Baseball poised to make its move

Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 | 10:06 a.m.

On the day Major League Baseball's executive council met for three hours in Milwaukee and moved the Montreal Expos closer than ever to a transfer to Washington, D.C., the point man of the Las Vegas effort to lure the team met with mayor Oscar Goodman, who canceled his weekly news conference in favor of a baseball update.

Mike Shapiro, a San Francisco-area consultant and a spokesman for Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment LLC, said he did not deliver the final word.

"I gave him an update on where things stand," Shapiro said. "I wanted the mayor to be completely aware of the situation."

Washington has received an abundance of attention recently as the likely destination for the Expos, but the Associated Press reported that nothing final was decided in Milwaukee.

The report said that commissioner Bud Selig told the council he would move forward to conclude a deal as quickly as possible, and that Selig left a clear impression with the council members that those negotiations would be with the downtown Washington group.

One of the chief holdups remains Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, one of the eight executive council members. He has not wavered about his contention that a team in Washington would infringe upon his territory.

"Mr. Angelos' concerns," MLB president Bob DuPuy told the AP, "have always been a serious issue."

And the D.C. Council faces a tight window in which it can approve public stadium funding. Las Vegas, with LVSE's plan to privately finance the construction of a $420 million stadium, is viewed as a fallback candidate.

Shapiro declined to reveal the specifics of what he told Goodman during their one-hour meeting, and Goodman could not be reached for comment.

"I know he's seen the press reports, and I just wanted him to have all the information that I had at my disposal," Shapiro said. "It's what I considered to be an accurate report on the status of the discussions and where baseball is."

Shapiro flew to Las Vegas early Thursday, counted the meeting with Goodman as one of his many baseball-related duties for the day and was home for a late dinner.

"As a matter of courtesy, I have regularly updated the mayor," Shapiro said. "He's certainly been outstanding in the effort as the vision behind all of this, and he certainly deserves to be kept up to date.

"And I enjoy the mayor's company. He's a fascinating guy."