Salvation!

After spending much of the weekend discussing with friends why the D.C. baseball fiasco was a done deal, I was shocked to hear late last night that Tony Williams has come to the rescue. And as far as I know, he does not smoke crack, which is probably a step in the right direction for Washington's municipal politics.

The plan that has saved the deal was ridiculed just yesterday by the Washington Post's Tony Kornheiser. (I'd supply the link but you'd need to register.) Basically, the idea is to sell control of parking meter revenue to an Ohio-based private company in order to raise about $100 million, or about half of the money the city needs to find in the private sector. I was never great at math but, like Kornheiser, I have difficulty imagining how many quarters it would take to raise that kind of dough, even at 25 cents per 30 minutes. Consider it a challenge: the first reader who answers the following question correctly will get a special prize. Post your answer as a "comment" below.

Vinny Castilla has left his El Camino at a meter outside RFK stadium. He hopes that his $2.00 in quarters (and the 4 hours of time it buys him) will be sufficient to last through an exhibition game against the Harambe Market beer-league team. Vinny is in luck: the game will be over in plenty of time. But if his 8 quarters bought 4 hours of time, how many quarters (and how much time) would Vinny need to make $100 million in revenues for the Nats?

Get out your pencils...

Anyway, according to espn.com and others, the folks over at the city council have done this math already, and are confident that the plan is feasible. Still, as Kornheiser wrote yesterday, that's a lot of quarters. Keep also in mind that it takes 27 quarters to buy a pack of cigarettes in Brooklyn; in Iowa it takes just 9.