to block a move to D.C. Angelos said he was “cordial” and “friendly” with his colleagues but wouldn’t go any further. “I could make some self-serving statements to what I believe my relationship is with fellow owners but I’m not going to do that.”
On Aug. 18, a Wednesday afternoon, Angelos ordered the Orioles players led by Rafael Palmeiro into Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C. for a caravan with free ice cream and hot dogs for all fans.
Boswell reported in The Washington Post:
Farragut Park was a baseball idyll on Wednesday. Thousands of Washingtonians, in three hours of interviews, were of one nearly unanimous mind. They love the Orioles. They love baseball. They deeply want a team back in Washington. They think the idea of putting a team near Dulles Airport is both a bad joke and a certain disaster. And they know for certain that Angelos is a brazen monopolist who’s already maimed the Orioles and now wants to grab something that isn’t his: Washington.
As the 2004 season came to a conclusion on the field, it became apparent that the Expos were headed for Washington D.C. in 2005 and the only hurdle for Selig was negotiating a happy ending with Angelos.
But instead of negotiating with Angelos on the front end, Selig and DuPuy simply called in late September and told him they were placing the team in Washington, D.C. and that they’d negotiate with him later about the terms.
Or, as then operating officer Joe Foss later told the Baltimore Business Journal, “Bud thought that Peter would be reasonable, and he had no intention of being reasonable.”
8
The compensation proposed to Angelos includes a large cash payment or a stake in a new regional sports network that would televise the Orioles and the Washington team, both The Washington Post and The Sun reported.
There was no legal requirement to compensate Angelos but insiders said it was his friendship with Selig that afforded him any ground to negotiate.
“If anything, it’s an effort in good will,” said John Moag, the Baltimore investment banker who lured the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, told The Sun. “I think there is sympathy from the commissioner and fellow owners that, in reality, this would hurt the Orioles, and there is a desire to alleviate the hurt.”
On Sept. 28. 2004, it became official. Selig and DuPuy announced that the Montreal Expos would be relocating to Washington, D.C. and play at R.F.K. Stadium in 2005.
Immediately, Angelos softened his position and said he could go along with a plan to move the Montreal Expos to Washington but wanted to ensure a deal that would protect his team’s viability in the future.
Angelos last salvo before the announcement said he would consider a deal if it meets two conditions: “Does the deal protect the value of the franchise? Does it protect the state and the taxpayers’ investment in Camden Yards?”
“If those two goals can be accomplished, and I feel the franchise would be secure and the revenue stream is protected and the asset value is secure, it might be possible to make a deal. As far as my personal interests are concerned, as far as paying me $100 million or $150 million, all that would do is take care of Peter Angelos. That’s not what it is about.”
8Boswell wrote in The Washington Post:
However, whether we choose to add more fresh Orioles images in the future is quite another matter.
Peter Angelos might want to remember that before he continues to spit in our faces while reaching around to stab us in the backs. The belligerent Orioles owner should ask himself how we will react to his bad faith. After all the cash Washington fans have put in his team’s pockets, this is our repayment? Who but this litigious bully would try to hijack the entire nation’s capital when he has no shred of a legal claim?
At the moment, the balance between residual affection for the Orioles and contempt for Angelos’s behavior is precarious. Each day that Angelos stamps his foot like a rich brat he loses more of the “swing” fans between Baltimore and Washington that he claims to crave so desperately. And he not only loses us as ticket buyers, but as loyal TV viewers as well.
Angelos was left to stew as the MLB-owned Montreal Expos were in play to turn Washington, D.C. into a baseball town again.
The Orioles finished under .500 for the seventh straight year. Angelos disliked – and barely knew – his manager Lee Mazzilli. The investment of $120 million in Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sidney Ponson didn’t work. As a matter of fact, in his stout and boisterous efforts to keep a team out of Washington, D.C., Angelos lost more money than ever in 2004 – in excess of $25 million.
Some reports put his debt at well over $150 million by the end of that 2004 season.
8And, now, his worst nightmare had been realized when he saw Washington Nationals hats and gear being sold in Baltimore gift shops during the holidays of 2004.
It was 2005 and Major League Baseball in Washington, D.C. was now a reality. Selig made it happen. And the new D.C. marketplace disliked him even more than the long-suffering Orioles fans in Baltimore did at this point, and now with a team to call their own many wouldn’t be coming back to Camden Yards or raising their kids in orange and black once the team was established in the District of Columbia.
The common Angelos ploy of…doing…nothing…was…in…play. Angelos loves the “stall and threaten litigation” tactic as a weapon.
Angelos steadfastly refused to agree to any of the terms Selig and DuPuy would put forward to make a deal. He held his position throughout the remainder of 2004 and into 2005 even as the Nationals were selling tickets and were into spring training without a radio or television deal in place.
In his mind, Angelos wasn’t going to get a fair deal with his MLB partners who double-crossed him. He was going to get as much as he could get – which meant waiting until after the last hour possible, the tried-and-true Angelos technique of wearing down his opponent with an angry silence – and he didn’t mind doing that in a federal court, where every MLB owner would be exposed by their monopolistic practices.
Angelos wasn’t even as motivated by the money as he was to get even with the men in his industry that did what he previously thought was inconceivable. They came and squatted on what Angelos felt was his territory.
He’d make them pay. And pay dearly.
