Tuesday, June 26, 2007

My Backstory on Bringing MLB to Northern Virginia

One of the subjects that I've most wanted to write about here at South Beach Hoosier, and will at much greater length in the not too-distant future, complete with photos and presentation materials, are my ruminations about my personal involvement with two grassroots groups I was very involved in with both my head as well as my heart: the Arlington Baseball Coalition and Virginians for Baseball.

The effort to bring MLB baseball to Northern Virginia was a campaign -ultimately, a failed one- that I was deeply involved in on two separate occasions, over a period of ten years, until returning to South Florida in late 2003.

Despite the vast resources of the Northern Virginia area, both in terms of a highly desirable and well-educated population, and amazing demographic profiles and con$umer $pending pattern$, not to mention, the amazing amount of sheer talent and brain power of some of the most enthusiastic NOVA supporters -who wanted to see MLB relocate the Expos- of the Collins ownership group, led by Bill Collins, continually failed to develop anything even remotely like a logical and comprehensive marketing strategy.
That failure, shared my MANY people other than just Mr. Collins, was systematic and multi-level.
At its most basic level, they failed to take into account completely predictable human behavior: the determined efforts of a smart and organized opposition, particularly the failure to publicly acknowledge the oppostition of certain powerful Washington, D.C. parties, both private and within local and state governments.
Except in our case, we were fighting a two-front war: one against the folks who wanted a team in the District, and the second against various neighborhood groups -and pseudo-groups- in NOVA that didn't want a team near them, their homes or business, for reasons that ranged from the serious to the banal, despite their own admission that they were already there for the very same reason we wanted to be -great proximity to mass transit via the D.C. MetroRail.
(Among other notables associated with Mr. Collins' group were Mark Warner, before he was elected Virginia's governor in 1999, as well as veteran sportscaster James Brown, then with CBS-Sports, and a beloved, longtime Washington presence, in front and behind the camera.)
You can't simply ignore your opponents just because you want to give the impression of an inevitable victory, a lesson that shouldn't be lost on other well-intentioned South Florida civic groups trying to cobble together a winning coalition in an area like ours on transportation issues, where everyone's used to putting their parochial concerns above others in order to be heard.
Which Sounds like something that some of the Kendall groups that Transit Miami has been writing about lately.)

This failure to develop a simple, logical and comprehensive coalition of interest groups dedicated to the common goal of getting MLB back to the DC area, and to Northern Virginia specifically, showed a lack of common sense that was often breath-taking, I'm sorry to say.
Yet nobody ever seemed interested in adapting what we'd learned over time to the overall plan, so we kept making ther same mistakes over and over again.
Ouch!!!

Since the Harvard Business Review is clearly unlikely to memorialize their failed marketing campaign, it looks like it falls upon me to describe how you fail when you have the largest untapped media market in the country.
I'll also delve into the larger role of how the Washington Post, thru their Editorial Page pronouncements and curious story selection and placement, helped kill Northern Virgina's effort, in favor of the one The Post always favored.
That would've been one in The District, proper, and preferably, with a large minority participation, even if by by political/sports celebs like Colin Powell or Franklin Raines, then the head of Fannie Mae
Which is to say, men with nothing even remotely close to the baseball pedigree of the Collins Group, whose family had long been involved with minor league baseball.
In fact, it was at an early Minor League Baseball Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill in the early '90's where I first met Mr. Collins, his father and sister, all part of the collective effort over the years.
Those meetings on The Hill were chaired by then-NY congressman Sherwood Boehlert, one of the smartest and nicest persons I met in my 15 years in Washington, whose congressional district included Cooperstown.
Until I start anew, though, let me leave you with something to chew on: excerpts from two emails of mine from 2005.
The first was one I sent to a very talented writer in May of 2005, who'd written me earlier seeking some info on a matter that I was deeply involved with, and I wanted to connect some dots on the issue just to show him what was percolating out-of-sight.
The second email is an excerpt from a December 2005 email I sent to some knowledgable
friends around the country, who all had a connection to Washington, D.C. or baseball to some degree, and all of whom were also all-too-familiar with the behind-the-scenes manuvering and posturing then going on in the nation's capitol to get a foothold, however that could be accomplished.
And then, finally, the Washington Post finally started doing some hard-hitting stories on the shenanigans at Fannie Mae, whose head was one of the supposed stalking horses for a baseball team in Washington proper, and thus, the opposition for the groups that I was working with
___________________________________________________________
27 May 2005
re Colin Powell: How much does a Teflon mannequin cost these days?
Dear X:

