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In response to
"Can someone C&P the article? -- nm"
by
Krusty
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Here.
Posted by
David (aka David)
Feb 6 '24, 17:40
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"The Sudden Sale of the Baltimore Orioles Left Behind Some Loose Ends
More than 30 years after his family bought the team, John Angelos’s surprise decision to sell a controlling stake in the club blindsided some key stakeholders
A press release had been drafted announcing the identity of the company that would replace the ‘Oriole’ part of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Patrick Smith/Getty Images
By Lindsey Adler
and Jared Diamond
Updated Feb. 6, 2024 5:15 pm ET
30
Not long ago, John Angelos was putting the finishing touches on a deal that would have had Baltimore Orioles fans choking on their crab cakes: He was going to sell the naming rights to the team’s storied ballpark.
Angelos, whose family has owned the Orioles for three decades, had reached an agreement with T. Rowe Price
, an investment management firm headquartered in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, people familiar with the matter said. A press release had been drafted announcing the identity of the company that would replace the “Oriole” part of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. It was scheduled to be blasted out on Tuesday.
But it turns out that Angelos was also working on something else. It emerged last week that he is selling a controlling stake in the Orioles to a group of investors led by local private-equity billionaire David Rubenstein. T. Rowe Price, which thought that it was about to plaster its name around Camden Yards, didn’t know anything about a possible sale until learning about it in the initial news reports.
The future of the Orioles’ naming-rights situation remains unclear, but the episode perfectly encapsulates the confounding saga that will almost certainly end with Rubenstein taking control of the organization. Even days before the sale was finalized, many stakeholders were kept in the dark by Angelos or only partially aware of the status of negotiations, including Major League Baseball and even government officials.
In Maryland, it has conjured memories of the NFL’s Colts, who bolted from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the dead of night in 1984, breaking the hearts of legions of fans. The only difference this time is that the fleeing owners left the team behind—and just about everybody is thrilled about it.
Through a spokesperson, John Angelos declined to comment.
Orioles fans immediately celebrated Rubenstein’s arrival. Baltimore had the best record in the American League last year despite a payroll near the bottom of the sport, with little reason to believe Angelos would loosen the purse strings anytime soon. That will almost certainly change under Rubenstein.
The party continued throughout the week. One day after Rubenstein announced publicly he was buying the team, the Orioles pulled off a stunning trade for Milwaukee Brewers ace Corbin Burnes, affirming their place as a serious championship contender. (Orioles general manager Mike Elias said the trade had been in the works for months and the timing was a coincidence.)
Regardless, just a couple of months ago, the idea of Rubenstein swooping in seemed far-fetched. As recently as mid-December, Angelos told Maryland Gov. Wes Moore in an emergency phone call that he intended to hold on to the Orioles, right before he signed a new lease that could keep them in Baltimore for as long as 30 years. Eight weeks later, the Orioles had been sold.
The development left some Maryland lawmakers shocked and frustrated. Lease negotiations stalled amid concerns that Angelos was considering selling. Only after he assuaged those worries did the lease deal go through.
“If John can hear me now,” Maryland State Treasurer Dereck Davis said during a meeting last week. “it’s deeply disappointing and troubling that you could look your state in the eye and outright lie to us about your intentions.”
After the sale, Moore told reporters in Baltimore, “The transparency that was required, it was not there. It’s disappointing.”
The sudden turn of events that took the Angelos family from signing a massive stadium lease to selling the club has left MLB and local officials confused about how the plan was hatched. Like the naming-rights deal that Angelos was finalizing on his way out the door, the lease he signed in his final weeks as Orioles owner also leaves Rubenstein with a loose end to deal with.
Angelos’s stated goal was to build a mixed-use development on the state-owned land around Camden Yards, an increasingly popular profit-driver for sports owners. To his disappointment, he was unable to obtain the rights to do so in the lease. Instead, the Orioles have the right to opt out after 15 years if they are unable to secure a separate agreement by the end of 2027.
That is now Rubenstein’s issue to solve.
“The opportunity for the team to catalyze development around Camden Yards and in downtown Baltimore will provide generations of fans with lifelong memories and create additional economic opportunities for our community,” Rubenstein said in a statement.
To those who know Angelos, none of this comes as much of a surprise. Angelos took over as MLB’s designated “control person” in 2020 from his 94-year-old father, Peter Angelos, who is ailing from dementia. Peter Angelos originally bought the Orioles in 1993 for $173 million and had previously expressed his wishes for his family to sell the team upon his death.
John Angelos acknowledges he can be capricious, prone to whims and changes-of-heart that make him unlike the careful corporate figures found in most owners’ boxes. He negotiated on and off with Rubenstein for three years, frequently leaving people around him wondering where things stood and what his true intentions were. He played down the intensity of his flirtation with Rubenstein to the end, to the point that many inside MLB didn’t know the sale was finally going forward until about a week before it was finalized.
Yet the most surprising thing about John Angelos’s tenure as the head of the Orioles might just have been his lack of sentimentality. He can conjure up affection for Brooks Robinson like any good Baltimorean, but he made a deliberate effort not to wear Orioles merchandise or even the color orange.
Angelos’s dispassion for his own ball club stands in contrast to that of Rubenstein, who described himself in a statement as being an Orioles fan for his “entire life.”
John Angelos tends to be most passionate when he is speaking not of his own ball club, but of the city of Baltimore as a complicated but misunderstood place that could use a few more vocal advocates.
It was that appreciation for Baltimore that shaped his desire to redevelop the land and buildings around Camden Yards—which held up the stadium lease for months. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Angelos spoke of using the leased land to bring not just retail to the area around the ballpark, but also for things like, say, an elementary school in the Eutaw Street warehouse.
“It’s crazy how we all put the words family and business right next to each other all the time,” Angelos said. “Arguably, the two are so inapt, they should never be used in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence.”
For John Angelos, the eventual offloading of the Orioles will finally sever his strained relationship between his family and his business. For Rubenstein, the passion for the Orioles came first, business came later."
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