The washington baseball club
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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THE WASHINGTON BASEBALL CLUB
About Us: Profile
Originally formed in 1999, the Washington Baseball Club, L.L.C., is a group of six general partners dedicated to returning the National Pastime to the Nation’s Capital.
In January 2002, WBC entered into an exclusive agreement with the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission to work together to bring Major League Baseball back to Washington, D.C. ...
WHAT IS THE WASHINGTON BASEBALL CLUB?
We are a group of Washingtonians dedicated to returning the national pastime to the Nation’s Capital. Our group did not come together to merely own a team. We came together to bring back a team to this city....
WHO IS IN THE WASHINGTON BASEBALL CLUB?
The group currently consists of six community and business leaders. They are:
Frederic V. Malek, Managing Partner, Chairman of Thayer Capital Partners and former partner in the Texas Rangers;
Franklin D. Raines, Chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae;
James V. Kimsey, Founding CEO and Chairman Emeritus of America Online;
Joseph E. Robert, Jr., Chairman and CEO of J.E. Robert Companies;
Stephen W. Porter, Senior Partner at Arnold & Porter; and
Paul Wolff, Senior Partner at Williams & Connolly....
WHAT IS THE WASHINGTON BASEBALL CLUB FOUNDATION?
To continue our long-standing commitment to the community, we are establishing a foundation whose mission will be to revitalize youth baseball and softball in Washington, D.C. The focus of the foundation will be to restore, build and improve baseball and softball fields and provide much-needed equipment and uniforms to teams....
HOW DO WE KNOW THAT A NEW TEAM WILL STAY HERE?
Our goal is not to just own a team, but to use baseball as a key for the economic revitalization of the District. We plan to make the baseball team a major part of the social and economic fabric of this city.
As members of this community, we strongly feel Washington is a terrific place for a baseball team – good for the city, good for major league baseball, and thus good for Washington.
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November 6, 2004
D.C. Baseball in Foul Territory
By Michael Wilbon, www.washingtonpost.com
I was front and center a few weeks ago on that triumphant afternoon at the City Museum when Mayor Anthony A. Williams announced the District had come to an agreement with Major League Baseball that would return the game here after a 33-year absence. Standing no more than 10 feet away, pledging her undying support, was Linda W. Cropp, the D.C. Council chairman. She took the microphone and screamed louder and went on longer than anybody. She was a baseball evangelist, spreading the gospel as if she were in the pulpit of a Baptist church on Sunday morning.
Now, after issuing her “new proposal” yesterday, it turns out that she is pretty much a complete fraud. While Williams is standing steadfast in the face of some predictable opposition, Cropp has turned her back on the very deal to which she gave her word. As a result, baseball in D.C. is in jeopardy.
The deal to bring the Expos here wasn’t to build a stadium anyplace, or someplace, or where Cropp believes it should be built. The deal is for a stadium to be built along a specific spot on the Anacostia waterfront.
And if I ran MLB I would call Williams and say, “The deal’s off the table. We’re not accepting your council chairman’s bait-and-switch idiocy. Do we have a deal or not? And if not, we’ll let the team play in RFK until we strike a deal with Las Vegas, or perhaps we’ll more fully explore our options in Northern Virginia. If you don’t get the stadium built where you promised, you don’t get the team. Period.”
After Cropp announced her betrayal, Williams said her move threatens to “blow this thing up,”....
Baseball coming to D.C. isn’t the most important thing about the Anacostia waterfront deal. It’s about turning that area, most of it simply blight, into something shining and inviting and productive. But Cropp and anybody else who lied to the mayor then and tries to change the deal now is threatening to undo that.
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Now, here’s more about these dedicated community and business leaders, and some of the bats they hang around with...
Frederick V. Malek – Chairman of Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington D.C. based merchant bank.
From The Washington Baseball Club:
Fred Malek is Chairman of Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington D.C. based merchant bank. Mr. Malek formed Thayer Capital Partners in 1993 to acquire operating companies of divisions of larger companies....
