Less than a week after the passing of longtime Orioles owner Peter Angelos at age 94, Major League Baseball team owners voted unanimously on Wednesday, Mar. 27, in favor of transferring the controlling stake in the Baltimore franchise to a group led by local billionaire David M. Rubenstein.
“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I thank the Angelos family for their many years of service to the game and the communities of Baltimore,” said MLB Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred, Jr. in a statement. “Peter Angelos loved Baseball, loved Baltimore and was an important part of MLB for more than three decades.
“I congratulate David Rubenstein on receiving approval from the Major League Clubs as the new control person of the Orioles. As a Baltimore native and a lifelong fan of the team, David is uniquely suited to lead the Orioles moving forward. We welcome David and his partners as the new stewards of the franchise.”
The vote makes Rubenstein the team’s majority owner, taking the Orioles out of the hands of the Angelos family for the first time in more than three decades.
In January, multiple media sources reported that a consortium led by Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group Inc., agreed to buy the Orioles in a reported transaction valued at $1.725 billion.
The investment team reportedly includes Ares Management Corp. co-founder Michael Arougheti, former Orioles great Cal Ripken Jr., ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and former NBA superstar Grant Hill.
A Bethesda resident, Rubenstein, 74, is a multi-billionaire lawyer, businessman, TV host and philanthropist who was born and raised in Pikesville. The son of a postal office file clerk and a homemaker who occasionally worked in a dress shop, he attended Baltimore City College and studied at Duke University before earning a law degree at the University of Chicago.
“When I was young, Baltimore was a religiously segregated city,” Rubenstein said in an interview with the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. “The Jews were in the northwest part of town, and it was very much a ghetto situation.”
From 1977 to 1981, Rubenstein served as deputy assistant for domestic policy to President Jimmy Carter. In 1987, he co-founded The Carlyle Group, which became one of the world’s largest private equity firms.
Rubenstein recently stepped down as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has also served as chair of the National Gallery of Art, the Council on Foreign Relations and The Economic Club of Washington D.C.
According to Forbes, he has a net worth of $3.2 billion, as of December of 2022 and is the 790th richest person in the world.
Rubenstein was honored at the 2018 Charles Baum Symposium at Pikesville’s Suburban Club presented by The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.
“I was fortunate to have a loving set of parents who were committed to my education,” Rubenstein told the Washington Post in 2012. “They wanted me to do well in school, and their approval meant a lot. When your parents tell you, ‘We are proud of you,’ and they tell the neighbors what a good job you did, that’s incentive. …
“Until I was 11 or so, I thought everybody was Jewish. I’d see people working hard and getting well-educated, so I always felt that’s how you get ahead.”
Rubenstein described himself as a proud but non-practicing Jew. “I was born Jewish and I was bar mitzvahed, but I’m not an observant Jewish person,” he said. “My parents, who didn’t really understand Hebrew, would go to sit for the High Holy Days, but they didn’t really understand what was going on.
“I went to Hebrew school, but my Hebrew was so bad that when I got bar mitzvahed, the rabbi had to write it out phonetically for me in English to make sure I got it right. So I would say I’m not observant.”
Rubenstein is a prolific philanthropist known for gifts to preserve patriotic sites and objects, including copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. He was among the initial group of signatories to The Giving Pledge, the charitable campaign started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage wealthy individuals to contribute at least half of their wealth to charitable causes.
In 2022, Rubenstein donated $15 million to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the museum’s collection was renamed in his honor. Rubenstein, whose father’s family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine, said the war between Ukraine and Russia inspired him to make the donation.
For now, the Rubenstein group will own 40% of the Orioles, with a plan to purchase an additional 30% from the Angelos family in the future. Last December, the Orioles signed a 30-year lease to remain at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, including a provision allowing the team to develop land around the ballpark.
“I am grateful to the Angelos family for the opportunity to join the team I have been a fan of my entire life,” Rubenstein posted in a statement on social media in February. “I look forward to working with all the Orioles owners, players and staff to build upon the incredible success the team has achieved in recent seasons. Our collective goal will be to bring a World Series Trophy back to the City of Baltimore. To the fans I say: we do it for you and can’t do it without you. Thank you for your support.”
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