
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 20, 1995                   TAG: 9510200067
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ASTROS: VIRGINIA'S BEST BET

Telecommunications executive William L. Collins III and his partners are prepared to pay more than $150 million for the Houston Astros and firmly believe they have a good chance to purchase the financially troubled baseball team - with plans to move it to the Washington area - shortly after the World Series, sources close to the situation said Thursday.

However, major-league baseball officials continued to say that they don't think the sport's team owners would permit the Astros to move from Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city. They also indicated that there probably is not enough time for a franchise to be purchased, moved and ready to play by next season.

Any club that Collins' Virginia Baseball Club would buy would play in RFK Stadium for two to three seasons while a 45,000-seat Virginia ballpark is built near Dulles Airport.

Both Collins and Astros Chairman Drayton McLane were quiet publicly Thursday after acknowledging late on Wednesday that they'd met several times recently.

``I have visited with Bill Collins, but it is premature to draw any conclusions from our talks,'' McLane said in a prepared statement released Thursday in which he declined further comment until after the World Series.

Collins did not return telephone messages. But a source familiar with the thinking of Collins and his partners said the Astros - not the Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, Montreal Expos, Minnesota Twins or San Francisco Giants - now represent the best hope for the D.C. area to have a baseball team in 1996.

The Collins group is ``pretty far along'' in its negotiations with the Astros, said the source, who expressed the belief that there's ``about an 80 percent chance'' there will be a major-league club playing in RFK Stadium next spring. The D.C. area has been without a baseball team since the Senators left following the 1971 season and became the Texas Rangers.

Collins' group is ready to pay at least $150 million for the Astros, plus any relocation fee - a sum that would be divided among the other major-league teams - the owners would add on to approve the move, sources said.

by CNB