Thayer Capital and Mr. Malek led the 1995 acquisition of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, with Marriott International as a major equity partner. He was one of the three leaders in the acquisition of Northwest Airlines and is a director and major investor in Northwest Airlines, where he served as President and vice Chairman from late 1989 through 1991.
Earlier, Mr. Malek led with management the acquisition of CB Richard Ellis (formerly Coldwell Banker), the largest real estate services company in the United States, where he served as Co-Chairman until 1996.
Mr. Malek also is Chairman and CEO of Thayer Hotel Investors, a large equity partnership that purchases, owns, and operates hotels valued at $2 billion in the United States. He serves on the boards of several other large corporations including Automatic Data Processing, Inc., and FPL Group (Florida Power and Light)....
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Not a Crook: Fred Malek
This former Nixon aide likes to make lists – of political benefactors and, most notoriously, of Jews
By L. J. Davis, Mother Jones
Fred Malek received his 15 minutes of fame in the 1970s as deputy director of CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President), the Nixon White House operation behind Watergate. Unlike many of his former associates, Malek walked out of Washington.
After lying low for a time, he made his political comeback as a leader in the Republican Party in the late 1980s, only to resign as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1988 when an ugly incident from his past came to light:
At Nixon’s behest, he had drawn up a list of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where Nixon thought a “Jewish cabal” was out to get him.
Nonetheless, Malek rebounded yet again in 1992 as campaign manager for the Bush/Quayle ticket.
Now a GOP fundraiser, Malek once wrote a most explicit description of political influence. In a briefing paper on the federal budget to Nixon in 1972, Malek asserted:
“All major grants and construction decisions for the next fiscal year should be reviewed prior to the finalization of the budgets to ensure to the extent possible they impacted on politically beneficial areas.”
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From American Friends of the Czech Republic ...
Fred Malek was raised in a middle class ethnic area near Chicago. He won an appointment to West Point and post graduation served as an airborne ranger army officer, attached to a Special Forces (green beret) group in Vietnam in the early 60s.
Following his Army tour, Mr. Malek has had success in four careers encompassing corporate management, government, politics, and finance. As a corporate executive, Fred served Marriott Corporation for 14 years rising to President of Marriott Hotels and Resorts where he was responsible for more than $3 billion in sales, 70,000 workers, and a quadrupling of profits. He later served as President and Co-CEO and then Vice Chairman of Northwest Airlines where he led major improvements in performance.
Mr. Malek has played a key role in government over the past 30 years. He served as Deputy Under Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under Elliot Richardson, as Special Assistant to the President, and as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In his White House role, he was responsible for recruiting Cabinet level officials, pioneered professional executive search in government, and led a government wide effort to improve government management....
Mr. Malek received his Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, and he and his wife of 39 years have two children.
He currently serves on the boards of several university and other non-profit institutions....
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Origins of the G.W. Bush-Carlyle-Nazi Axis
By Alex Constantine
Even loyal conservatives must admit that George Bush, Jr. is a strange bird. Texans have never truly accepted him as one of their own. “Like his father,” the UK’s Observer jeered in 1994, “his home-grown credentials are questioned.”
In general, the natives were somewhat uneasy about the occasional bizarre antic – like the first day of a local dove shoot, highlighted by Bush bagging a protected songbird, not the designated target....
“No real Texan would have done that!” barked then Governor Ann Richards.
But then, in the mid-90s, the Texas political landscape shifted radically, the old order crumbling and a home-grown right-wing mutation plowing through the crust....
But Bush still didn’t quite fit the ticket, some Texans felt. True, his business was petroleum. But shortly after George, Jr. joined the board of Harken Oil, BCCI, the international bank that parlayed middle eastern oil profits into political influence, not to mention engaging in child prostitution and arming Iraq, dropped a number of lucrative drilling contracts in his lap....