For years one of the principal reasons I've turned to your stories on a consistent basis has been that your sensibility and interests closely seem to mirror my own, a comment that friends have constantly told me after I've turned them on via email to one of your funny, prescient articles that ask the questions nobody else will ask.
Except this time, your column on Powell, good as it was, hardly even begins to scratch the surface on what's been afoot in DC over the past few years in the effort to bring MLB to the capitol area.
Allow me to connect the dots on some things that you don't know about, many of which are still galling and exasperating to me months and years after the fact because of my own long-time involvement in trying to bring MLB to Northern Virginia.

Where to start....
About two years ago, I was in the lobby of the Army-Navy Bldg. on Eye St., which as some one like you knows full well is the home of the New York Times' Washington Bureau.
As it happens, I have a ton of friends there at the paper and at the law firms there, as well as with former Minneapolis Star-Tribune folks who used to be there.
(It's where my copy of Daily variety was delivered, just across the street from the MPAA- the Motion Picture Association of America.)
Late one afternoon, just after quitting time, I was talking to a bunch of my friends in the lobby, most of whom were African-American and either Times writers, editors or administration people. Not surprisingly, gieven what we'd be going back and forth about for awhile, the topic soon turned to the charade of what "black mannequin" Fred Malek would prop in his window for window dressing in order to co-opt both the DC City Council MLB and get the franchise.
FYI: I was VERY, VERY involved with the Northern Virginia effort tragically led my Bill Collins and his Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
I personally realized many years ago that he was far from the perfect vessel to bring a team to the area. Personally, I favored someone who was clearly intelligent, and personable if not charismatic, favoring someone like former VA Lt. Gov. Don Beyer of McLean or Gov. Mark Warner -who hadn't been elected yet- who's from Alexandria, since Collins was, I hate to say this, a bit of a sad sack in person.
(Many people called him "Grover Cleveland" for reasons that are obvious when you see him.)
Worst moment: We're in the penthouse of a very nice Arlington hotel near Pentagon City that's full of good food and drinks, and sports a spectacular 360 degree view of the area, including DC, for a press conference that announcing some new investors, as well as the latest on the Collins Group's efforts to lure MLB to NOVA.
The reporters make quick work of the food, as expected, and after a terrific video narrated by James Brown of CBS Sports -a minority investor, along with a former Redskin whose name escapes me now!- you'd think this is when you turn on the hard-court press schmoozing, right?
Yet instead of doing that, the presentations are so leaden and cardboard -what is that weird combination called exactly?- that the attention of most of the men in the room was not on Collins or the members of his group, who, sadly, didn't realize like I did that you need to tell a more compelling hook and story than just 'Here's our new video that MLB just got... MLB tells us to be patient... Nope!
Though we'd spent lots of time and effort to make this information as accessible as possible, and had a real story to tell, the Channel 7 intern who had been assigned to event, a gorgeous blonde from FSU who looked straight out of a film noir flick, commanded everyone's attention.
These suits were no competition.
As The Sports Junkies would say, it was a "debacle."
_________________________________________________________________
Monday Dec. 5th, 2005
Connecting the dots on some recent baseball matters:

So, former DC man of the moment Franklin Raines is going to use some of his ill-gotten loot
to be a partner in one of the DC baseball groups, http://www.baseballindc.com/, i.e the Colin Powell, Darrell Green & Vernon Jordan group that didn't put up any real money?
So predictable.
Couldn't the Malek group at least make sure that the financial numbers on Raines' bio on the group's website were accurate? They sound fishy to me, given what we've discovered thru the congressional investigations that unmasked the phony numbers.

More than ten years ago, when I was very involved in the original Bill Collins' group effort to get a MLB team for Northern Virgina, I knew that no matter what, a character like Malek would still be around until the bitter end, no matter how cheap and transparent his efforts were, despite the fact that the Collins family already owned several well-regarded minor league teams.
(I'd met his father and sister at a Capitol Hill meeting of the Minor League Baseball Caucus in the early '90's, when the subject of MLB's antitrust exemption was being discussed -again.)

