Read the entire column here on the Business Journal of Portland website.

Time to join the majors
Publisher's Notebook
By Craig Wessel
The Business Journal of Portland

There was something just plain weird about the way that Senate Bill 5 passed last week. I don't mean exactly the way it passed--somehow I think there's more to that story than we're ever going to hear about--but more the air of absolute drama that surrounded it. If the deal hadn't come so close to going down the drain I would have sworn that the supporters of the stadium proposal staged the whole thing. Had that actually been the case, it would have been masterful creativity. I'm not sure Bill Veeck himself, the greatest and most deranged mind in sports promotion, could have come up with a better promotional stunt. Planned or not, I'll say one thing: It sure worked on me. When the news broke that the stadium deal was dead on Saturday morning, I found myself in a state of serious depression. While I have not been a proponent of the way we are trying to fund the stadium or the way bringing major league baseball to town is being sold as an "economic development" initiative, I really love the game and despite all of my concerns regarding how this thing is getting done, I realized on Saturday that I really did want it to get done. The reversal on the bill in the final hour that got it through the Senate put me in mind of the heroic shot from Kirk Gibson in the World Series where, desperate and injured, Gibson limped to the plate in the ninth inning and crushed a fastball over the fence off the un-hittable Dennis Eckersly and L.A. went on to win the series and break the heart of every A's fan alive, yours truly counted among them.

"PLAY BALL!"