IT WAS HOT AS HADES in that lower Manhattan federal courtroom. Jam-packed with bidders, curiosity seekers and baseball fans, the Baltimore Orioles franchise was up for grabs on August 2, 1993, and the bidding was as steamy as the air in the room once the price began to rapidly accelerate into the stratosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that there was any bidding at all was somewhat surprising to Peter G. Angelos, a Baltimore attorney who had begun a power play five months earlier to purchase the Major League Baseball franchise that was being sold off via an auction nearly 200 miles away from its home on the Chesapeake Bay. In the hours leading up to the auction, Angelos managed to turn his sole competitor from a previous suspended bid for the team during June into a partner. William DeWitt Jr., a Cincinnati native whose father once owned the St. Louis Browns in the 1940s and a minority investor in the Texas Rangers, joined Angelos\u2019 celebrity-led local group from Maryland just hours before the bidding was to begin in the sweltering Custom House. DeWitt was promised a role in the operations and management of the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was an amazing coup for Angelos to pull DeWitt from being a worthy, legitimate competitor into a teammate that morning, after convincing him that he\u2019d be involved and an influential part of the eventual winning group. It was shocking that DeWitt had pulled out because several times over the previous eight months, he was convinced that he was already the winning bidder and new owner of the Orioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In February 1993, after six months of lengthy, arduous negotiations on a fair price, DeWitt had entered into a deal with Orioles majority owner Eli Jacobs to buy the team for $141.3 million. Jacobs, who was in his final days of semi-liquidity and quietly on the verge of bankruptcy, didn\u2019t have the legal authority to close the deal with DeWitt once the banks seized his assets in March. Instead, the Orioles wound up at auction five months later and suddenly Angelos \u2013 with DeWitt now shockingly a member of his ownership team \u2013 believed he would emerge victorious without breaking a sweat in the summer heat of The Big Apple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that afternoon, after entering the courtroom in what he believed would be a rubber-stamped win, instead he found himself embroiled in a bidding war with a stranger he never strongly considered to being a worthy foil in the fray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeffrey Loria, a New York art dealer and Triple-A baseball team owner, wanted badly to be a Major League Baseball owner. Baltimore native and former NFL player Jean Fugett represented a group led by TLC Beatrice, which featured a rare minority bid for an MLB franchise on that day in New York. One bidder, Doug Jemal of Nobody Beats The Wiz electronics stores, had early interest but bowed out before the steamy auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That August day, the bidding began at $151.25 million, which included a \u201cstalking fee\u201d of $1.7 million which was originally awarded to DeWitt\u2019s team because of his vast due diligence and legal work done months earlier when he thought he had won a deal to secure the Orioles in the spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
George Stamas, who represented Angelos\u2019 group during the bidding process, opened the bidding at $153 million, which was seen as a good faith gesture from the combined bid with DeWitt, which could\u2019ve been perceived as artificially deflating the sale price by judge Cornelius Blackshear. Loria, who was a stranger to the Angelos group, immediately raised it by $100,000. Stamas barked out, \u201cOne million more – $154.1!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And for the next 30 minutes, the bids drew north from the $150 millions into the $160s. With every bid, Loria would raise by $100,000. Stamas, on behalf of Angelos, raised it by $1 million at a time. After 13 rounds of back and forth money, Angelos had the leading bid $170 million. Fugett, who had been completely silent during the auction, asked the judge for a recess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The request was granted and the judge headed to his chambers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, suddenly, it got even hotter in a blazing courtroom on a sweltering day in The Big Apple in a battle over who would own and control the Baltimore Orioles for the next two decades and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IT ALL EVOLVED SO QUICKLY, this love affair the newly wealthy attorney from East Baltimore had discovered with the Baltimore Orioles. So how did all of this happen \u2013 his fascination and obsession with the local baseball team? Where and when and why did Peter G. Angelos decide that he wanted so desperately to buy and control the Orioles? By any measurement at the time, it was clear he was only, at best, a passive baseball fan \u2013 a man who revered the law and politics far more than games of sport on the civic scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angelos had recently cashed in on asbestos cases in the late 1980s, using his many years and influence as a union lawyer via the steel mills and workers in Sparrows Point. In 1992, he hit a huge payday with a class action assault on manufacturers who poisoned workers and