I spent a good part of my weekend thinking about intentional walks and winning streaks, but we covered that territory last week so I won't force them on you this week. (If, on the other hand, you didn't quite get your fill, you can read what happens when Rob Neyer and Jim Caple disagree about something, and also a few "final" thoughts about the Atheltics' wondrous winning streak.)

Instead of old territory, let's head to new territory. Specifically, Quebec. More specifically, does it bother anybody else that still nobody seems to know what's going to happen to that the franchise currently known as the Montreal Expos?

For all of Angelos' bluster, it's not hard to see the Expos becoming the Washington Lobbyists (or whatever) in 2004 (though 2005 might be more realistic). Peter Angelos is, at heart, an ambulance-chaser. And while suing might be what ambulance-chasers do best, what they do second-best is settle.

Doesn't it seem like the stories about the Expos have been almost exactly the same for three years now? Wouldn't it be wonderful to finally read that the Expos are moving to the District of Columbia or northern Virginia?

What's standing in the way? In no particular order:

1. No plans for a new ballpark.
2. No solid ownership group.
3. Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

Most people outside MLB's inner circle think Angelos is the biggest impediment to a team in D.C., and Angelos is happy to encourage this thinking, at least publicly.

"I'm sick of talking about it," Angelos told USA Today's Hal Bodley last week. "It seems to me people who understand this game should know a franchise on top of another 30 miles away doesn't work."

Really? Here are the five most populous metropolitan areas in the United States (according to the 2000 Census), along with how many Major League Baseball franchises they currently support:

New York-Northern N.J.-Long Island   2
Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County  2
Chicago-Gary-Kenosha                 2
Washington-Baltimore                 1
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose       2

"It just won't work," Angelos continued. "If you place a team there, it would make it impossible for either one to generate the revenues to be competitive in the divisions in which they play."

Well, that's an interesting argument. By that logic, the Devil Rays should be shunted off to another division -- the Central, perhaps -- where they'd have a better chance of being competitive. The Yankees and Red Sox will always have a natural financial advantage, but that doesn't mean everybody else should suffer so the Orioles can maintain their accustomed place as perhaps the most fortunate franchise in sports.

Because that's just what they are. When Angelos bought the Orioles, he basically purchased a license to print money. He got a beautiful ballpark and a competitive team that had a huge market all to itself. In addition to the lack of an NBA or NHL team in Baltimore -- still the case -- there wasn't then an NFL team in Charm City, either. Nevertheless, Angelos claims to have lost $10 million last year, because ... well, Angelos hasn't explained that one yet, but his own incompetence has to be seriously considered. He has a license to print money, and thus (presumably) field a competitive team.

Instead, the O's have finished fourth five straight seasons, and there's very little reason to hope for improvement soon. The bottom line is Angelos is a terrible owner, and he'll be a terrible owner whether there's a team 30 miles to the south or not.

Let's look at those five metropolitan areas again, with a bit more detail:

                 Population
New York        20.2 million
Los Angeles     16.0 million
Chicago          8.9 million
Baltimore-D.C.   7.4 million
Bay Area         6.9 million

Angelos would argue that it's not fair to compare Baltimore-D.C. to New York or Los Angeles, and he'd be right: it's not fair. But what about Chicago and the Bay Area? Both of those metropolises are roughly comparable to Baltimore-D.C., and there's every reason to think that both can support two baseball teams, especially if the teams are managed competently.

And this ignores things like per-capita income, where the Baltimore-D.C. area always gets high marks. Washington's law firms alone could, and probably will, account for a good percentage of the luxury suites in a new ballpark. Yes, some of those law firms will desert Camden Yards. But as we've already seen, there's plenty of population to go around.

The fact is that if you move a franchise anywhere within the continental United States, you're going to hurt somebody. It hasn't really hit the press yet, but the Mariners are violently opposed to Portland, Ore., getting a team, because they consider Portland -- 170 miles from Seattle -- part of their market. Northern New Jersey could almost certainly support a team, but of course the Mets and (especially) the Yankees consider northern New Jersey a part of their markets.

Eventually, fast-growing Las Vegas and perhaps Salt Lake City might be big enough to support major-league franchises (unless the water runs out), but they're still years away from viability. Simply as a matter of practicality, there are, by almost anybody's estimate, currently only two viable sites for a new baseball team: the D.C. area, and Portland. And by almost anybody's estimate, D.C. is a better market than Portland, if only because of population. The Portland-Salem metropolitan area -- which is, admittedly, growing quickly -- has a population of 2.2 million. And as we saw earlier, a team in the D.C. area would split 7.4 million.

But it goes beyond that. I know that economic times are (relatively) tough all over, but the good people of the Portland area are particularly feeling the pinch. There's a very good possibility that budget shortfalls will result in Portland's public schools -- until recently a source of great civic pride -- having the shortest school year in the country, and recently hundreds of state troopers were laid off.

Supporters of baseball in Portland will argue that a new ballpark can be financed without dipping into the public till. But even if they're right -- and if you know anything about public works, you have to be skeptical -- the political will simply doesn't exist right now. Maybe if a local billionaire stepped in, but it seems that none of our billionaires really care much for baseball.

Portland will almost certainly have Major League Baseball someday, perhaps even within the next five or six years. But the ex-Expos in 2004? From where I sit -- five miles from where a new Portland ballpark might sit -- it's just not going to happen that soon.

Which leaves the District of Columbia or someplace close to it.

How does that happen? It has been suggested that Angelos might be dissuaded from suing MLB if he's given a small payoff. Something in the neighborhood of $200 million.

But that's a lot of money, even for commissioner Bud and the other owners. Maybe it won't come to that, though. As one MLB official told me last year, "Peter Angelos is not a young man." And his sons have shown little interest in taking over, which leads some to think that Angelos might be willing to sell the franchise. With commissioner Bud having absolutely no compunction when it comes to rigging such transactions, what's to prevent MLB from "arranging" a sale whereby the new owners would agree to be indemnified at a sum substantially lower than the aforementioned $200 million? And the owners could finance this indemnification with whatever they get from the sale of the Expos.

So for all of Angelos' bluster, it's not hard to see the Expos becoming the Washington Lobbyists (or whatever) in 2004 (though 2005 might be more realistic). Peter Angelos is, at heart, an ambulance-chaser. And while suing might be what ambulance-chasers do best, what they do second-best is settle. Unfortunately, in the meantime we're all going to have to suffer the ambulance-chaser's huster and bluster.

But that's all it is. When the money's right, he'll settle.

Senior writer Rob Neyer, whose Big Book of Baseball Lineups will be published in April by Fireside, appears here regularly during the season and irregularly in the offseason. His e-mail address is rob.neyer@dig.com.