Bob DuPuy Agreement Quotations

Today's vote is a serious setback to all those in the Washington community who sought the return of a team to the nation's capital. I regret very much that D.C. officials have failed to honor the agreement they made when they successfully bid for the Expos to move to Washington. Baseball has no choice but to pursue arbitration so the terms of our original agreement can be honored and to begin to explore whatever options are available to us.

We have worked very hard to accommodate the requests from the Mayor and the Council that changed the terms of the agreement that brought the Montreal Expos to Washington. Because we believe in the future of Baseball in the nation's capital, we have signed a lease that honors the 2004 agreement, while conforming to the emergency legislation that the Council passed last month.

I'd like to have a vote on it at the November [owners'] meetings. There's no reason why we can't announce who we intend to sell the team to in conjunction with signing the lease. But it's very important that we sign a lease contemplated by the stadium agreement. We continue to negotiate and hope that this will quickly be resolved.

We are growing increasingly concerned about the District's ability to meet the agreed-upon December 31, 2005 deadline, by which date a number of critical tasks in the Baseball Stadium Agreement must be completed,

I regret very much that D.C. officials have failed to honor the agreement they made when they successfully bid for the Expos to move to Washington. Baseball has no choice but to pursue arbitration so the terms of our original agreement can be honored and to begin to explore whatever options are available to us.