was truly nouveau riche. Before owning a Major League Baseball team the only thing he owned that dealt with the public was a tavern, following in the footsteps of his father, who ran a dining establishment. As an attorney, Angelos represented blue-collar claims. He ran for office. He helped the common man fight the system and big business. He was a lifelong Democrat. He hated fat-cat Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angelos won a City Council seat in the Third District in 1959 and never won another election. He ran for mayor in 1967 on the first mixed race ticket and lost and failed to win as city council president in 1963 and 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born in Pittsburgh on July 4, 1929, Angelos nearly died from appendicitis when he was 10 years old before coming to Baltimore a year later. By age 30, he had been elected to the City Council, and he ran unsuccessfully for mayor prior to turning 40. His father\u2019s tavern, Tom\u2019s Bar, at the corner of Oldham and Eastern Ave in Greektown, was where Angelos got his street smarts and he was an amateur boxer in his formative years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The City Paper<\/em> did an extensive profile of Angelos in 2000 and reported:<\/p>\n\n\n\n He lost a state Senate bid in 1958, but a year later he was elected to the City Council, where he developed a reputation as both government watchdog and incurable windbag. He successfully advocated for the city to hire a fiscal adviser to scrutinize mayoral spending, and he pushed for raises for police and firefighters while demanding that city officials hold the line on their own pay. He regularly demanded investigations, into everything from gasoline prices to the city welfare, real-estate, and school-construction agencies. But more often than not, The Evening Sun said in a 1967 editorial, these probes produced only “interminable charges and counter charges and finally dissipated with a hailstorm of words.” The outspoken council member, the paper concluded, was “excellent on the attack but lacked the staying power on important issues.” In 1963, Angelos ran against Tommy D’Alesandro III for City Council president and lost. Four years later, he ran for mayor \u2013 again taking on D’Alesandro (and heading the city’s first integrated ticket, with Clarence Mitchell III running for council president), and again losing. He would consider several state and congressional races before bowing out of electoral politics to focus on his law practice, but it wasn’t long before that took on the familiar ring of a crusade.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But it wasn’t until 1992 that Peter Angelos became a rich man. That spring, Angelos’ many asbestos cases were consolidated and went to trial. In July, a Baltimore Circuit Court jury ruled that several asbestos manufacturers knowingly peddled a hazardous product to plants such as Bethlehem Steel for more than a half-century, causing cancer in thousands of Baltimore factory workers. By August, the awards had reached the $200 million to $400 million range; Angelos and his firm, which handled the cases on a contingency, earned more than $100 million, according to newspaper reports at the time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And just what does a guy who used to run a diner do when he comes into a couple of hundred million dollars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, Angelos tried for political clout and power in the 1960s and mostly failed. He tried to get famous, become the mayor and become loved and remembered but life didn\u2019t take him on that pathway. Instead, 25 years later, he\u2019d become wealthy and mostly anonymous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n He was in that steamy courtroom on that August day in 1993 to change that. Most people in Baltimore had no idea who Peter G. Angelos was on that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If he could win this bid and bring home a local ownership team to Baltimore, he\u2019d be revered forever as a champion of the people and a modern day hero in his adopted hometown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least that\u2019s what he thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n THE SELLER OF THE BALTIMORE Orioles, Eli Jacobs, wasn\u2019t broken-hearted to be selling the baseball team. He was much closer to \u201cbroke\u201d than broken-hearted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before his bankruptcy case, Jacobs told Tony Kornheiser of The Washington Post<\/em> in June 1991 that he didn\u2019t like owning a MLB team as much as he thought he would. \u201cI\u2019d prefer that I live a normal, ordinary life.