Beaverton steps up to the plate

In case you haven’t talked to any baseball fans lately, take it from us: There are a lot of irritated followers of the Portland Beavers out there.

They are unhappy about any prospect that the team could move away from Portland, and almost as unhappy about any proposal to relocate the team to the farthest fringes of the region.

See, we have this habit here, bolstered by decades of regional policy, of collecting in the center.

Light rail whisks us to downtown Portland, and downtown has become the “meet in the middle” location. Practical reasons for this abound and — as Beavers owner Merritt Paulson understands only too well — there is a psychological advantage to keeping the Beavers in the center, too.

– Excerpt from The Oregonian Editorial, July 23, 2009