LOVERRO: Orioles, Nationals rivalry more about billionaires, bottom lines than ballparks, players

I asked Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez, who has seen seven seasons of these “Battles of the Beltway” with the Baltimore Orioles, if after all this time, the series had actually developed into a rivalry.

“Honestly, no,” Martinez said. “It really hasn’t.”

As of Wednesday, they’ve played 95 games against each other — some of them entertaining, but few of them passionate.

Baltimore has a 55-40 advantage in the two-game home-and-away series the two teams have played against each other since 2006. Washington closed the gap slightly with an impressive 3-0 win Tuesday night at Nationals Park over the highly-touted Oriole before a crowd of 30,000 — a good number of them Orioles fans.

No reports of fights. No tension in the ballpark. They might as well have been playing the Seattle Mariners.

How can there be a rivalry when the teams partnered up by wearing their respective “City Connect” uniforms, in a promotion called “Cities Connected?” When each team pledged a contribution to youth programs in the other’s city?

A partnership? How’s that worked out so far?

There’s been a rivalry between the two teams, all right, but not on the field. It’s been in the courtroom in the bitter, drawn-out, and well-documented battle between the Orioles and the Nationals over television revenue they share as “partners” from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network

There is a feeling, though, that with the death of former Orioles owner Peter Angelos and the takeover of the franchise by new owner David Rubenstein, that the legal rivalry, at least, may soon be at an end.

Rubenstein had indicated that he is hopeful he can do just that. “I am working on it,” he said shortly after taking over ownership of the franchise in March. “I just think it’s premature to say what the resolution will be, but my goal is to take this away from the lawyers and give it back to the business people to resolve. So I’m hopeful and I have reason to believe that I can get this done, but I’m not a miracle worker.

“It’s been going on for a long time but I think the commissioner of baseball would like to get this resolved,” he said. “I think all the owners would like to get this resolved, and I would like to get it resolved. But I don’t have an easy answer yet. If it was easy, it would have been resolved, of course, but I think it’s something I am really focused on and I think I have reason to believe that we can get something done.”

Commissioner Rob Manfred has made it clear he hopes the new ownership will lead to a resolution of the dispute, whatever that is. “All I’ll say on that is that change always produces an opportunity,” he told reporters at the owners’ meeting in February.

I understand the optimism. Rubenstein is warm and cuddly and loveable, not like the combative Angelos. On Friday he will be the guest splasher in the “Bird Bath” in section 86 at Camden Yards, during the second and third innings of their game with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He has done some humorous promos, referring to himself as “Rubensplash.”

But I don’t believe he’s welcomed his new neighbors and written any checks yet to the Nationals for the $100-plus million already due — and settled upon, according to reports — in MASN revenue from 2012 to 2022. According to sources, the Nationals have not gotten those payments yet, unless the Lerners are keeping it quiet — or maybe, with MASN hemorrhaging subscribers for years now like the rest of the cable television business, the money may not be there.

I learned that they are currently taking depositions for the MASN share to be divided starting in 2022. So much for no more lawyers.

Let us not forget that the Lerners are not warm and cuddly and loveable. They are just as combative as Angelos was, and turning it over to the business people, as Rubenstein suggested he hopes to do, may not make things any easier. I can assure you that if the roles were reversed – the Nationals were the primary stakeholder in MASN and the Orioles were the stepchild partner – Angelos would have had to fight for every penny due in court that the Lerners have had to.

Then again, it is in the best interest of the Lerners to have the MASN dispute resolved, if this team is put back on the market for sale.

After two years, the Lerners announced in February that the team is no longer for sale. But sources said the main reason was because they didn’t get the bids they were hoping for. The $1.7 billion Orioles sales price – a surprisingly low figure – won’t help.

Is there hope for a reasonable partnership solution between the two franchises? Can they love each other in the boardroom as much as they do on the field? At one time, that was suggested to Angelos, years before the 2005 MASN agreement was struck after the Montreal Expos moved to the District.

When Pat Gillick was general manager in Baltimore from 1996 to 1998, he saw the future of baseball in Washington. He suggested to his boss, Peter Angelos, that they embrace a team in Washington and become partners, though his idea was a far more equitable relationship than the 90-10 split Washington started with in favor of Baltimore in 2005 that has since grown to a still one-sided 77 to 23 percent.

Maybe Rubensplash is capable of creating the sort of partnership Gillick suggested.

Or maybe it has to end in divorce. They may have to separate to truly connect.

• You can hear Thom Loverro on the Kevin Sheehan podcast.