\u201d Described as introverted and doggedly shy, Jacobs put the team on the market for $200 million as the Orioles wound down their time at Memorial Stadium. Jacobs paid just $70 million for the team less than three years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacobs thought the team merited a $130 million appreciation as Camden Yards opened its doors in April 1992. He was at the right place at the right time in buying \u2013 and then trying to flip \u2013 the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While continually denying any financial pressure, his price lowered to $160 million by the fall of 1992, when his empire was privately crumbling. By December, he was reportedly negotiating exclusively with William DeWitt, Jr., a baseball family insider and Cincinnati oil executive, who owned a small piece of the Texas Rangers with soon-to-be President George W. Bush. The price was in the $150 million range. DeWitt, through his connections with new commissioner Bud Selig was thought to be \u201cpre-approved\u201d for ownership given his reputation and family legacy in the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, there were only two comparable sales of any sports franchise in North America: the National Football League\u2019s Dallas Cowboys fetched $140 million from oil tycoon Jerry Jones in February 1989 and the MLB Seattle Mariners sold for a then-thought-to-be-outlandish $125 million in February 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacobs bought the team on Dec. 6, 1989, from the estate of Washington-based attorney Edward Bennett Williams, who died in the summer of 1988 after inking a long-term deal with then-Governor William Donald Schaefer to keep the Orioles in Baltimore and move them into a new downtown ballpark that would become Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Jacobs was a junk bond man from Wall Street in the 1980s. A Red Sox fan by birth, Jacobs bought the Orioles because he could afford to do it and because it allowed him to enter rooms with presidents, the Queen of England and various business leaders and politicians. Plus, it was right on the train between Washington and New York and he could wield some political clout with his Republican friends by owning a Major League Baseball team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also thought it was a pretty sound investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than any other Major League Baseball team, the Orioles were swimming in profit. In 1990, they had $2.1 million in profit. In 1991, it increased to $7 million with big sales for the final season at Memorial Stadium. And in 1992 at the shiny new publicly financed palace, which was the centerpiece of a downtown urban renaissance for Baltimore, the Orioles made $28 million in profit while drawing 3.8 million fans to the Inner Harbor for baseball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baltimore Orioles franchise was the gem of baseball and a civic treasure in 1992 when Camden Yards opened its doors. If you were anybody in Baltimore \u2013 or even around the D.C. Beltway and straight onto Capital Hill \u2013 an Orioles game on a summer night was the place to be in the Mid-Atlantic region. At this point in his career, just seeing Cal Ripken Jr. play baseball was thought to be something you\u2019d be telling your grandkids about for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacobs was in the right spot at the right time with the Orioles. He was in charge of a soft underbelly of the Orioles existence. Fans had high expectations because the community was fresh off of a 17-year run of mostly exceptional baseball and two generations of fans who thought of the team as an extended member of their families and referred to virtually every member of the franchise by their first name or nickname. It was a love affair that left grown men in tears when Earl Weaver and Jim Palmer retired and forced full families into tears when the team made an emotional departure in the fall of 1991 from gritty 33rd<\/sup> Street and Memorial Stadium to the shiny, new retro ballpark at Camden Yards in the spring of 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every Baltimorean who was alive that day vividly remembers those events. The Orioles were like royalty and Memorial Stadium was a closing castle. This move spanned the generations for Baltimore sports fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Orioles, simply put, were considered a public treasure \u2013 an institution respected, revered, loved and admired. And after the Baltimore Colts were stolen away to Indianapolis in the middle of the night on March 28, 1984, by a carpet-bagging, Chicagoan with a penchant for vodka at 10 a.m. named Robert Irsay, the baseball team took on an even bigger role in civic pride, especially after the 1983 World Series championship. Overnight, Baltimore had become a one-sport town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while things were postcard-perfect for the business of the Orioles in 1993, Jacobs \u2013 the epitome of an \u201coutsider\u201d in intensely provincial Baltimore, a Boston native and resident of New York \u2013 was in the midst of a massive financial crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team bottomed out on the field in 1988 with an 0-21 start and an ailing owner but the promise of the stadium and an exciting team in 1989 gave Jacobs\u2019 $70 million investment some security. But other than being a fan, he knew very little about operating a baseball team and allowed limited partner and C.E.O. and President Larry Lucchino, a holdover from Williams\u2019 ownership, to operate the club on a strict budget after pulling a power play to make sure that Sargent Shriver, a third partner, wasn\u2019t influential with the franchise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From 1990 to early 1993, under Jacobs\u2019 reign, the obvious growth in attendance and interest did very little to positively affect the quality of play on the field. Each year, when the team could\u2019ve used better players at the trading deadline, the Orioles were forced into low-budget, low-risk, low-ceiling veterans and an eventual late summer fade. And the franchise was reeling from the results of a poor 1991 trade with