Even as late as the fall of 2003, when I left DC and returned to South Florida, Malek would never say publicly how much money his group would pony up towards stadium construction, while the Collins group was always willing to say that they'd do at least $100 million or one-third, whichever was greater, towards a $300-400 million stadium.
That the Washington Post's reporters never pinned him down on such a very basic question was a never-ending source of frustration to me, given the Post's clear desire for a MLB team to be located within DC proper, and not in the Northern Virginia suburbs, where most of the area's growing and affluent population -and baseball fans-actually lived.
The Collins Group, which then included present-VA Governor Mark Warner, FOX Sports' James Brown and a prominent ex-Redskin among many others, once held a great newser atop an Arlington penthouse hotel along the main Jefferson Davis Hwy. commercial strip on the way out to Reagan National Airport.
Our intent was simply to take the talk of getting a team out of the abstract and show in a very tangible way, the wonderful panoramic view of The National Mall and the monuments and NOVA from an ARLINGTON stadium site p.o.v., and how that would look on TV.
(Since I lived in Arlington at the time, and used the Metro everyday to and from work in downtown DC, this could've become the standard for combining future stadiums, transportation and a sense of public place -and be somewhere that people went even when nothing is scheduled, like the area near Camden Yards during the winter.)

The DC TV stations dutifully sent camera crews, but undercut us by sending mostly "fluff" reporters to the event, not sports people or political reporters, so they were ill-prepared to ask the kind of good, meaty questions that would actually get us -and them- much airtime.
For one of the few times, we actually provided a really great spread of food and drinks, and after some great state-of-the-art multi-media presentations, esp. James Brown's, we were really looking forward to schmoozing and spinning the crowd with facts and figures that would help us get our message out to the local audience, to undercut the Post's long-standing and conscious cold-water treatment of MLB in NOVA.
Unfortunately, most of the people there, 99% male, ended up paying closer attention to the drop-dead gorgeous, blonde ABC-7 -WJLA- intern from FSU, than they were to anything we were saying or showing them in our carefully prepared handouts.
After the prepared remarks, unaccustomed as most of the TV people there were to being at events where they had to engage in a certain amount of give and take with the participants, which sports or political reporters would be accustomed to, they either ran out the doors, or hung around demolishing the food and drinks and staring at the intern.
That was our Waterloo.
"I was defeated, you won the war..."

