that shoot fireworks and a Navy fighter jet just beyond the outfield wall, and a Naval nickname could be parts of that plan.

Somerindyke and Osborne, 26-year-old local businessmen who are both sons of Navy chiefs, recently made a 24-hour visit to the Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier on maneuvers a few hundred miles off the Atlantic coast.

"We took the trip because we want to incorporate the military into everything involving our franchise," Somerindyke told the Virginian-Pilot, "and we want to understand and appreciate what goes on with the 6,000 people on an aircraft carrier."

In a driving rain at night, they watched jet fighters take off and land.

"We stood out there and watched planes land on that small deck with winds gusting up to 50 miles per hour," Somerindyke said. "It was really impressive."

No shows for the Expos

Unlike a year ago, Portland officials have not planned to trek, en masse, to Safeco Field in Seattle this weekend to watch the Expos play the Mariners.

Last season, about 50 backers of Portland's effort to lure the Expos went on a coordinated trip to Safeco to show their support for the team. A spokesman for the Portland Baseball Group said 20 supporters, on individual terms, might visit Seattle this weekend.

Catch-22

The Baltimore Sun recently outlined the position that Washington and northern Virginia might find themselves, in regards to Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

Angelos, a successful attorney, has told plenty of people, including the Las Vegas Sun, that he would resist a team being relocated into territory that he claims for himself.

If, as D.C. and northern Virginia claim, the Orioles would not be affected by another team playing in their general vicinity, then maybe that would be the "most tangible indicator of the (inadequate) level of true, sustainable baseball interest in (the D.C./northern Virginia) area," according to the Baltimore Sun.

Baseball has failed twice in the District.

"The Expos would need to draw about 2 1/2 million fans a year to be successful," wrote the Baltimore Sun's Peter Schmuck, "yet D.C. baseball advocates contend that only a small fraction of that number is willing to put out any effort to see the team that's already in the region."

A Las Vegas GM

Expos general manager Omar Minaya recently told baseball's Web site that he would prefer to stay on with the club, no matter where it might land.

"Of course, I do," Minaya said. "Two years ago, we started to build this organization. ... We haven't embarrassed Major League Baseball with how we've run the organization, and that's from top to bottom.

"I hope that I stay as a general manager for many years to come because I've invested a lot of time in this organization. I hope we stay and put a plan in place and build what we already have."

archive