Owners set to meet

PASADENA, Calif. – The impending sale of the Washington Nationals and the steroids issue figure to be the most high-profile topics when baseball owners hold their quarterly meeting today and Thursday.

Major League Baseball figures to be the big winner when the Nationals’ sale goes through – hopefully sooner than later.

The sport’s other 29 teams bought the then-Montreal Expos in 2002 for $120 million as part of a complicated transaction that involved new owners for the Boston Red Sox and Florida Marlins.

MLB wished to disband the team, but that didn’t happen. After a couple of ugly seasons when the Expos played some home games in Puerto Rico before sparse crowds, the franchise was moved to Washington, D.C. last winter.

That turned out to be an enormously successful development since the Nationals have fared well on the field and attracted a healthy fan following, prompting interest from as many as eight groups. The sale price could approach $450 million – far more than originally anticipated.

Baseball once hoped to complete the sale by the beginning of the season. No announcement is expected at this meeting, although an update is anticipated. Something definitive could be known by the end of the month.

The owners will be meeting for the first time since Baltimore’s Rafael Palmeiro became the first big star to test positive for steroids and served a 10-day suspension.

Commissioner Bud Selig later reiterated his desire for even more stringent testing and harsher penalties for steroid users, including a 50-game suspension for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third.