In a later conversation with the Ch. 7 cameraman, he told me that the intern's appearance -wish I'd written down her name!- often caused a commotion at events, and that for those reasons and many others he didn't want to get into at the time, most of the female reporters at the station didn't like having her around with them when they were covering a story.
Given the Marlins' pathetic and unprofessional attempts to get a baseball stadium down here since their World Series victory two years ago, from NOT having a savvy professional lobbyist in Tallahassee at important times -per Hank Goldberg's comments on his WQAM radio show- to not even having the support of a majority of the local members of the state House and Senate when you need THEIR help, it's sometimes a case of too much deja vu for me to stomach.
___________________________
Washington Post
New Paths for Mortgage Giants
Old Way of Doing Business Will Not Work Anymore For Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
By Annys Shin
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 5, 2005
Struggling through the aftermath of multibillion-dollar accounting scandals, officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say their most difficult decisions may lie ahead. With stiffer competition from other companies and the changing tastes of home buyers in the types of loans they want, the companies face a choice between moving into riskier types of investing and acknowledging to stockholders that their potential for growth is limited.
In either case, company officials say, the business model that has generated record profit in recent years -- buying standard 30-year mortgages from banks so bankers would have more money to lend -- must change.
"Where in the olden days, you had a choice of selling your mortgage to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, in the future, there are lots of alternatives," a fact that has prompted a search for ways to diversify, Fannie Mae chief executive Daniel H. Mudd said in a recent interview.
The companies' options include becoming more deeply involved in the adjustable-rate mortgages that many consumers have preferred in recent years, financing more multifamily developments, and changing the standards for granting mortgages to take more risks with consumers who have spotty credit records.
The companies are even concerned about sustaining their staple business -- bundling mortgages into securities that are sold to investors throughout the world -- now that large institutions such as Countrywide Home Loans Inc., Lehman Brothers Inc. and Bear Stearns & Co. have moved into it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's share of the mortgage-backed-securities business has fallen from more than 60 percent in 2000 to around 40 percent this year, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.
District-based Fannie Mae and McLean-based Freddie Mac are two of the area's largest and most visible businesses, employing more than 8,000 in the region.
"The challenge for us is to reassert our presence in those areas where we've lost a bit of competitive advantage," said Patricia L. Cook, Freddie Mac's executive vice president for investment and capital markets.
The companies have not faced such fundamental questions about their underlying business model since the 1980s, when the collapse of the savings and loan industry under billions of dollars in bad debt pushed Fannie Mae into the red.
The current dilemma, in contrast, follows an era of explosive earnings growth at both firms, which helped turn a pair of bread-and-butter, government-chartered mortgage finance companies into high-performing growth stocks and prompted Fannie Mae chief executive Franklin D. Raines to promise Wall Street similar results far into the future. The companies' earnings, it was later disclosed, were inflated through accounting techniques that masked some investment losses.
Top executives, including Raines, were forced out, and the companies had to remove a combined $16 billion in profit from their books. Freddie Mac officials say they are nearing the point where they can produce reliable financial results. Fannie Mae is further behind and remains the subject of several federal investigations.
As they emerge from those crises, executives say part of their post-scandal life is to set more realistic expectations. Fannie Mae's stock is down about 30 percent this year, closing Friday at $47.99 a share. Freddie Mac's share price is off by slightly over 7 percent for the year and ended the week at $62.90.
"We've transitioned from growth to a value stock," Cook said. "The investment and analyst community appropriately expects us to be getting back to business."
The companies are also trying to cope with a mortgage industry much freer in its lending and much more likely to hold mortgages in-house for longer periods and with consumers more willing to take on riskier, adjustable-rate loans to keep their monthly payments down.
Fannie Mae, founded during the Great Depression to keep the home mortgage market liquid, and Freddie Mac, chartered in 1970 to compete, built their businesses around the fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage and a more conservative banking climate. Their presence, as a source of cash and a standard-setter for how to rate mortgage applicants, encouraged banks to lend money. Lenders could initiate loans and pocket the fees, confident that as long as the borrower met Fannie Mae's or Freddie Mac's standards, they could resell the loans to one of them, get their capital back, and make another loan.
The companies tended to shy away from delving too deeply into adjustable-rate and other unconventional mortgages, regarding them as too risky. Such loans, however, have soared in popularity and now account for more than 30 percent of U.S. home mortgages issued in 2004, said Dale Westhoff, Bear Stearns's senior managing director of mortgage research.
In contrast, loans that conform to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's basic guidelines -- the companies cannot, for example, accept loans of more than $417,000 because their basic mission is to support middle- and low-income housing -- have fallen from more than 62 percent of loans issued in 2003 to less than 36 percent of loans issued this year, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.
"So much of the new mortgages don't fit into their framework," said William C. Apgar Jr., a former assistant housing and urban development secretary now with Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "Fannie and Freddie did a big service taking a relatively unorganized system and saying, 'If you present a mortgage of this type, we can bundle them together and sell them to investors.' Now the flow of product is so much more complex and requires so much information," he said.
"Fannie and Freddie haven't figured out a way to get into that segment of the market," Apgar said. "They're constrained because of their concern about how well they can manage that risk."
Demand for adjustable-rate mortgages has begun to taper off lately as interest rates have risen. But housing finance experts say adjustable-rate mortgages are here to stay.
"It's unlikely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will ever see the market shares they saw in the early 2000s," Westhoff said. "We will continue to see a higher share of adjustable-rate mortgages than we've seen historically."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not willing to let the market pass them by. Executives of both companies argued that they will have to adapt to fulfill their government-chartered mission to keep money flowing into the housing market.
"As we look at our business, we realize we have a special role to fulfill in the market," Mudd said. "Various strategies we may consider clearly need to be examined in terms of our mission to support the market and help low- and middle-income families." Mudd said that after the firm puts its accounting problems behind it, it will "participate in more markets with more products... and more flexible products for people with a credit blemish on their record and for first-time minority home buyers."
Freddie Mac already has stepped up its investment in adjustable-rate mortgages, although about 80 percent of its holdings still are long-term, fixed-rate loans.
As the firms look for new ways to grow, both will have to be careful not to grow too much. Their investment portfolios, which grew rapidly in the 1990s, were a major source of the accounting violations at both companies. Congress is considering legislation that would give a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac varying levels of authority to scale back the size of their holdings. A Senate proposal would limit the kinds of assets they can hold.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already been forced to become smaller to satisfy regulatory requirements, shedding a combined $200 billion in portfolio holdings.
"The market is so competitive that even if our favored and friendliest customer sees us as being off by a [tenth of a] point, they're going to sell the business to somewhere else," Mudd said.
"We've got to build the company to manage that and be ready for it."
_________________________________
Baseball and the District: Dancing With Wolves
By Mike Wise
November 26, 2005