the Houston Astros that netted a broken-down slugger named Glenn Davis in exchange for three young players \u2013 outfielder Steve Finley and pitchers Peter Harnisch and Curt Schilling \u2013 who were all turning into quality MLB players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Jacobs was getting skewered on sports talk radio in Baltimore, where the Orioles were the only game in town. And Jacobs was considered a \u201ccheapskate\u201d by Orioles fans and he was very succinct and vocal in wanting to relinquish his investment, even before his economic issues fully hit the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an asset, it was hard to argue with the growth of franchise values for anyone who assessed the industry. Major League Baseball franchises had usually tread water in annual income but the emerging trend of publicly-financed stadiums along with growth in television revenue and marketing money made the franchises climb in resale value. Plus, any good attorney and accountant would tell you that it\u2019s a helluva tax shelter for anyone wealthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest issue regarding the sport as a whole during the summer of 1993 was the impending labor doom and gloom that surrounded the game for more than two decades. A draconian policy called the \u201creserve clause\u201d bound MLB players to the same team for the lifetime of their baseball career, which artificially suppressed their salaries and earning potential for decades. In 1975, the Major League Baseball Players Association under the leadership of Marvin Miller won a case that became known as the Seitz Decision, which open the gates for free agency and open bidding on the best players in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two decades, player salaries escalated, sometimes in rather arbitrary and outsized ways, as competitive owners who wanted to win didn\u2019t care as much about losing money as they did about holding up a championship trophy for their respective hometowns. Rich, egotistical men buy sports franchises to feed their egos and to feel the power of competing and winning a championship and civic respect. But these Major League Baseball owners, on the whole, were also tired of getting beaten at the negotiating table over and over again by the MLBPA at every cycle while many were legitimately losing money each year even though the clubs\u2019 respective values upon resale seemed to be making up the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The summer of 1994 figured to be an Apocalyptic battle between the players and owners, who had suffered through seven work stoppages and disputes over the previous 22 years. Anyone who won this battle for the ownership of the Baltimore Orioles in 1993 would certainly have to be prepared for the upcoming war with the players that had become such a tired refrain for the fans, most of whom just wanted to watch baseball and support their favorite team and players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Banks, more so than anyone in the industry, had a legitimate fear of a crumbling Major League Baseball financial empire and the lack of vision and leadership on the part of the Commissioner and owners was clearly a confidence killer. The death of A. Bartlett Giamatti in September 1989 led to a brief tenure by his lieutenant Fay Vincent, who was essentially overthrown by a group of MLB owners led by Allan \u201cBud\u201d Selig in 1992. Selig, who had assumed the acting Commissioner role for the brawl with then MLBPA labor head Donald Fehr, had been the long-standing owner of the Milwaukee Brewers but he felt that Vincent wasn\u2019t \u201cpro owner\u201d and he famously put together a group of six owners and seized control of the sport just before Eli Jacobs went broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any purchase of the Baltimore Orioles was led by the caveat emptor of MLB\u2019s tenuous labor situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the mere fact that a Major League Baseball team \u2013 and its most profitable, no less \u2013 wound up in a bankruptcy auction was appalling to the rest of the owners, who had been infamous for \u201capproving membership\u201d of owners who were more \u201clike minded\u201d in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacobs\u2019 financial situation and his crumbled empire nearly had an angel in Bill DeWitt, Jr. who had believed he\u2019d won the Orioles in February after spending six months negotiating the sale price with a desperate man who was days away from having his assets seized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baltimore clothing impresario Leonard \u201cBoogie\u201d Weinglass, whose ponytail and Merry-Go-Round chain stores for the hip and sexy, was the only other interested party in the Fall 1992 selloff of the Orioles but getting MLB approval proved to be a brick wall for him. He did his due diligence but in the end didn\u2019t have the right connections that DeWitt brought to the MLB brain trust. Plus, in the end, Weinglass also didn\u2019t have the funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commissioner of baseball and the other owners quietly had the ability to simply \u201cuninvite\u201d some members into their ownership club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Major League Baseball has been protected by an antitrust exemption that the United States Supreme Court had held in 1922 in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which