BALTIMORE — More than 90,000 fans filled Camden Yards Saturday and Sunday to watch the Baltimore Orioles face the Texas Rangers in the American League Division Series, and they turned the place back to the glory days of the ballpark that changed baseball.
“I thought the environment was unbelievable,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said after his team lost Game 1 by the score of 3-2. “It was really loud early in the game, to start the game. Thank you fans for showing up. That was a special environment for our guys to play in.”
They doubled down on it Sunday, and even when the Rangers took a 9-2 lead on their way to an 11-8 win and a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, the sold-out crowd generated electricity like few places in Major League Baseball can.
The Orioles moving to Nashville, Tennessee? John Angelos would have a better chance of finally passing the bar exam than this team going anywhere.
John Angelos is one of Orioles owner Peter Angelos’ sons. He is running the team because Peter, 94, has been incapacitated for several years now.
His other son, Louis, in a lawsuit against John and their mother and Peter’s wife Georgia, claimed John was planning on moving the team to Nashville, where he reportedly lives much of the time with his wife, who is in the music business. John Angelos has denied any intention of moving the team, and the suit was settled without any disclosure of the terms.
This farce was as ridiculous as the so-called negotiations between the Orioles and the state of Maryland — specifically, John Angelos’ best buddy, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (memo to new Commanders owner Josh Harris — get Moore in the room and make a stadium deal quick; this guy is a mark) — over the terms of the lease. It reached embarrassing levels when John Angelos appeared on the video board at Camden Yards during a Sept. 28 game and announced a new agreement that would keep the team there for another 30 years.
Everyone assumed that was the “lease” and celebrated as if it was a done deal. But it turned out to be just a memorandum of understanding — a non-binding one at that, which means there is still no lease.
Moore told the Maryland Board of Public Works a week later that a lease agreement would be signed. “Mark my word … the Orioles will be here for 30 years,” he said.
Of course they will be. They have no other option. There is no place for them to go. That’s what makes the negotiations so comical, and Moore looks like a fool for buddying up to John Angelos.
Major League Baseball has not allowed an owner to move a team since the Senators left Washington after the 1971 season. The Montreal Expos moved to the District after the 2004 season, but that franchise was owned by Major League Baseball. The Oakland Athletics may be on the verge of moving to Las Vegas, but Oakland is a troubled franchise that plays in perhaps the worst stadium in sports.
Camden Yards is a crown jewel, and MLB is not about to leave it vacant — certainly not for John Angelos, who is the “controlling person” for the franchise. Not when this team will be put on the market for sale once Peter Angelos passes away, as per the terms of his will, according to sources.
When that sale comes up, there will be no shortage of buyers. There are already bidders lined up — including, according to Bloomberg, Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, who was also supposedly the lead bidder for the Washington Nationals. The process of selling the Nationals has temporarily ground to a halt because of the complications from the MASN broadcasting dispute between the two teams. Those complications are likely to disappear when the Orioles are sold.
The new Orioles owners will likely have a new lease that includes the ability for the team to work with companies to develop the land around Camden Yards, which would include the vacant Camden station. This is rich because it was the Orioles during the 14 straight seasons of losing from 1998 to 2011 under the dysfunctional ownership of Peter Angelos that left Camden Station — which once housed the Sports Legends Museum — vacant due to the drop in attendance during those years.
Harborplace also received a new lease on life because of Camden Yards in the early days of the ballpark, but now it is closed and about to be demolished. It was once the symbol of Baltimore’s renaissance.
The new owners will also be the beneficiaries of five straight losing seasons — three of them 100-plus losses — from 2017 to 2021 that allowed the club to draft high and put together a very talented, young and cheap baseball team. Gunnar Henderson is going to be a star on the Bryce Harper level. Adley Rutschman is an All-Star catcher. And the best player in the minor leagues, Jackson Holliday, is set to arrive next season. This Orioles team may not win this series with the Rangers. But they should be championship contenders for years to come. The electricity at Camden Yards will be turned back on.
You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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