(From The New York Times)
Jan. 12, 2002
Abbott and Costello Might Be Familiar With This Routine
By MURRAY CHASS

Spring training begins a month from Tuesday, and Major League Baseball is spinning crazily out of control. Four teams can't be certain if they will even see spring training. Three of those four teams plus another team don't know who will own them when they begin spring training. Two owners don't know which team they will own, if any.

And none of this has anything to do with bank loans or negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. Negotiations? Lawyers for the players and the owners have spent two months on contraction, and they might as well be talking about words like can't and won't for all of the progress they have made.

Now members of Congress have jumped in, feet in their mouths first. Better it should be Abbott and Costello and who's on first.

Donald Watkins, who has money in his left pocket for a team and money in his right pocket for a new park for that team, wants to buy the Minnesota Twins. If he is successful, he will spare the Twins from contraction. If the Twins cannot be eliminated, Commissioner Bud Selig will have to select another team to seal in the history books.

The most likely replacement candidate is Tampa Bay, but it could also be the Florida Marlins. If it's the Marlins, what will happen with Jeffrey Loria's prospective purchase of them? Without playing a game, Loria could suffer a doubleheader loss: the Marlins and the Montreal Expos, the team he owns now, which is No. 1 on the contraction hit list.

John Henry could be a double loser, too. If he loses the Boston Red Sox, whom he had in his $660 million grasp, to Charles Dolan, the crafty Cablevision man, would Henry keep the Marlins, or would he still sell them to Loria?

If he were to sell to Loria, what would he do? Would he revive his talks with Disney for the Anaheim Angels, who have been said to have reneged on deals twice with him before he got into the Red Sox race?

Or would Henry simply retain his 1 percent share of the Yankees (Yankees holdings, now that the team is part of a larger outfit), which he has not sold in the three years he has owned the Marlins, and call off his deal to sell it to Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today?

If the commissioner designates the Devil Rays for demise, they will have only themselves to blame. If they had taken Watkins more seriously last summer when he was interested in them, he might have bought them before he knew the Twins could be available. Devil Rays, here today, gone tomorrow, never having won 70 games in a season. What an epitaph.

A Twisting Path

Early last season, Donald Watkins related, he saw a newspaper article that said the Devil Rays might be for sale. He found the report believable because as a banker with contacts throughout the banking industry he knew the club was trying to borrow a huge sum of money but with no success. Watkins, a billionaire from Birmingham, Ala., let the Devil Rays know he was interested, but they replied that they did not know if they were selling and don't call us, we'll call you.

On Aug. 8, they called; that is, J. P. Morgan, the investment firm, not the man, called. Yes, Watkins said, he remained interested, and he proceeded to fill out a Major League Baseball application, personal financial data and all. Watkins was instructed to communicate only with J. P. Morgan, not with the Devil Rays, not with baseball.

Watkins was so eager to get into baseball he sent periodic updates of his financial information. Each one, he said, enhanced his economic position. Sometime in October, Watkins saw a series of news articles about contraction, and Tampa Bay was listed as one of the candidates.

"I departed from the instructions," he said, "and wrote a letter to Commissioner Selig. I had spent a lot of time and money on it and was surprised to see Tampa Bay mentioned. About an hour after I faxed that letter, I heard from J. P. Morgan saying Tampa Bay was not one of the teams being considered. They said my information was on Selig's desk and I should be hearing something in the next couple of weeks. I never heard from them."

Vince Naimoli, the Devil Rays' managing partner, said through a spokesman, "I have never had any contact whatsoever with Donald Watkins." Watkins doesn't dispute that. It's possible that they will never have any contact. If time and legal rulings allow, Naimoli could be gone by the time Watkins joins the previously all- white club.

By November, Watkins had made public his interest in buying a team. Fans in Minnesota picked up on it faster than the Devil Rays had and zealously urged Watkins to buy the Twins. Watkins turned his attention to Minnesota, and with baseball's blessing he plans to call a Twins executive tomorrow to set up a meeting with Carl Pohlad, the owner, and his sons.

"The way I was treated by Tampa Bay surprised me," Watkins, 53, said, adding that he mentioned one particularly irritating aspect of that treatment in his meeting last Thursday with two baseball officials.

"There was a quote in a newspaper that they looked at my application and couldn't understand some of my financial information. If somebody felt the need to discuss my financial situation, they could at least have discussed it with me first. If they were unclear about something, they could have asked me about it. That was confidential information."

Watkins, a longtime lawyer who also owns an energy investment company, has a background filled with the country's post-1950's history. He grew up in Montgomery, Ala., and his family attended the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as it was known then, the church of Martin Luther King Jr.

"That was his first church," Watkins said. "We grew up with King, with the Abernathys, with Rosa Parks. We all knew each other. You can't come out of Montgomery as a child of the 50's and 60's and not be a child of the movement. Nobody knew anybody was going to be famous. Our families still stay in touch."