stated baseball was an \u201camusement\u201d and that organizing a schedule of games between independently owned and operated clubs operating in various states, and engaging in activities incidental thereto, did not constitute \u201cinterstate commerce\u201d and that therefore antitrust laws did not apply to such activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeWitt, however, was already well known by the old-boys club of Major League Baseball ownership through his connections with George W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeWitt\u2019s father, William DeWitt Sr., once owned the St. Louis Browns (which became the Orioles when they moved from the Midwest in 1954) and was a batboy for the team as a child. It was his outfit that was used by Eddie Gaedel when the little person stunt was pulled by owner Bill Veeck in the 1950s. DeWitt was already a minority stakeholder in the Texas Rangers with the Bush family. He was an insider, just the way Selig and the boys liked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeWitt had traveled to New York several times in the winter to meet with Jacobs and his team to negotiate a final settlement to buy the Orioles. DeWitt knew Jacobs was having economic difficulties all along \u2013 Selig and the other MLB owners closely monitored the debt of the Orioles\u2019 owner and they wanted him out quickly because seeing the team wind up in bankruptcy \u2013 at a fire sale \u2013 would be less than advantageous. It didn\u2019t reflect well upon the sport, its stability or the people involved in ownership. Plus, given the small circle and antitrust protection, the Lords of Major League Baseball preferred to pick their partners so as to have unity, peace and what they considered a peaceful brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MLB owners had experienced their fair share of maverick owners with outsized personalities in Charles O. Finley in Kansas City (and then Oakland) and George Steinbrenner, who at various points believed he was the King of New York. Selig and some of the other old-line MLB owners watched what had happened with the growth of the National Football League over the past two decades and admired their ability to be united after the AFL-NFL merger but they also saw the deterioration of faith and partnership every time Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis confronted his partners in litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Selig wanted to pick the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He, along with the Lords, had already hand picked Bill DeWitt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, somehow, it all got derailed when Jacobs went broke and the team wound up at a bankruptcy auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Selig and the owners were about to experience their worst nightmare. Peter Angelos would soon prove to be an outsider; one who had his own thoughts about the future of Major League Baseball in Baltimore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 26, 1993, Peter G. Angelos showed up at his law offices in downtown Baltimore and began reading The Sun,<\/em> just like every other morning. He saw the headline \u2013 \u201cDeWitt agrees to buy Orioles for $141.3 million\u201d \u2013 and bristled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baltimore Orioles were the toast of the town \u2013 by far the most significant diversion for local sports fans and families, truly a civic institution \u2013 and somehow they were being sold to yet another \u201cout of towner,\u201d Angelos thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos, who had just started to receive a flood of money from his litigation of asbestos cases throughout the late 1980s, wondered aloud why someone from the Baltimore area didn\u2019t want to own the prized possession of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure, the price had a sticker shock quality, but if a Cincinnati oil man thought it was a good investment and wanted to own Baltimore\u2019s civic treasure, it must worth investigating. So, Angelos, who always fancied himself a deal maker and an architect from his political days in the 1960s, went to work trying to put together a \u201cdream team\u201d of Orioles owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos made some calls to his friends in the local government \u2013 he had plenty of political allies because he was one of their first calls for contributions on the Democratic side of the ticket \u2013 and found out who Eli Jacobs was, and where to find him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos later said that he was rebuffed by Jacobs and was told the sale to DeWitt was a fait accompli. \u201cThe attitude was that local people need not apply; this is a done deal,\u201d he told author John Helyar in the 1994 book, Lords Of The Realm<\/em>. \u201cThat didn\u2019t set well with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you allow your major league club to be owner by out-of-towners you\u2019re not really a major league city; you\u2019re a branch-office city,\u201d Angelos bellowed. It was always easy to play to the intensely provincial sports crowd in Baltimore, a city that had seen the NBA Bullets taken out of the city in 1973 by a D.C. owner in Abe Pollin. And when the Colts snaked off to Indianapolis by Irsay, the local fans\u2019 hearts were heavy and the abandonment was painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos later