The Baltimore Orioles, on the field, are sitting pretty right now at 70-43, two games up on the Tampa Bay Rays in the rugged AL East. Behind the scenes, the O’s are as much a mess as they’ve ever been.
There’s the still-ongoing nonsense involving the MASN TV play-by-play guy, Kevin Brown, who has been off the air for two weeks because he did the voiceover to a pre-game package ahead of the recent Rays’ series highlighting that the O’s are doing well against the Rays this year, which, yes, that’s what the issue was.
That apparently upset O’s owner-designate John Angelos, the son of the legendarily awful Peter Angelos, the long-time owner and primary reason O’s fans have to celebrate the 1983 World Series champs so much, because the franchise hasn’t come close to winning anything since he bought the team in 1993.
The Angelos clan is easy to upset, as O’s fans have long been aware.
The paterfamilias, who made his millions as a trial lawyer, is still fighting the Washington Nationals over money owed to that team by MASN, the TV network that owned and run by the Orioles, part of the deal with MLB for Angelos to agree to allowing another franchise in his TV market back in 2005.
That’s what trial lawyers do.
Trial lawyers who dabble in politics also play brinksmanship with the future of the team vis-à-vis Camden Yards.
That’s the other big issue facing O’s fans, who want to assume that the team will come to an agreement to extend the lease with the state of Maryland, but the Dec. 31 deadline gets closer literally every day, and it’s not like the Angelos clan has any leverage to extract a better deal than what’s on the table, which involves $600 million pledged by the state for improvements.
Apparently, the Angeloses want more to be able to undertake development around the ballpark akin to what the Atlanta Braves have been able to do around their new park in the suburbs and what we’ve seen built up around Nationals Park in Navy Yard in Washington.
Thing is, there’s nowhere around Camden Yards to be able to do anything like what’s been done in Atlanta and Washington, and it’s not like anybody in their right mind is going to suggest building a new park in the ‘burbs, considering the jewel that Camden Yards is.
All that’s being achieved with the delay in signing the lease extension is, more bad will, which is what the Angelos era has been all about.
On the field, go O’s.
Off the field, the sooner the Angeloses are out of the equation, the better.
Share
Chris Graham