The home stretch is upon the men who want to own Washington's baseball team, and this is how they look plodding toward the post:
Ted Lerner has become more reclusive than Howard Hughes, as accessible as Thomas Pynchon or J.D. Salinger. (Does anyone know what Lerner looks like? When he was last seen?) I know baseball told everyone to stay mum, but this man has duct-taped his lips. His bid was probably air mailed from Guam.
Jeff Smulyan can be seen grinning in celluloid, campaigning harder than John Kerry. The Indianapolis media mogul is so desperate to erase the portrayal of himself as the outsider, he returned my call. Soon enough, he'll be on stage with Bruce Springsteen in a barn jacket.
And Fred Malek? Poor Fred Malek. He sent Colin Powell last week to lobby the D.C. Council on his group's behalf. Imagine the indignity for such a great American with just a infinitesimal financial stake in Malek's group: One minute, you're addressing the United Nations on matters of global security, the next, you're at Corner Bakery with Jack Evans and Anthony Williams. Very disconcerting.
Fortunately, it's almost over. And this is how it will most likely go down: The penny-wrangling between the District and Major League Baseball should end in about a week, the final details of a lease for a new stadium to be worked out.
By Friday, Stan Kasten, the former Braves president, will have met with Bud Selig and formally be told, "Join forces with Lerner because we all know your group is toast."
Smulyan's group will also meet with Selig, and the commissioner will then make his final call. Within two weeks, at the latest, the Nationals will no longer be on the baseball public-assistance plan. They'll have a real live owner, not to mention the final touches on plans for a new stadium. This is just a hunch, but it will probably be announced at a joint press conference.
Which rich guy should it be? Only Bud knows.
Reading Selig, the only tea leaf in baseball that matters, is akin to living your life by horoscope: You hear what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. Beyond the rhetoric, here is what Selig is weighing in a two-, maybe three-horse race, depending whether you're in the camp of Smulyan or Malek.
(By the way, Malek's big supporter, the lame-duck mayor, has really come up small on this issue. While baseball was trying to sew up the lease deal, Williams left town. Williams has tethered his legacy to the economic redevelopment of Washington, and for more than a year baseball has been his baby. It's time he was there to see it grow up.)
Lerner is purported to have the inside track for two reasons. One, he is of D.C., which, perception-wise, means he loves Washington too much to move the Nationals. Two, baseball is happy he adhered to its secrecy request. With the way he has comported himself in this campaign, Lerner is someone baseball feels could carry the ownership banner without making a spectacle of himself. If a baseball man like Kasten is added to the mix, well, that erases the inexperience factor.
Smulyan is still in the running for several reasons. Cold-calling, grabbing everyone he can, he has enlisted a number of local investors, who happen to be black. They include Alfred Liggins, Rodney Hunt and Jeffrey Thompson, who brought along two of Joe Gibbs's former players, Art Monk and Charles Mann. Including Eric Holder and Bill Jarvis, Smulyan's group of African-American owners would represent the largest minority ownership in baseball, some $50 million. And Selig wants to champion diversity at the highest levels of the game. Further, some feel he has the backing of old friend Jerry Reinsdorf, the man Selig charged with assembling the cast of buyers.
Smulyan's ownership history in Seattle hurts him (cash-strapped and hamstrung by a stadium lease, he sold the team in 1992), but at least he's been there.
Any vote to move the team would be taken by the club's Washington owners, not Smulyan. Smulyan has removed himself from the equation just to make sure people believe him when he says he is not the second coming of Bob Short, who moved the Senators some 30 years ago.
"If you believe nothing I've ever said, let me say this: Indianapolis is never going to get baseball," Smulyan said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The value of the team is in Washington. Why would someone spend $450 million to buy a team in the fifth-largest media market and the area with the country's second- or third-most disposable income and then move it? Nobody is that dumb. Not even me.
"I'll buy a home there, I'll be there. Nobody will work harder than we will."
Take it easy, Senator. We know you want to be president.
Malek's group is still smarting from the perception, wrongly or not, that it initiated the negative campaign against Smulyan. Baseball does not like connivers, and only puts up with them because George Steinbrenner makes it. There is the existing relationship between the city and the Malek group to promote baseball in the district dating back several years. Before anybody believed a return was possible, Malek was the forefront of the movement, and the mayor has been loyal to him.
But his past has come back to haunt him, too. Though prominent Jewish leaders have said Malek has atoned for his role as a Nixon White House aide who counted the number of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's still out there.
Asked if he believed the Malek group was behind the out-of-town characterization and whether Smulyan's Jewish faith had anything to do wit h it, Smulyan said: "You hear things, but I can't believe that. I don't think there's any anti-Semitism involved. If I would have been part of a group of Episcopal bishops from out of town, the same thing would have happened."
I'm still perplexed by the localism issue. How is the area you live in more important than the stewardship of the team? This entire Sale-By-Zip-Code rationale has got to stop. After all, Bob Short lived in Washington for 15 years before he moved the team. The Griffith family lived in the District only their entire lives before they made sure baseball left Washington the first time.
Shouldn't more pressing issues be on the table at this point? Like, who is going to bring in wonder boy Theo Epstein? He's 31. He does not want to work for Larry Lucchino and the Red Sox anymore and he has direct ties to Washington.
(Okay, so his sister is merely a writer on the new Geena Davis series, "Commander in Chief." That counts, right?) The point is, it's getting late in the game. It's time to pick someone in this race, and I don't care what Selig is thinking. I'm going with Smulyan in the hopes he can bring in a rock star like Theo to lure some rock-star players.
What? The guy called me back.

