McLean, Va. ? Fittingly for the nation’s capital, the two men leading opposing efforts to bring major league baseball to the Washington area have a political history dating to the Watergate era.

Frederic Malek, whose group wants to bring a team to the city, was an aide in the Nixon administration and served as the elder George Bush’s campaign manager in 1992.

William L. Collins III, who wants a new team to play in the suburbs of northern Virginia, was an aide to U.S. Rep. Larry Hogan, the first Republican on the Judiciary Committee to call for Nixon’s impeachment. Collins eventually gave up on a minor league baseball career to pursue a career in political campaigns.

Collins and Malek find themselves competing again for the right to bring the national pastime to the area for the first time since 1971, when the Washington Senators left town to become the Texas Rangers.

There’s strong speculation that baseball will allow one of its struggling franchises likely the Montreal Expos to move to Washington in either 2003 or 2004.

Malek leads a group of high-profile partners and Beltway insiders, including Franklin Raines, a former budget director for President Clinton and now the chief executive at Fannie Mae; America Online founder James Kimsey; and developer Joseph E. Robert Jr. Darrell Green, the Washington Redskins cornerback, also is a partner, along with Clinton pal Vernon Jordan.

Unlike Collins, who has worked hard for eight years to try to land a team, the Malek group has no burning desire to own a team. City leaders recruited Malek, a onetime co-owner of the Texas Rangers, who in turn brought in his friends and business associates.

“Our group didn’t decide, ‘Gee, we want to own a baseball team,”‘ Malek said. “We were approached by the mayor and D.C. sports commission. We’re doing this because we think it’s the right thing to do for the city.”

Said Kimsey: “It is about helping Washington, D.C., more than anything. … We’re not doing it for the hope of economic gain. Hopefully, we won’t take a bath, either.”

Collins and his group have spent $8 million so far in their long effort to win a franchise. They first sought an expansion team but lost out to Arizona and Tampa Bay. Later, they felt sure they had a deal to bring the Astros to Virginia, but baseball quashed the deal and Houston built a new stadium for the Astros.

Collins admitted he would have aborted his efforts long ago if he were following his head instead of his heart.

“If you looked at it purely from a business perspective, there’s a lot of people that feel like we’ve thrown a lot of money down the tubes,” Collins said.

Collins played college ball at George Washington University, was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers and started his professional career in Double-A. But he quit after three years, saying his future as a catching prospect with the Brewers was limited after the team acquired prospects Charlie Moore and Darrell Porter, each of whom went on to have long big-league careers.

“I remember what it was like as a minor league player, how excited I was when my paycheck jumped from $800 a month to $1,000 a month,” said Collins, who earned his fortune as a telecommunications executive. “I have a great appreciation for what players have gone through to reach the big leagues. At the same time, I know what it means to control payrolls.”

Despite his enthusiasm as a baseball fan, Collins said he would limit his role as owner to business decisions “and leave baseball decisions to baseball people.”

Malek, too, would take a more hands-off approach on day-to-day operations, Raines said.

“I think we would bring to baseball a successful business record. We don’t believe that we would know how to run a team ourselves. We would bring in good baseball professionals,” Raines said.