Archive, MASN, Nestor Aparicio, Orioles

MASN Money For Dummies (Part 3): Angelos was bleeding cash when Nats money came

Nestor Aparicio

Baltimore Positive is the vision and the creative extension of four decades of sharing the love of local sports for this Dundalk native and University of Baltimore grad, who began his career as a sportswriter and music critic at The News American and The Baltimore Sun in the mid-1980s. Launched radio career in December 1991 with Kenny Albert after covering the AHL Skipjacks. Bought WNST-AM 1570 in July 1998, created WNST.net in 2007 and began diversifying conversations on radio, podcast and social media as Baltimore Positive in 2016. nes@baltimorepositive.com

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did in All The President’s Men.

Angelos – having gone from piles of debt and a dormant, cash-bleeding franchise that he had no idea how to properly operate in 2004 to now sitting on a $3 billion empire in 2016 – should thank The Washington Post for all of it. The newspaper’s threats of antitrust revocation in the summer of 2004 and the lack of a home for the Expos made Angelos wealthier beyond his wildest imagination once Selig and Bob DuPuy botched the negotiation.

Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell, who had more than his fill of lies, deception and his newspaper being played like a fiddle by Angelos when the old man was pissed at The Baltimore Sun (and Ken Rosenthal, Mike Littwin, John Eisenberg and Mark Hyman all grilled him with real questions back when he had feigned some level of accountability), was the most prescient of all them in predicting this Angelos feud with the current owners of the Washington Nationals before he even knew who they’d be.

Click on any of the above links to read some old-school opinions and facts about the legacy of Peter G. Angelos and his treatment of the media.

Angelos also has a strong opinion regarding what constitutes a “journalist” and a “paid representative of the Orioles.”

So for any of you listening to CBS Radio or 105.7 The Fan for “enlightenment” – or if you’re one of the sheep who reads the propaganda at MASN Sports or the Orioles team website for “news” – remember the words of the man who owns them or has them on the payroll.

In the end, The Washington Post was the one media entity that held the nuclear bomb of antitrust revocation to the head of MLB via Congress and the antitrust exemption during 2004.

By the spring of 2005, Angelos had struck MLB gold by receiving the greatest financial windfall ever by a North American sports franchise owner.

Twelve years into owning the Orioles, Angelos was inching up on being upside down by almost $200 million with a huge note of debt still on the franchise from the auction in 1993. By moving the Expos into the DMV, Bud Selig and the boys in New York bailed him out by putting a team in Washington, D.C. and giving him a guaranteed floor price of $365 million, $75 million in cash and the rights to control MASN into perpetuity and take the lion’s share of the profits through 2031.

It was the deal of a lifetime.

Angelos is still counting the money.

So am I.

This is Chapter 3 of a six-part series written for Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals fans to better understand the history of MASN and where all of the money has been going.

Chapter 4 is coming soon…

Chapter 1 is here.

Chapter 2 is here.

If you are interested in the history of the Baltimore Orioles and the ownership reign of Peter G. Angelos, here are the first three chapters of “The Peter Principles.”