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Six years ago, while offering a deposit in a New Jersey sports betting case, then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig spoke firmly against ever placing a franchise in vegas and railed against gaming as"evil" Today, a team is working with investors to build a stadium and bring a major-league team to Las Vegas. Those efforts come as Selig's successor, Rob Manfred, predicts Las Vegas a viable marketplace for the game and baseball's decision-makers descend on the city for its league's Winter Meetings at Mandalay Bay from Dec. 9-13. Behind the scenes, Lou Weisbach, a Chicago-area entrepreneur who led the charge to bring the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, along with Chicago White Sox tv announcer and former Cy Young winner Steve Stone are among those working to make their vision of bringing a group to Southern Nevada come true. Weisbach reported the people he is working with, such as some in Las Vegas whom he declined to identify, are engaged in continuing conversations with investors and landowners. He said people involved have been talking with local leaders. Gov.-elect Steve Sisolak, the longtime Clark County Commission chairman, was asked if he had had talks about a major-league team in vegas. "Not I can speak about. ... I hope you know sometimes I have to sign NDAs (nondisclosure agreements)," he explained. Can it work here? The jury is still out on if Major League Baseball would thrive in vegas. Some say no -- which the entertainment buck would be stretched too thin for 81 home games to sell out. Then there's Weisbach. SHORT DESCRIPTION (Las Vegas Review-Journal) "We have a great deal of different places we continue to work on and that are accessible and therefore it's not a question of if Vegas is going to get Major League Baseball," he stated,"it is a matter of if." Following a more than 30-year absence, Major League Baseball returned to Washington, D.C., since the Expos became the Washington Nationals, that settled into a temporary residence at RFK Memorial Stadium. Whether Las Vegas has been used as leverage or was seriously close to turning into a major-league city in 2004 remains up for discussion, and the response varies based on who is asked. One thing was for certain: Washington, D.C., had a stadium (and since has assembled a baseball-specific one). Las Vegas did not. "I believe in the few instances that I've attempted to really do so, I think it was too early and we didn't have a centre," Stone said. Weisbach went further, saying he considered that if Las Vegas had a stadium at that time, the Expos would have proceeded west. This time, the plan is to build a stadium first and deal with procuring a staff -- whether by relocation or expansion -- second. Read more here: http://classicsounds.pl/?p=38391