THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 25, 1995 TAG: 9502250206
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
For a while Thursday, it seemed that Northern Virginia had its field of dreams, a major league baseball team.
Hampton Roads residents, many of whom trek to Baltimore to watch the Orioles, would have shared in the dream of attending games in a 45,000-seat stadium in Fairfax or Loudon County.
In The Washington Post, an aide to U.S. Sen. John Warner said a major league baseball official had promised an expansion team for Northern Virginia and that Warner had decided to abandon legislation removing baseball's antitrust exemption. In a denial, Warner said:
``When I met with the owners and the players, no promises were given nor were any requested. Consequently, there was no deal. I was not `bought,' I never have been and never will be.''
Reaction among many devout baseball fans was that, if he had been bought, it would have been the best deal anybody ever got for his constituents for a single vote.
Warner said in January that he was asked to cosponsor a bill on the antitrust issue as a result of the baseball strike. He declined.
During a forum on Feb. 7, he said he wouldn't support legislation to alter the antitrust exemption created by a 1922 Supreme Court decision.
Since 1988 he and local officials have been conferring, along with other congressmen, with baseball spokesmen on how to lure a team.
Team owners have visited sites. Two investor groups are pondering team names, colors and uniforms. The General Assembly passed bills to make it easier for the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority to finance and build a stadium.
The odds are that Northern Virginia, within two or three years, may be chosen for one of four expansion teams. So the dream may yet occur. When it does, Congress should require that 75 games be played in daylight outdoors. It would take Congress away from the Capitol with a consequent lessening of the flow of legislation, 70 percent of which tends to be baleful.
There is something beneficent about baseball in the sunshine. The healing sun draws winter from your bones and lulls the troubled mind. In the murmuring bleachers, there's a lovely lassitude broken by spurts of action on the diamond that unites spectators in roars of excitement.
There's time to savor exploits and space to talk, tell a story about pitcher Eppa Rixey from Culpeper who prized his Southern heritage.
Word got around you could get his goat by whistling ``Marching through Georgia,'' the Yankees' fight song. One day, during batting practice, a fellow on the other bench began whistling it, and Eppa fired the baseball into the dugout and scattered the players.
Why, somebody asked him later, did the song make him mad.
``That song doesn't make me mad,'' Eppa said. ``The thing that makes me mad is that they think they're making me mad.''
Try telling that story (Abe Goldblatt's favorite) during the rush of football or basketball. You can't. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Pitcher Eppa Rixey from Culpeper fired a baseball into the dugout
and scattered the opposing players.
by CNB