RIP Peter Angelos (I guess)

[tapintoamerica]

Imagine your entire legacy resting with Armando Benítez in a tied game in a pivotal playoff game.

It wasn't tied. Orioles led. And boy did he blow it.

 

[justgladtobehere]

Man, IDK. Baltimore was the best team in baseball between 1966-71 and they co-existed just fine with the Senators. More than enough space for two teams in that market.

The most important factor is just how big and rich the DC area has become.

The metro area for Baltimore and DC were just over 1 million in 1950. DC area has over double the population now.

Baltimore Metro Area Population 1950-2024

Washington DC Metro Area Population 1950-2024

DC was a bad market forever. Pre-WWII, the place was a backwater.

 

[Della9250]

He drove the franchise into the ground and ruined one of the best baseball markets in the country. There is no opening for a team in D.C. if the Orioles remain successful and popular like they were for their first 40 years. If you're an Orioles and Skins/Commanders fan, you finally are done with albatrosses of ownership groups. You hope.

The whole MASN rights issue was obnoxious and petty

 

[Hermes]

It wasn't tied. Orioles led. And boy did he blow it.

I had it down as a lead, second-guessed myself, and changed it.

It's a missing moment in my Cleveland sports fandom because I bought a ticket to a Christian rock band concert for a band called Three Crosses and missed Tony Fernandez's home run. Before cellphones, I watched four 28-year old guys guys doing outdated rock moves (including the organist picking up the keyboard and holding it over his head) to a room full of Ohio youth group students in a tiny cafetorium while worried the entire time the series was going to go seven games.

(Cue my wife: "How do you have photographic memory when it comes to sporting events from 1997 and can't remember any names of anybody beyond my immediate family at gatherings?")

 

[garrow]

Didn't know Angelos was a pol...or once lost to Nancy Pelosi's brother.

 

[swingline]

@Hermes, tell your wife you only remember the important things.

I'll send flowers to your funeral.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The most important factor is just how big and rich the DC area has become.

The metro area for Baltimore and DC were just over 1 million in 1950. DC area has over double the population now.

Baltimore Metro Area Population 1950-2024

Washington DC Metro Area Population 1950-2024

DC was a bad market forever. Pre-WWII, the place was a backwater.

And post-WWII, the original Senators and the expansion Senators always had cheap, underfunded ownership. Which can be the death knell to any franchise.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Not to hijack this (RIP Peter, a complicated man, as noted, who at least liked the players), but...

Imagine your entire legacy resting with Armando Benítez in a tied game in a pivotal playoff game.

...six blown saves in 10 postseason opportunities. Incredible. The '69 World Series combatants are bonded by Benitez extending their current droughts, cause the 2000 Mets win the World Series if they win Game 1. Clemens comes out in a steroidal rage in Game 2 and Piazza murders him when he throws the bat b/c the Mets are up 1-0 instead of down 0-1.

 

[Octave]

Armando "Ball One" Benitez - Mets fans are well acquainted.

 

[tapintoamerica]

The whole MASN rights issue was obnoxious and petty

And not without precedent.

 

[wicked]

Man, IDK. Baltimore was the best team in baseball between 1966-71 and they co-existed just fine with the Senators. More than enough space for two teams in that market.

The Senators were atrocious. No one cared that Ted Williams was the manager.

 

[wicked]

MLB was going to put a team in DC regardless of whether the Orioles were good. Two reasons:
1) It's a top-10 market.
2) There's nowhere else to go. Nearly 2o years later, MLB still hasn't found another market worth going to. The commissioner has said the issues in Tampa Bay and Oakland had to be resolved before expansion became a thing, and that's not simply out of some sense of loyalty to those places. The usual suspects -- Charlotte, Raleigh, Vegas -- are tapped out. Vegas doesn't have the land and Charlotte and Raleigh don't have the interest. They're all Braves fans.

Sadly, the Washington National League Ball Club LLC was inevitable. Good for Angelos for fending off the challenge as long as he did. People forget that Jack Kent Cooke conspired for years with commissioners to keep the NFL out of Baltimore.

By 2005 the crowds at Camden were dwindling. I remember going to a game that year against the Red Sox and walking up and getting tickets — until then, you could NEVER do that since the ballpark opened. Angelos forced MLB to guarantee the franchise value then because he was afraid he'd be wiped out by a sale. How quaint that sounds now when the value is like six or seven times what it was then. The Nats drew ok for the first year or two then fell off a bunch, even with the new ballpark. I don't see either team being able to sell out on the same night, especially with Camden at 40-something k.