Baseball has begun, and if you pay the slightest attention to the sport, you realize that the one thing it is known for, aside from spitting, is miracles. There are miracle catches and miracle hits and the greatest miracle of all - that more fans don't fall asleep during games.

Last year, three miracles occurred that inform the new season.

First, there was the miracle of the Boston Red Sox beating the New York Yankees in the playoffs, and then going on to not lose the World Series - sort of a miracle twofer. Second, there was the miracle of
Major League Baseball announcing a steroid-
testing policy, which, if enforced, will reduce the average number of homers in a season from its current 348,000 to around 14. Third, there was the miracle of the national pastime returning to the nation's capital.

Of them all, what happened between Washington, D.C., and MLB - an acronym that just doesn't roll off the tongue like NFL or NBA, or even KFC - may be the greatest.
Last fall, MLB decided to move the Expos from Montreal to Washington. Starved for the sport since it left town for Texas in the '70s, Washington reacted with a great groundswell of dithering.

The debate began after the mayor reached an agreement with MLB that read as follows:

"We, the City, known hereinafter as the District, do hereby accept a Baseball Team to play in the environs of said District in exchange for building said Team a Stadium through the use of Public Funds, kinda sorta, because they're just technically tax moneys to wit and henceforth the meaning of which is Arguable. Besides, Nobody is really going to shell out Anything because, hey, what are you anyway, Anti-baseball? Huh, are ya?"

Some folks on the City Council took issue with the deal and responded with the following statement: