Finally!

The Washington Nationals will have a new owner that isn't Major League Baseball.

USA Today reports that Theodore N. Lerner has been chosen to purchase the franchise.

This is excellent news, both for the franchise (which is still recovering from its schmuck of a former owner, Jeffrey Loria, now rapist owner of the Florida Marlins) and for MLB, which has had to cope with the specter of being both owner and competitor to the Nationals since Loria gave them up. Adding to the good news for the franchise is that former Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten will be the new president of the team. Kasten is widely credited (including by me) as having been a key mover in the revitalization of the Braves, and a major architect of their success (as of 2005, 14 straight divisional titles).

I have been looking forward to this for several years, now. Not that I want the Nationals to win it all -- they are in the same division as the Mets, after all -- but it's been a disgrace that MLB was running a team that it simply couldn't afford to give a fighting chance.