Texans were left to ponder the question: Why in tarnation was Bush, Jr. in business with the scandal-ridden Shiek Khalifah bin-Salmon al-Khalifah, the ruling emir of Bahrain? In 1990, the Shiek’s name surfaced on a list of primary shareholders in BCCI’s parent company, BCCI Holdings in Luxembourg.
Bush had pulled strings to throw the contracts to Harken. In return, Harken Oil helped BCCI investment bankers gain a foothold in the U.S.
When the Iraqgate scandal broke, W. attempted to separate himself from it, blaming a former aide who had gone to work for BCCI and resigned when the press caught a whiff of the deal....
The W.S. Journal looked into Bush’s business dealings and found a “complex pattern” of provocative personal and financial ties, but Bush refused to respond to questions....
In March, 1995, the regents of the University of Texas, at the behest of Governor Bush, invested $10 million with the Carlyle Group, a merchant in the District of Columbia.
Carlyle was chaired by Frank Carlucci, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense, and, since 1989, “a darling of the corporate sector,” per the L.A. Times.
Carlucci sits on the board of numerous mega-corporations, including Bell Atlantic, Ashland Oil and the Kaman Corporation. Carlyle’s sole outside partner is the Mellon Family. Richard Darmon, economic advisor to Bush, Sr., was on the board. So was James Baker III, former secretary of state. These investments raised a ruckus in the business press.
Seems G.W. himself had long-standing business ties to the Carlyle Group, a firm bonded financially with the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, he was granted a seat on the board of Carlyle by former Nixon aide/bagman Fred Malek, a Carlyle advisor....
Fred Malek, mind you, was the CREEP deputy director, who, prompted by Nixon’s trembling belief that “a Jewish cabal” in the Bureau of Labor Statistics was ben on his destruction, made up a list of Jews in the bureau. Malek was made deputy director of the Republican National Committee by George Bush, Sr., an old friend.
It was Malek who organized an “ethnic coalition” of Nazis in August 1988, the Heritage Groups Council, that included the likes of Laszlo Pastor (a Hungarian-American, former fascist Arrowcross death squad officer and junior diplomatic envoy to Berlin under Hitler), and Father Florian Galdau (a priest, Vatican P-2 member and New York leader of the Iron Guard, a latter day version of the old SS-run Romanian terror organization.)
Once again, the Bush family distanced itself from scandal. The clan pled ignorance, even though Bush, Sr. had cherry-picked Malek for the job....
On February 2, 1990, USA Today’s Tom Squitieri wrote that “four key Republican activists, ousted from George Bush’s 1988 campaign amid charges of anti-Semitic or pro-fascist links, are back working for the party.” These included Fred Malek and Phil Guarino, another pro-Nazi P2 lodger.
George W. Bush ran spin control for this father’s 1988 presidential campaign, and when the Nazi scandal broke ever-so-briefly in the media, GW protected his father by urging the European fascists to resign from the Heritage Council....
From http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/carlyle-bush-osb.html
Goldman Sachs - A politically connected investment bank.
June 23, 2003
D.C. baseball group hires Goldman Sachs
By Jeff Clabaugh, Washington Business Journal
The Washington Baseball Club, whose backers include Thayer Capital Partners Chairman Frederic Malek, America Online co-founder James Kimsey and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, says it has hired Goldman Sachs as adviser.
The New York-based investment banking firm will provide strategic advice and financial services for the group, which is trying to buy the Montreal Expos and move the team to Washington.
Goldman Sachs has an extensive background in sports franchise transactions. It advised John Henry and Tom Werner on their purchase of the Boston Red Sox and New England Sports Network, advised the NFL on its 1998 sale of the Cleveland expansion franchise and has been involved in various franchise sales including the New York Jets, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Blues.
Last year, the Washington Baseball Club signed a deal with the DC Sports & Entertainment Commission for exclusive negotiating rights on a lease for a D.C.-based baseball franchise to play at RFK Stadium.
© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.
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Originally posted: February 1, 2004
Last Update July 15, 2008, by The Catbird