MIKE BURKE
Allegany Radio Corporation Sports
John Angelos needs to go away – far, far away, without the Baltimore Orioles on his person.
The son of Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who stewards the baseball organization now that his father is quite ill, simply cannot stand it that the Orioles team itself is again the talk of baseball for its play on the field, so he continues to butt in to make himself the topic of conversation.
Weeks after the Kevin Brown fiasco, John Angelos offered to The New York Times that it’s unlikely the Orioles will be able to sign several members of the team to long-term contract extensions, that the days of the Brooks Robinsons and the Cal Ripkens (i.e. Adley Rutschmans and Gunnar Hendersons) playing their entire careers in Baltimore are over.
(Uh, they’ve been over for quite some time, Mr. Baseball – everywhere in baseball.)
“We’re going to have to raise the prices here — dramatically,” Angelos told The Times in terms of what he saw as the only way for the Orioles to retain their collection of young stars.
Such a crock …
The Orioles opened the season with MLB’s second-lowest payroll, ahead of only the Oakland Athletics, who, like the current Orioles, had a talented young core of players not long ago, before unloading them to become baseball’s worst team in building their owner’s out to Las Vegas.
“The hardest thing to do in sports is be a small-market team in baseball and be competitive, because everything is stacked against you — everything,” Branch Angelos told The Times. “I don’t think you should run losses. I think you should live within your means and within your market.”
In the same interview, Angelos discussed Brown’s three-week exile from MASN for reporting facts, telling The Times the organization was reviewing internal processes that led to the punishment and that he regretted it distracted from the team’s on-field successes.
“Nothing like that is going to happen again,” Angelos said. “It shouldn’t have happened once.”
No kidding. But under two different Angeloses, it has a history of happening.
Just the latest example of the Angelos Way – everybody is happy, so rain on the parade, making John the second member of the Angelos family who can’t seem to stand things going well, as both men have long exhibited such low self-esteem.
Certainly, nobody would expect the Orioles to start throwing down numerous enormous contracts, although everybody in baseball not named Angelos believes Rutschman’s contract should have been extended by now. Yet at this point, who wants to think about it in the midst of this gloriously happy renaissance season of Orioles baseball?
Say something diplomatic, use some finesse to give a non-answer answer. No. Little John just throws down the doom and assures the same fans he wants coming to the ballpark that the future will be bleak. What a miserable person
And the Angelos family tradition of crying poverty is just as rich (literally). The Orioles have spent $180 million in salary since 2020. Meanwhile, each MLB team receives a flat $60 million from the national TV deals on top of MASN and revenue sharing. The Orioles and every other team also received $30 million over the winter for MLB’s sale of the remaining BAMTech to Disney, all before selling a single ticket.
If Angelos hasn’t pocketed enough money over the past four years to pay his players, he should make everybody happy and sell the team.
This latest Angelos cry of poverty comes, of course, as he refuses to sign a lease with the Maryland Stadium Authority to keep the Orioles at Camden Yards. The current lease expires Dec. 31, though Angelos has long insisted the club will remain in Baltimore. With the new long-term lease, the Orioles would gain access to $600 million in public funds, though Angelos has at various stages of negotiations requested an additional $300 million, developmental rights for state-owned parking lots and that the Orioles not have to pay rent.
Angelos’ most recent comments – to The New York Times, no less – seem to be a negotiating ploy — a poor and dimwitted one, mind you, as the state has already made clear he won’t be developing publicly-owned land for personal gain.
Conversely, the Milwaukee Brewers could not get a $300 million lease in place and now say they are open to relocating. Maryland is giving the Orioles $600 million and Angelos won’t sign the damn lease.
He’s just like his father without the brains or without having accomplished anything in his life. He has to be the center of attention, the shiny object when the actual team is the matter of substance. This is how the Orioles lost the great general manager and manager Pat Gillick and Davey Johnson. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as it’s the owner.
John Angelos is killing the vibe before it’s even gained full stride, which is a page out of A’s owner John Fisher’s playbook. It’s as though Angelos doesn’t want the fans to come while he makes unreasonable and impossible demands of the state so he will have an excuse to move the team.
Irsay 101 continues, it would seem.
I say we bring in Georgia Angelos to get the lease signed. She’ll get it done, for in the end, it is the mother who is there to save the day. The mother, after all, is always the hero.
The son, on the other hand, is anything but.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT