In this season of giddiness, with the Orioles’ kids atop the American League East and blossoming before our eyes, we get a dose of reality — and untimeliness — now from owner John Angelos.
In an interview with the New York Times, the main drop-head reads, “John Angelos wants to reimagine the way Baltimore approaches the business of baseball, but his team’s electric young core may not be around to see the result.”
To which we say, in the most deeply analytical way: Oy.
It might have been nice to enjoy this lovely moment in the triumphant summer of 2023, but no. This baseball team just finished battering the Oakland A’s three straight times. Thirty games above break-even .500, they’re among baseball’s elite now. They’re heading for their first playoffs in a long time.
And if we dream a little, we might even see their first World Series since 1983, a time so distant that the current mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, was but a twinkle in his daddy’s eye back then.
Can we hear a word about Gunnar Henderson’s four hits on Sunday, or Ryan Mountcastle’s latest cannon shot, or the making of an ace pitcher named Kyle Bradish?
Yes, we get words, but they’re the wrong ones. They’re about money.
You love these kids? Great, but don’t fall too deeply in love with ‘em, because Angelos told The Times he won’t be able to afford to keep them.
“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,” he said.
Angelos said this to The Times’ Tyler Kepner, who covered the Orioles for The Sun when Peter Angelos ran the team. Kepner writes that Angelos then “conceded that it might not be feasible for his popular young core to be career Orioles like Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken Jr.”
John, John.
This is a hell of a time to kill the spirit of the moment.
You pick now to tell us you can’t afford to own the Baltimore Orioles? It’s not bad enough that in this summer of pure delight, you’re driving state officials nuts by dragging your feet on a long-term stadium deal to keep the O’s here?
You do that, and you bring out an entirely different emotion than joy among all Orioles’ fans of a certain age.
You bring back Robert Irsay and the theft one winter night of the beloved Colts football team, and the accompanying misery.
But you also bring back a memory of Peter Angelos, who was there for Baltimore when it counted most.
When out-of-towners tried to buy the team — and maybe move them to greener outfields — it was Peter Angelos, whose roots are deep in Bawlamer’s Highlandtown, who offered $173 million to ensure the Orioles would stay here.
He should have been a hero in this town.
He came up with that money in the town’s greatest era of sports-related anxiety, and he said he would have kept on bidding to keep the Orioles, no matter how high the price might go.
He paid a lot. And for a while, he kept paying a lot. He kept Cal Ripken in the fold, and he brought in high-priced guys like Rafael Palmeiro and Roberto Alomar and Bobby Bonilla. And for a while, in their glorious new downtown ballpark, the Orioles were among the sport’s sweethearts.
But the rules of the game changed over the years. Meaning, the salary structure and the sheer impossibility of small-market teams like Baltimore holding on to its biggest stars once the club no longer holds contract rights.
Bye-bye, Manny Machado.
Hello, New York Times piece. It’s a reminder of the baseball numbers that do not involve batting averages or spin rates, but strictly money. The New Yorks and the Bostons have it in limitless numbers, and the Baltimores do not.
Angelos is correct about all that, but oddly clueless to bring it up now.
Yes, his dad carried the load when the Orioles cost $173 million. You know what their value is right now on the open market? An estimated $1.6 billion.
Yes, it’s tough competing in major league baseball when you’re a small-market team. So let’s not shed too many tears over money he’ll have to spend to stay competitive.
We know the modern rules of baseball and money. We also know this is the most compelling Orioles team in memory.
Let’s enjoy these kids right now, and let’s watch them grow up for a few years and play thrilling baseball before we start worrying about them as they drift away from home, the way kids do.
Michael Olesker’s latest book, “Boogie: Life on A Merry-Go-Round,” was recently published by Apprentice House. It’s the life story of Baltimore legend Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass, an original “Diner” guy who grew up to create the Merry-Go-Round clothing chain and contribute millions to charity.
Allow me a few paragraphs of time travel, and let’s go back to Johnny Carson’s monologue the night after Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. I’m paraphrasing here, but I think the joke still works 57 years after Carson first delivered it. “The good Read more
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