Who Are The Two?

Rick Dodge, an assistant city manager of St. Petersburg, Fla., has worked for 10 years to bring a major league baseball team to the Gulf Coast of Florida. Now, like hopeful civic officials in five other U.S. cities, he faces one last maddening week of waiting. "I'm trying to keep my anxiety level lower than my excitement level," says Dodge. On June 12, baseball commissioner Fay Vincent is expected to announce which two cities will be awarded franchises—at a fee of $95 million each—as the two expansion teams that will join the National League in the 1993 season. For Dodge the anticipation is unbearable. "What do I do when I go home at night?" he says. "I drink. I pray."

The cocktails are going down and the prayers going up in each of the six cities on the National League's list: Buffalo, Denver, Miami, Orlando, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Washington, D.C. The expansion will be baseball's first since the American League added Toronto and Seattle in 1977 and, according to Vincent, the last in this century. The verdict will be rendered after the four-man expansion committee, headed by Douglas Danforth, chairman of the Pirates, makes its recommendation to baseball's 26 owners shortly before June 12. The committee's recommendation is expected to be readily ratified by the owners.

A few of the details of expansion were expected to be clarified early this week, when Vincent was to announce his decisions on two subjects. First, he was to determine whether American League teams will receive some of the $190 million in franchise fees. Sources have speculated that the American League will get one third of the money and the National League two thirds. Second, Vincent was to announce whether American League teams will contribute players to the pool for the expansion draft. It has been predicted that the American League will provide one third of the players.

But there has been no official tip-off as to who the lucky two will be. In fact, one committee insider says that the decision "could switch directions more than once in the next week." So the guessing game continues. "All six cities did outstanding jobs [in their presentations to the expansion committee]," Danforth says. That's about as much as you'll get from the diplomatic Danforth. The committee's efforts to guard its secrets would do the CIA proud, but they have left a swirl of questions to be pondered. Here are 15.

1. Who will win? The clear leaders down the stretch are Miami, Denver and Tampa-St. Pete, in that order. Orlando and Washington are behind by six runs in the bottom of the ninth; Buffalo trails by 10.

2. If Miami gets a franchise, can fans buy highlight tapes at the ballpark from the Blockbuster Video concession stand? Yes, if Wayne Huizenga says so. Huizenga is the chairman of Blockbuster Entertainment, the nation's largest video chain retailer; he is also the sole financier in the Miami effort to land a team. In the past two years, he has purchased 15% of the Miami Dolphins and 50% of Joe Robbie Stadium, home of the Dolphins and, he hopes, future home of a Miami baseball team. The $95 million entry fee will barely dent Huizenga's assets, and that's one reason baseball likes him. The powers that be in baseball like having one man in charge, and Huizenga is definitely in charge in Miami.

3. What's the connection between Blockbuster Video and Danforth? Carl Barger is president of the Pirates. Barger also is on Blockbuster's board of directors and owns 102,000 shares of its stock. Barger and Huizenga have been friends for 20 years. Barger's law firm has done work for Blockbuster. Blockbuster is the exclusive retailer for Major League Baseball Home Video. Blockbuster is a sponsor on ESPN, which broadcasts baseball. Given that Barger works for Danforth and that Danforth has an awful lot to say about who gets a team, isn't this relationship rather cozy? "Mr. Barger would do nothing to risk the integrity of baseball or his relationship with baseball," says Don Smiley, vice-president of South Florida Big League Baseball, Inc., which operates Huizenga's campaign. "Mr. Barger's being on the board is neutral, at best, and possibly a negative, because the relationship has to be kept at arm's length."

A negative? Right, and Ryne Sandberg will be left unprotected in the expansion draft. While there's nothing illicit about the Huizenga-Barger-Danforth connection, it's not a negative for Miami.

4. Since the NBA already has the Miami Heat, will the baseball team be named the Miami Rain? Actually, it will be named the Miami Humidity so that local fans can say, "It's not the Heat that's so bad, it's the Humidity." But it's Miami's rain that prompts Dodge, the competitor from the other side of Florida, to point out that the Class A Miami Miracle had a total of 49 rainouts in 1988, '89 and '90, while the average for major league teams in those years was two rainouts per season. Smiley cites a study showing that on Atlanta's 81 home dates in 1990 it got a half inch less rain than Miami did on those same dates, and the Braves had only four rainouts.

Moreover, says one American League owner, a team can't play in Florida's stifling summer heat without a domed park. It doesn't matter, he says, if the Miami team plays 90% to 95% of its games at night, as it plans to do. The theory is that Miami would suffer the plight of the Texas Rangers, who every year seem to wilt in the high heat of Arlington Stadium.