2005 The Washington Post Company

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In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation

In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
"In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation." -South Beach Hoosier, 2007

#IUBB, #bannersix

#IUBB, #bannersix
Assembly Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Click photo to see video of Straight No Chaser's version of Back Home Again In Indiana, 2:37
The South Florida I Grew Up In

Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:

In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...

"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.

At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...

In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...
Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.

This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.

It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.

I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"

Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.

Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive
Hallandale Beach, FL; February 16, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
"Gentlemen, I am happy to announce that as of today we are closing down our Washington news bureau and moving the entire operation to L.A."

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
"O.K., so I dig a hole and put the bone in the hole. But what's my motivation for burying it?"

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM
The Magic of Hollywood: A motion has been put forth that we should seek to create rather than imitate. All in favor of killing this silly notion, nod in mindless agreement...

Miami Dolphins

Miami Dolphins
South Beach Hoosier's first Dolphin game at the Orange Bowl came in Dec. 1970, aged 9, a 45-3 win over Buffalo that propelled them into their first ever playoff appearance.

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes
Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.) After that first ballgame against Tulane, as l often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio. A few times, I was just about the only person onboard besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside. I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do. Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!) For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?) I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale? To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game. I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007
Photo by Mario J. Bermudez. April 28, 2007 at Dolphins NFL Draft Party at Dolphin HQ, Davie, FL

Of cheerleaders past and present

Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm. Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic. Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket? Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!! And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for. You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service! (After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.) In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country. I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit. There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.

It's All About "The U"

It's All About "The U"
South Beach Hoosier's first U-M football game at the Orange Bowl was in 1972, age 11, against Tulane in the infamous "Fifth Down" game. In order to drum up support and attendance for the U-M at the Orange Bowl, that game had a promotion whereby South Florida kids who were school safety patrols could get in for free IF they wore their sash. I did. Clearly they knew that it was better to let kids in for free, knowing their parents would give them money to buy food and souvenirs, perhaps become a fan and want to return for future games. The ballgame made an interesting impression on The New York Times, resulting in this gem from the "View of Sport" column of Oct, 14, 1990, labeled 'Fifth Down or Not, It's Over When It's Over.' -"In 1972, aided by a fifth-down officiating gift in the last moments of the game, Miami of Florida defeated Tulane, 24-21. The country and the world was a much different place that fall because The New York Times took time and space to editorialize on the subject. ''Is it right for sportsmen, particularly young athletes, to be penalized or deprived of the goals for which they earnestly competed because responsible officials make mistakes? The ideal of true sportsmanship would be better served if Miami forfeited last week's game.' South Beach Hoosier hardly needs to tell you that this was YET another New York Times editoral that was completely ignored!

