The Peter Principles (Ch. 13): Mi$ter Angelo$ & $on$ Network change$ everything for two citie$

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like a quarter of a billion dollars before 2015.

Any talk of Angelos simply taking $100 million or perhaps, $150 million, was unacceptable to him. And he knew he had the ability to create anarchy – either internally or within the courts.

The negotiations with commissioner Bud Selig’s appointee Bob DuPuy were not going well at any point and in the end, Angelos forced the MLB owners into a deal far worse than they could’ve possibly imagined when they foolishly moved the team in September 2004 and decided to negotiate with an irate, bloody-thirsty “partner” who had a reputation (and one they had seen work against them in 1994) for walking his own path and fighting as dirty as anyone even among the filthiest of filthy sports owners on the planet.

On March 13, 2005, just four days before Congressional leaders would have Selig and 10 players under oath to Capitol Hill to discuss performance enhancing drugs in baseball and its effect on statistics, history and health of young players, Angelos and the Orioles took out an ad in The Washington Post that voiced his concerns and served to enrage Washington baseball fans even more.

“For over 30 years the Orioles have had the exclusive rights to a geographically defined television market that stretches from Pennsylvania through all of Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, Delaware, portions of West Virginia and as far south as Charlotte, North Carolina.

When the Orioles were purchased by the current ownership group in 1993, these rights were a material element of the franchise value as reflected in the then-record purchase price of $173 million.”

As to the broadcast of Nationals’ game, we have repeatedly advised MLB that we would welcome the Nationals to our regional sports network and are prepared to televise Nationals’ games throughout our television territory.”

The Orioles are prepared to offer a fair and appropriate fee to the Nationals in the many millions of dollars annually for the telecast of their games.”

Virtually every writer and legal critic in the sports world was saying that Angelos hadn’t an iota of proof that he had any legal rights to Washington, D.C. There were no bylaws or promises made – real or implied – that the Orioles were a part of any territory outside of a few counties that surrounded Baltimore City, where they played their home games since 1954 and where twice a Washington, D.C. team resided.

It was echoed many times that Angelos didn’t really have a legal leg to stand on in this debate. So, then, why wouldn’t Selig just tell him to sue MLB and declare war?

Neil deMause of Baseball Prospectus summed it up:

The ostensible crux of this whole debate is TV rights. While innumerable press reports have asserted that the Orioles have “territorial rights” to D.C., this was never the case: according to baseball’s bylaws, Baltimore territory includes several suburban counties in Maryland, and stops at the state line.

What Angelos does have are the more nebulous “cable TV rights,” which for the O’s extend clear to the Carolinas. This is par for the course in the monopolistic world of MLB, wherein every cable system in the country can be assigned to a specific team, even ones hundreds of miles from home plate. They are, however, provisional rights –they’re owned by MLB, and only granted to teams at the whim of the commissioner and the executive committee. “My own reading of it,” says baseball economist Andy Zimbalist, “is that Angelos doesn’t have any legal grounds to pursue this at all.”

Why, then, you may ask, is Bud Selig wasting his time negotiating with Peter Angelos, then? Just give the man some lovely parting gifts, and send him away to play the home version.

The problem is that Angelos is holding MLB’s traditional kryptonite: the threat of an antitrust suit. Because the very existence of the cable-rights pie is a function of MLB’s monopoly powers, an Angelos lawsuit, even if it ultimately failed, could force Selig to air some laundry he’d prefer to keep under the bed.

Zimbalist later wrote a book called “In The Best Interests of Baseball,” where he covered the Selig decision in great detail.

Selig may be willing to play hardball with cities, but he was reluctant to do so with Angelos. For one, Angelos was threatening legal action. However dubious his legal case may have been, Angelos would have filed it locally and probably received a sympathetic hearing, at least initially. Any legal action would also have brought document discovery. Discovery in this case could potentially have involved any documents related to team ownership, MLB’s relations with host cities, owner relations with the central office, or team finances. Some of these documents may be particularly sensitive, embarrassing, or even indicting.

Selig was also quoted as saying: “I really believe in the partnership concept, which is a thing I’ve tried to sell. As [former Tigers owner] Mr. Fetzer used to tell me: “We want to beat each other’s brains on the field but Buddy, off the field, we’re partners.” I know it sounds trite, but it is true. Look, Art Rooney understood it. George Halas understood it. Wellington Mara understood it and so on and so forth. So now I see about Peter Angelos. Well, this is…they’re dumping a team twenty miles away; you can make all the compelling arguments; I’ve heard them all, on all sides, and I know that some people think I’m bending over backwards. But I think we are partners off the field and I do think that in unusual circumstance where it becomes obvious there was some economic damage that we ought to think about something that at least is fair.”

On March 31, 2005, there was finally détente. Just three days before …

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