In 1994 — Peter Angelos’ first full season (save for the players’ strike that began in August) — the drama unfolded nearly every day in the Baltimore Orioles’ offices inside the B&O Warehouse.
The new Orioles owner — prodded by his two fantasy-baseball-playing sons, John and Lou — was ordering personnel decisions, bypassing general manager Roland Hemond and assistant general manager Doug Melvin. Reliever Lee Smith, starting pitcher Sid Fernandez and others — the boys would tell people they were the ones building the roster.
They were also the ones pushing their father to play Leo Gomez at third base that season instead of free-agent pickup Chris Sabo. It came to a head when Orioles manager Johnny Oates was called up to Angelos’ office and ordered to play Gomez at third one night.
I was in Angelos’ private box that night when Gomez blasted the game-winning home run. Angelos received hugs and high-fives all around. “I knew that playing Gomez was the right move,” he bellowed.
After the game, I was in Oates’ office, just the two of us. He was an emotional wreck by this time — he would be fired at the end of the strike-shortened season, despite a 63-49 record.
The manager looked like a deer in headlights as I described the scene that took place in Angelos’ suite earlier. Oates asked me, “Please don’t make me look too bad in the paper tomorrow.”
This was typical for the theatrics that went on in the early days of Angelos’ ownership. I was the Orioles beat writer for the paper for three of those years and a columnist actively covering the team after that and had a front-row seat for much of it.
The relationship between Angelos, who died Saturday at the age of 94, and the press would later sour as the team fell into a dysfunctional abyss for 14 straight losing seasons. But in those first years of ownership, Angelos loved reporters. We spoke two, sometimes three times a week. And I wasn’t the only one he often spoke with.
We would sometimes sit in a vacant private box together and watch a game and he would spill out his often-frustrating opinions on this manager or that front office decision-maker. It made for some wild conversations over the years.
He would feed you the skinny — but sometimes he wanted something in return, like the time he asked me who should be their center fielder in 1995.
They weren’t bringing Mike Devereaux back, and they had a center field prospect in Curtis Goodwin.
But he wasn’t quite ready yet — turns out he would never be quite ready, batting .248 in five major league seasons with the Orioles, Reds, Rockies, Cubs and Blue Jays.
I suggested they sign Andy Van Slyke, a free agent coming off two injury-filled years in Pittsburgh, to a one-year deal to bridge the time until Goodwin was ready. Two days later, the Orioles signed Van Slyke.
After 17 games played and 68 at-bats with 10 hits, Van Slyke was gone. That was my GM stint.
In early August, after being swept in four games by the Red Sox in Boston, giving Baltimore a 46-53 record, I was on the phone with Angelos after the last loss of the series. He wanted to fire manager Phil Regan and asked me if he should. I told him the team was out of it, for the most part, and just a few weeks away from the celebration of Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig’s 2,131 consecutive game streak.
There was no reason to take away from that positive attention by firing the manager. Phil Regan finished out the year. I’m not sure I did him a favor. He was miserable the whole time.
Then there was the time I got back from covering the July 11 Riddick Bowe-Andrew Golota heavyweight title fight in Madison Square Garden. This was the 22-minute riot at the Garden when Golota was disqualified for repeated low blows, but in the process had given Bowe a beating.
Angelos called me. “Do you know the manager for Golota?” I told him I did. He asked me to set up a meeting. “I want to buy his contract,” he said. Angelos had been an amateur boxer and loved the sport. I set up a meeting, which did not result in any deal, because at the time Golota’s people believed he was the next heavyweight champion. Instead, he proved to be a self-destructive enigma who fouled his way out of a promising career. Angelos dodged a bullet on that one.
There were so many more remarkable moments. He had the best manager perhaps of his time in former Oriole Davey Johnson in 1996 and 1997, yet Angelos hated him within the first week of hiring him.
I would have conversations with Angelos during the 1997 season, when Baltimore went wire-to-wire in first place in the American League East, and you would have thought that Johnson’s first name was a vulgar curse. He did not, contrary to popular opinion, fire Johnson.
Angelos refused to give Johnson a contract extension going into the final season of his deal, after Johnson had just been named AL Manager of the Year. Johnson quit.
After years of failure led to numerous critical Angelos columns, we didn’t speak. But at the Baseball Writers Association of America luncheon at the 2004 All-Star Game in Houston, Angelos came into the room. He saw me and came over and hugged me. “Still looking for that heavyweight champion, Thom.”
He was petty and could be meanspirited, and the good deeds that people have spoken of since his passing are not a deodorant. They weren’t for Dan Snyder and they’re not for Peter Angelos. But he made my life damned interesting.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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