told The Sun<\/em>, \u201cI was being discouraged by local people, who had good information, who said it was a done deal. So for a while they put me off. But then I decided that I would attempt it anyway. I wouldn\u2019t accept the proposition that everything was finished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three weeks later, with the Orioles at spring training in Florida, Jacobs defaulted on loans to seven banks, which forced him into bankruptcy and wanted to maximize the sale price of the Orioles. The banks believed that the open market would drive the sale price north of Jacobs\u2019 agreement with DeWitt. This opened the door for Angelos \u2013 or anyone else who had enough money \u2013 to get involved in an open bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 11, 1993, Peter G. Angelos jumped into the sports business, informing The Sun<\/em> of his intention to buy the team if it hit the open market. \u201cI am just another Baltimorean who would like to see the club owned by local interests,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I can help produce that result \u2013 if the DeWitt group withdrew \u2013 I\u2019d be willing to make my contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n By March 31, Angelos informed the newspaper that he was in the game. \u201cWe have every intention of making contact with all parties and advising them there is a local group ready, able and willing to purchase the team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mercantile Bank was holding a large portion of Jacobs\u2019 debt in Baltimore on the Orioles. He was on the hook for $47.5 million to the local bank and there was a belief on the part of one of Angelos\u2019 partners that they\u2019d be the ones who picked the winning bid. Local businessman Henry Knott, who was a key part of the Angelos team assembled to make a run at the Orioles in bankruptcy, openly fumed about the nature of local vs. out-of-town buyers for the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy opinion of Mercantile is that they have a license to do business in Baltimore City,\u201d Knott told The Sun<\/em>. \u201cAnd if they pick an out-of-town owner over us, somebody ought to lock them up, throw away the key and put them out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos continued to drive home his message regarding being \u201cthe hometown guy\u201d vs. positioning DeWitt\u2019s offer as being from \u201cout of town.\u201d All along, Angelos believed his tenacity was going to find a way to gain control of the Orioles. And he believed he\u2019d be perceived as a civic hero if somehow he managed to win the bid and \u201csave\u201d the Orioles from the indignity of \u201cout of town\u201d ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His first call in March was to his friend and partner at the law firm of Piper & Marbury, George P. Stamas, who offered to help him put together a team of investors with some civic clout and most importantly, some funding to flesh out an ownership group that would capture the attention of Major League Baseball and reflect well upon the league.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos literally didn\u2019t know anyone within Major League Baseball so he needed to make noise in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos and Stamas, along with Knott, cast a wide net over the next 90 days, pulling in local celebrities and dignitaries with an offer for a stake in owning the Baltimore Orioles. Author Tom Clancy, comic book distributor Stephen A. Geppi, movie producer Barry Levinson, legendary broadcaster Jim McKay and tennis star Pam Shriver were all recruited and excited to lend their names and stars to the involvement in bringing the Orioles to a local investment team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos told The Sun,<\/em> \u201cIt really gives what we attempted to do and hopefully what we\u2019re striving to do a lot of color. It gives you a little taste of what this area has produced \u2013 some really exceptional people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Angelos circled the wagons, DeWitt heard the very public preening by Angelos, who had a hotline to The Sun during these years. He could get a headline and a story written any time he wanted with one phone call over to his friends on Calvert Street. Longtime Baltimore columnists Michael Olesker and John Steadman, both who came from the now defunct afternoon newspaper, The News American<\/em>, kept company with a man who insisted his friends call him \u201cPete.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeWitt started making Baltimore calls and putting together a \u201chometown team\u201d of his own with the many relationships that team president and C.E.O. Larry Lucchino had developed over the 14 years he\u2019d run the club quite successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Lucchino saw the theatre and politicking that Angelos was attempting to do in the court of public opinion \u2013 everyone knew it was all about the highest bidder at this point, not a popularity poll \u2013 he thought it to be an odd juxtaposition against the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First of all, the Baltimore Orioles weren\u2019t going anywhere. They had a 30-year lease at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the only reason any sane businessman would want to purchase the team for upwards of $150 million was because of what Lucchino had built the