15. Larry Lucchino (and by extension, Edward Bennett Williams)
So many franchise goals were accomplished under the leadership of Larry Lucchino that only his hasty exit in 1993 upon the purchase of the Baltimore Orioles by Peter Angelos kept him from fully getting the credit for what amounted to a halcyon period for baseball in the region. And Lucchino’s biggest credit other than overseeing virtually every aspect of the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards should be that he truly did make the team a regional franchise under first the ownership of Edward Bennett Williams and then the C.E.O. and minority partner under Eli Jacobs.
Lucchino, as it will be told in The Peter Principles at WNST.net this March, was all set to remain in charge of the Baltimore Orioles in 1993 when he found William DeWitt Jr. to buy the team before it wound up at a bankruptcy auction in New York where Angelos swooped in to keep it away from him.
He left for San Diego, where he built another stadium and went to the World Series and then Boston, where he revolutionized the franchise, remodeled Fenway Park and has been aboard for three titles now in the new century. A Princeton lawyer who played basketball there with Bill Bradley, Lucchino is the only man known to have World Series rings (Orioles ’83, Red Sox ’04, ’07, and ’13), a Super Bowl ring (Redskins ’83) and a Final Four watch (Princeton, ’65). He is also a Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivor.
See next page for No. 14
