Less than six weeks remain until the Nationals kick off the 2008 baseball season in their new stadium, but Fred Malek, one of the team’s would-be owners, says he has no regrets about the process that awarded the team to the Lerner family.
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The longtime Republican activist and Northern Virginia financier says he “would absolutely” do it all over again. “It was one of the great projects I have worked on,” he told us from Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday. “Our primary goal was to bring baseball to the city. Five years before it happened,
nobody gave us a chance. It was a thankless project when we had very little traction. We just labored on and never gave up hope, and lo and behold, it happened.”
He concedes that “it would have been nice” were he chosen as the owner, but adds that “many members of our [ownership] group said, ‘Hey we brought baseball to Washington, let’s move on.’ “
With respect to his onetime rivals, the Lerners, he says they’re running the team exactly as he would have. “Bob Kasten has done an excellent job with the team,” Malek said. “We would have built from the ground up, developed the farm system, hired the best scouts and coaches. The way to build a successful team is not going out to get star players, it’s building from the ground up.”
Malek says he’ll go to plenty of games, but he won’t have season tickets, as he spends most of the summer in Aspen, Colo.
These days, he’s turning his attention to Republican politics. Last Tuesday, as voters were casting their ballots in the Potomac primary, Malek held a fundraiser for John McCain at his McLean home. He said the event drew about 90 people at $2,300 per person. “We had to turn people away,” he said. “It’s amazing how things have changed. Three months ago it was hard to raise money, six months ago it was nigh near impossible. Last summer raising money for McCain, people gave us the same reaction as when we decided to bring baseball to Washington.”
As for why McCain’s message finally took hold with voters, Malek says, “This is the real adult in the race.”