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl
College Football, Texas No. 1, Hook 'em Horns, Sept. 10, 1973. Living in North Miami Beach in the '70's, my Sports Illustrated usually showed up in my mailbox on the Thursday or Friday before the Monday cover date. And was read cover-to-cover by Sunday morning.

The Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm
U-M QB Ken Dorsey, Miami Hurricanes Undefeated National Champions 2001, Jan. 2002

Miami's Romp in the Rose

Miami's Romp in the Rose
Miami running back Clinton Portis, Jan. 7, 2002

Why the University of Miami should drop football

Why the University of Miami should drop football
June 12, 1995

REVENGE!

REVENGE!
Steve McGuire and Miami Overpower No.1 Notre Dame, Dec. 4, 1989

How Sweet It Is!

How Sweet It Is!
Miami Whips Oklahoma For The National Championship, Pictured: Dennis Kelleher, Jan. 11, 1988

My, Oh My, Miami!

My, Oh My, Miami!
Steve Walsh and the Canes Stun FSU, Oct. 12, 1987

Why Is Miami No. 1?

Why Is Miami No. 1?
QB Vinny Testaverde, Nov. 24, 1986

Miracle In Miami

Miracle In Miami
The Hurricanes Storm Past Nebraska, Halfback Keith Griffin, Jan. 9, 1984

Special Issue: College Football

Special Issue: College Football
The Best Passer, George Mira of Miami, Sept. 23, 1963

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular
A Pair Of Aces: U-M QB Bernie Kosar & Miami Dolphin QB Dan Marino, Sept. 5, 1984

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue
Dan Marino, Class of 2005, Aug. 2005

FACES OF THE NFL

FACES OF THE NFL
A Portfolio by Walter Iooss Jr., Ricky Williams, Miami Dolphins, Dec. 9, 2002

Coming Back

Coming Back
Jay Fiedler rallies Miami to a last-second win over Oakland, Oct. 1, 2001

Dan's Last Stand

Dan's Last Stand
At 38 and under siege, Dan Marino refuses to go down without a fight, Dec. 13, 1999

The War Zone

The War Zone
In the NFL's toughest division, the surprising Dolphins are on top, Lamar Smith, Dec. 11, 2000

Down and Dirty

Down and Dirty
Jimmy Johnson's Dolphins Bury The Patriots, Steve Emtman, Sept. 9, 1996

The Sunshine Boys

The Sunshine Boys
Now Playing in Miami: The Dan Marino and Jimmy Johnson Show, May 11, 1996

HOT & NOT

HOT & NOT
Miami loves Pat Riley but wants to give Don Shula the boot, Dec. 11, 1995

NFL PREVIEW 1995

NFL PREVIEW 1995
Which of today's stars are locks for the Hall of Fame? Dan Marino for sure. But who else? To find out, we polled the men who do the voting. Sept. 14, 1995

Sportsman Of The Year

Sportsman Of The Year
Don Shula, Dec. 20, 1993

Dan The Man

Dan The Man
Dan Marino Saves The Day For The Dolphins, Jan. 14, 1991

Dangerous Dan

Dangerous Dan
Dan Marino Passes Miami Into The Super Bowl, Jan. 14, 1985

Super Duper!

Super Duper!
Wide Receiver Mark Duper Of The Undefeated Dolphins, Nov. 19, 1984

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington
Mark Clayton (burning Darryl Green) Sept. 10, 1984

Rookies On The Rise

Rookies On The Rise
Dan Marino: Miami's Hot Quarterback, Nov. 14, 1983

New Life In The WFL

New Life In The WFL
Warfield, Csonka and Kiick of Memphis, July 28, 1975

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota
Larry Csonka, Jan. 21, 1974

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready
Larry Csonka & Bob Griese, Sept. 17, 1973

Miami All The Way

Miami All The Way
Bob Griese, Jan. 22, 1973

It's Miami and Washington

It's Miami and Washington
Mercury Morris Speeds Past The Steelers, Jan. 8, 1973

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo
Larry Csonka & Jim Kiick, Aug. 7, 1972

Sudden Death at Kansas City

Sudden Death at Kansas City
Miami's Garo Yepremian Ends the Longest Game; (kneeling) placekick holder Karl Noonan, Jan. 3, 1972

New Pro in a New Town

New Pro in a New Town
Miami's Frank Emanuel, Aug. 8, 1966

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot
The iconic image I grew-up with in Miami, before FedEx got into the picture