For archive's sake, I found the problem.

On the bottom of the cassette mechanism near all the take up reel
gearing is a black piece of plastic about the size of a 50 cent piece.
It is held into place by one screw and a couple of little plastic nubs.
While in place, you can see that there is a grey gear underneath the
black plastic piece that engagea a white gear of the take up reel.

Look carefully and make sure you know how the grey gear is aligned.
There is a small half cutout on the edge of the gear as an indicator.
I made sure the half cutout on the grey gear was aligned with the dot
on the white gear.

Remove the grey gear by popping it out of the black plastic holder. On
the bottomside of the grey gear are four metal contacts and on the
inside of the black plastic are metal strips where the contacts,
well...make contact. Mine were dirty. I used an eraser to clean
everything up. Also, on the outside of the black plastic piece is a
connector with contacts that go into the main circuit board. Mine were
also dirty and I cleaned them up with an eraser. I put everything back
together and the machine now ejects properly. Apparently, the grey
gear with the little metal fingers feeds info to the main processor
when the tape is loading. Dirty contacts caused the problem.