Major-league baseball could still return to the Washington region, filling the shoes of the Washington Senators after a 30-year absence.
Businessmen and baseball fans across the region, the District and Northern Virginia, have been jockeying for position as the home to any possible new team.
Arlington has been named a possible site in the past, but in a vote last week, the Arlington Civic Federation paraphrased Yogi Berra: "Include us out."
In a 59-23 vote at its March 5 meeting, the federation, made of representatives from civic associations and community groups around the county, said "No" to a baseball stadium situated in Arlington, north or south.
After pointing out shortcomings of possible locations, the resolution concludes, "The Federation urges elected officials, major league baseball and the Virginia Stadium Authority to focus their efforts on sites outside Arlington."
There was opposition to that resolution at the Federation meeting, from Arlington's Republicans and Democrats, and from the group supporting a Virginia-based stadium. But the federation's resolution did find a willing ear at the top level of county government.
"If baseball returns to the nation's Capitol, it should be in the nation's Capitol," County Board Chair Chris Zimmerman said.
<b>Principled Stand</b>
<bt>The Civic Federation's vote last Tuesday represented a public relations hurdle for the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority, the organization pushing to bring a major league team to Northern Virginia.
But the hurdle's not insurmountable, Brian Hannigan said. Hannigan, a spokesman for the Baseball Authority, called the Federation's vote "a ringing endorsement of the principle, 'Don't confuse me with the facts.'"
Federation delegates weren't looking at a real proposal, Hannigan said, but voting against an idea that's already outdated, a site proposed for a stadium in 1996 and rejected then.
What's worse, he said, the federation has now cut out its own input on the possibility of bringing baseball to Arlington. "They've marginalized themselves in this discussion, which is going to go ahead anyway," he said.
Jim Pebley, Civic Federation president, had one word for Hannigan: "Balderdash."
The federation knew what it was voting on, he said, it wasn't just blinded by history.
Instead, Pebley said, federation members looked at the shortage of available land in Arlington, and the county's business economy both north and south, and decided that Arlington didn't have room for baseball.
That's a view Zimmerman shares. "For the life of me I don't see where they would put it. I've been asking for years where they're going to put this," he said. A stadium would make economic sense in neighborhoods that produce little revenue for the county, but the only available land "is already contributing to the economy," he said.
<b>Seats at the Table</b>
<bt>Kevin Appel, one of Zimmerman's fellow Democrats in Arlington, doesn't share that view. Neither does Mike Lane, chair of the Arlington County Republican Committee.
They joined 21 other Civic Federation members in voting against the resolution against an Arlington stadium, calling the move premature.
"I ran [board member] Charles Monroe's campaign against Mike," Appel said. "It's nice to see us on the same side of the table here."
Appel, like Hannigan, questioned the reasoning behind federation members' decision.
"If it won't work, it won't work. But we need to take a realistic look, know the costs and the factors," he said, "rather than make a knee-jerk reaction. It was a silly thing."
Lane agreed with that assessment, especially a clause citing "security concerns" at south Arlington sites. "I think it made the Federation look frivolous and not serious," he said. "They were saying that security concerns in Arlington are different from DC, and that's preposterous."
<b>Rising in the South? </b>
<bt>Land around south Arlington, particularly in the vicinity of Pentagon City and Crystal City, could well be the strongest contender for a stadium site. A stadium would require easy access to highways and to transit systems, particularly Metrorail instead of Metrobus routes.
Pebley said that, given the limitations on possible sites for a stadium, federation members thought the authority already had a site in mind.
"They won't deny that they've settled on a site. They hired a designer to build a stadium," he said. "These things aren't modular."
The unwillingness to discuss specific sites under consideration added to opposition to a stadium in the county, he said.
Hannigan said that the authority had hired a design consultant. But that didn't mean designs were underway for a south Arlington site, he said. "Plans will not be site specific," he said. "They'll have to be flexible depending on whether the site is smaller and urban, or larger and suburban. There are a number of sites, in Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun."
Major League Baseball could decide as early as next season whether a team could move to Washington, he said, and the area would need to have a stadium site picked out by that time. So it makes sense to begin design work before a final site is selected, Hannigan said.
He also scoffed at problems with a south Arlington site.
"It's impractical to think that there won't be some additional development there," he said. "The question is, what's it going to be?"