RIP Peter Angelos (I guess)

[jr/shotglass]

He did want to win. He just didn't think he'd have to pay good money to achieve it.

 

[Woody Long]

He did want to win. He just didn't think he'd have to pay any money at all under any circumstances whatsoever to achieve it.

FTFY

 

[User 149557]

Imagine your entire legacy resting with Armando Benítez in a tied game in a pivotal playoff game.

 

[jr/shotglass]

 

[tapintoamerica]

It was important for a local group to own the Orioles after the tenuous ownership of a ****ing art dealer and venture capitalist from NYC. The Birds are where they should be, and they are important to the sport.

 

[UPChip]

Obviously, there were any number of negative things that he (and/or his family) did in the last several years, and I don't know how much he really knew about it, but I do respect his refusal to field replacement players in 1995. The rare owner who made his bones being on the labor side of things as opposed to exploiting it.

 

[UPChip]

I think this obit covers things well. A very generous man who maybe wasn't the best fit for owning a baseball team sometimes.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos dies at 94

 

[jr/shotglass]

I think this obit covers things well. A very generous man who maybe wasn't the best fit for owning a baseball team sometimes.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos dies at 94

Exceedingly well-done. It presented the various sides of Angelos as well as anyone could expect.

 

[wicked]

He drove the franchise into the ground and ruined one of the best baseball markets in the country. There is no opening for a team in D.C. if the Orioles remain successful and popular like they were for their first 40 years. If you’re an Orioles and Skins/Commanders fan, you finally are done with albatrosses of ownership groups. You hope.

 

[tapintoamerica]

He drove the franchise into the ground and ruined one of the best baseball markets in the country. There is no opening for a team in D.C. if the Orioles remain successful and popular like they were for their first 40 years. If you’re an Orioles and Skins/Commanders fan, you finally are done with albatrosses of ownership groups. You hope.

MLB was going to put a team in DC regardless of whether the Orioles were good. Two reasons:
1) It's a top-10 market.
2) There's nowhere else to go. Nearly 2o years later, MLB still hasn't found another market worth going to. The commissioner has said the issues in Tampa Bay and Oakland had to be resolved before expansion became a thing, and that's not simply out of some sense of loyalty to those places. The usual suspects -- Charlotte, Raleigh, Vegas -- are tapped out. Vegas doesn't have the land and Charlotte and Raleigh don't have the interest. They're all Braves fans.

Sadly, the Washington National League Ball Club LLC was inevitable. Good for Angelos for fending off the challenge as long as he did. People forget that Jack Kent Cooke conspired for years with commissioners to keep the NFL out of Baltimore.

 

[micropolitan guy]

He drove the franchise into the ground and ruined one of the best baseball markets in the country. There is no opening for a team in D.C. if the Orioles remain successful and popular like they were for their first 40 years. If you’re an Orioles and Skins/Commanders fan, you finally are done with albatrosses of ownership groups. You hope.

Man, IDK. Baltimore was the best team in baseball between 1966-71 and they co-existed just fine with the Senators. More than enough space for two teams in that market.

 

[UPChip]

Not to mention the fact that, as bad as they were for most of their tenures, I think there was something of a spiritual hole in the game to not have a MLB team in the capital. Nashville, Charlotte, Vegas don't have that.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Imagine your entire legacy resting with Armando Benítez in a tied game in a pivotal playoff game.

It wasn't tied. Orioles led. And boy did he blow it.

 

[justgladtobehere]

Man, IDK. Baltimore was the best team in baseball between 1966-71 and they co-existed just fine with the Senators. More than enough space for two teams in that market.

The most important factor is just how big and rich the DC area has become.

The metro area for Baltimore and DC were just over 1 million in 1950. DC area has over double the population now.

Baltimore Metro Area Population 1950-2024

Washington DC Metro Area Population 1950-2024

DC was a bad market forever. Pre-WWII, the place was a backwater.

 

[Della9250]

He drove the franchise into the ground and ruined one of the best baseball markets in the country. There is no opening for a team in D.C. if the Orioles remain successful and popular like they were for their first 40 years. If you’re an Orioles and Skins/Commanders fan, you finally are done with albatrosses of ownership groups. You hope.

The whole MASN rights issue was obnoxious and petty

 

[User 149557]

It wasn't tied. Orioles led. And boy did he blow it.

I had it down as a lead, second-guessed myself, and changed it.

It’s a missing moment in my Cleveland sports fandom because I bought a ticket to a Christian rock band concert for a band called Three Crosses and missed Tony Fernandez’s home run. Before cellphones, I watched four 28-year old guys guys doing outdated rock moves (including the organist picking up the keyboard and holding it over his head) to a room full of Ohio youth group students in a tiny cafetorium while worried the entire time the series was going to go seven games.

(Cue my wife: “How do you have photographic memory when it comes to sporting events from 1997 and can’t remember any names of anybody beyond my immediate family at gatherings?”)

 

[garrow]

Didn't know Angelos was a pol...or once lost to Nancy Pelosi's brother.

 

[swingline]

@Hermes, tell your wife you only remember the important things.

I’ll send flowers to your funeral.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The most important factor is just how big and rich the DC area has become.

The metro area for Baltimore and DC were just over 1 million in 1950. DC area has over double the population now.

Baltimore Metro Area Population 1950-2024

Washington DC Metro Area Population 1950-2024

DC was a bad market forever. Pre-WWII, the place was a backwater.

And post-WWII, the original Senators and the expansion Senators always had cheap, underfunded ownership. Which can be the death knell to any franchise.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Not to hijack this (RIP Peter, a complicated man, as noted, who at least liked the players), but...

Imagine your entire legacy resting with Armando Benítez in a tied game in a pivotal playoff game.

...six blown saves in 10 postseason opportunities. Incredible. The '69 World Series combatants are bonded by Benitez extending their current droughts, cause the 2000 Mets win the World Series if they win Game 1. Clemens comes out in a steroidal rage in Game 2 and Piazza murders him when he throws the bat b/c the Mets are up 1-0 instead of down 0-1.