Major League Baseball started its annual "hot stove" off-season with the owners' meetings in Florida this week. Rumors are already running rampant about potential trades, managerial changes, and free agent moves. Notably absent from the talks coming out of Key Biscayne is the ultimate fate of the black sheep of the MLB family, the Montreal Expos.

The Expos have been a team in waiting since baseball acquired the franchise from former owner Jeffrey Loria in 2002. Unsure of their final destination, but certain that their days in Montreal were numbered, baseball did little to field a quality team to fill the cavernously empty Olympic Stadium (possibly the worst venue ever to host a professional sports franchise -- my apologies, Astrodome).

The team that took the field in Montreal and, for 22 games in both 2003 and 2004, the conveniently located Hiram Bithorn stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico, bore no resemblance to the last truly competitive Expos team in the strike-shortened 1994 season.

When looking back on that team from a decade ago, it's difficult to believe that a franchise seemingly bursting with so much young talent could fall so far. Their pitching staff was anchored by Pedro Martinez, years before he was calling anyone his "daddy," when he had a dominating fastball to compliment his disgusting curve. John Wetteland was every bit the lights-out closer that he was for the Yankees in their 1996 World Series run, and the outfield featured Larry Walker, Moises Alou, and Marquis Grissom.

Despite this impressive crop of young talent, the Expos failures were succinctly summarized by former manager Felipe Alou when he said, "There are two things we haven't done in Montreal. We haven't kept players, and we haven't built a stadium."

This past summer, it looked as though the Expos were finally ready to start doing both. Baseball approved of the signing of the team's best remaining player, second baseman Jose Vidro, to a long-term contract, and finally found the Expos a new home in a market that has been without baseball for three decades, Washington, D.C.

In late September, baseball formally announced that the Expos franchise would call the nation's capital their new home. D.C. and Mayor Anthony Williams appeared at a press conference wearing a hat with the vintage script "W" of the old Washington Senators, hailing the return of baseball to the District.

At that time, there were no firm plans in place for stadium funding and a new ownership group had not yet stepped forward. Given the unusual manner in which baseball conducts business, namely with a total disregard for legal business practices and standard accounting procedures, this was not seen as a big problem.

Fast forward to early November. The D.C. Council is set to vote on a bill that would provide public funding for the proposed stadium in the District's Anacostia River area. Baseball's agreement to relocate the Expos to Washington is contingent on Mayor Williams lining up funding by December 31st. However, instead of approving the measure well ahead of the deadline, the Council's chairman, Linda Cropp, has the measure tabled until November 23rd, supposedly to explore the possibility of private funding.

While practices like this might be considered business as usual in the bizarre world of D.C. politics, the move likely turned more than a few heads at the owners' meetings. What D.C. politicos fail to understand, and might not learn until too late, is that Major League Baseball is essentially holding all the cards in this game. If the city waffles on stadium funding, the league has at least two outs.

There are other potential sites -- some as close as the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia -- that would jump at the opportunity for a franchise. The worst case scenario, and one that MLB has likely already considered, is returning the Expos to the purgatory of Montreal/San Juan.

From the owners' standpoint, how bad could that be? It's currently costing the 29 other owners about $5.5 million each to keep the Expos up and running, or almost what George Steinbrenner pays his backup organist at Yankee Stadium. The Expos averaged roughly 9,000 fans per game between their two homes. Given how starved Montreal residents will be for pro sports come spring with no Canadiens games to take in, it's unlikely they could do any worse if they returned.

Baseball wants -- and will get -- funding from outside the league to build the Expos' new home. Although baseball failed to keep its own deadline when deciding where to move the Expos (originally April, then definitely June, or was it August?), it's a smart bet that they'll keep the deadline they're  imposing on D.C. In the event that the council drags their heels past December 31st and somehow gets a stay of execution from baseball, the overall picture does not improve.

With the New Year comes the return of Marion Barry to D.C. politics, this time as a member of the council that Mayor Williams desperately needs to approve funding for the proposed stadium. To say that there's political tension between the two is like saying that Red Sox fans and Yankees fans have a slight difference of pinion.

While the game itself may have gone largely unchanged since baseball left D.C. 33 years ago, the business of baseball has changed dramatically. Bowie Kuhn, the reigning commissioner when the Washington Senators last took the field, has been replaced with Bud Selig. While Kuhn was at times fair to the point of being harsh, he acted in what he thought were the best interests of the game.

Selig has proven to be nothing more than a puppet of the group of owners that propped him up into the office of commissioner. It is now a league governed solely by the owners, for the owners.

If supporters of baseball in Washington, D.C. don't start playing by their rules, than the Expos might be playing elsewhere.