team into during his watch. No one was apt to buy the Orioles in an effort to wreck them or move them or alienate local baseball fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, secondly, if Lucchino harbored any secret intentions to depart Baltimore or sell the team off to someone who would\u2019ve moved the team, it would\u2019ve already have happened on his watch. It was ludicrous when you consider Lucchino\u2019s track record. He had spent the past dozen years getting Camden Yards built and building the legend of Orioles baseball. Lucchino did everything he could do to save baseball for the city and nurture the franchise to this point in its rich \u2013 but not-ever-profitable-until-he-came-along \u2013 history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lucchino came into the franchise in 1979 as the No. 1 man for owner Edward Bennett Williams, who purchased the team from longtime beer man Jerold Hoffberger for $12 million. Williams, often referred to as EBW, also had held a minority interest in the Washington Redskins and was considered the quintessential Washington power attorney, with friends throughout the converging worlds of government and law. Lucchino, who worked at Williams\u2019 firm, learned the business of sports law serving both the Orioles and Redskins and helped EBW complete the transaction on Aug. 2, 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every Orioles fan alive remembers the magical summer of 1979 \u2013 the summer of the birth of \u201cOriole Magic\u201d and \u201cThe Roar From 34,\u201d an upper deck right field section at Memorial Stadium that birthed super fan \u201cWild\u201d Bill Hagy, who led super cheers. Beer poured. Eddie Murray hit home runs. Mike Flanagan and Jim Palmer led the pitching staff. Earl Weaver reigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Orioles were in the midst of a World Series run and the two \u201cWashington men\u201d had allowed the sale to remain quiet until after the season so that the ever-present Hoffberger could have one last run in the sun and a chance to win another World Championship. The Birds lost a heartbreaking Game 7 to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Fall Classic. But Williams felt so strongly about Hoffberger that he named him president of the team for the next five years as part of the deal. Meanwhile, Lucchino learned the business of baseball in the 1980s in Baltimore, and Williams put him in charge of finding a new stadium for the Orioles. This was unprecedented heavy lifting, especially after the city and state failed to deliver a facility for the Colts, who snuck out of town in March 1984 with a greedy owner who wanted a better stadium and a better revenue stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baltimore Orioles were a tough business in 1979. Even when it was going well on the field, trying to match million-dollar offers with the likes of the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers was impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoffberger begrudgingly sold the team to Williams because he couldn\u2019t figure out a way to make money off of owning the Baltimore Orioles after many years. He could never even break even over two decades and with the advent of free agency in the 1970s, the small market Orioles were finding it hard to compete in keeping players even amidst the success of a farm system that was the envy of the sport. The vaunted \u201cOriole Way\u201d looked better in the standings than it did in the accountant\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Williams came to provincial Baltimore as the \u201cWashington, D.C. owner.\u201d He was forever rumored to be moving the Orioles to Washington \u2013 a narrative he fought hard to refute even in light of the Bullets heading to the nation\u2019s capital in 1973 and the Colts departure for Indianapolis. In fact, on the summer day in 1979 when he bought the team and returned to Washington, D.C. for dinner with Lucchino, a waiter stood at their table and sang \u201cTake Me Out To The Ballgame,\u201d somehow believing that it was EBW\u2019s destiny to move the Orioles to R.F.K. Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was very complicated, the relationship Baltimore and Washington had over the years with baseball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Washington Senators had existed since 1901 when the St. Louis Browns came to Baltimore in 1954 in a group led by Hoffberger and his friend Clarence Miles. The new group, renaming the team \u201cOrioles,\u201d paid Senators owner Clark Griffith a $300,000 payment and bought a lucrative beer sponsorship for the Washington club. The two clubs, just 38 miles apart, would both play in the American League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next two decades, baseball in the nation\u2019s capital was a dud on the field and at the turnstile. In 1960, Griffith took a better deal to move the Senators to Minneapolis and Major League Baseball replaced the team with an expansion franchise to ward off threats of losing their precious anti-trust exemption in D.C. Two sets of owners continued to bleed money for a decade before Bob Short moved the team to Arlington, Texas in 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, the Orioles flourished on the field but never in gate receipts during the glory era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Orioles dominated both Senators franchises, compiling an 89-65 record against the first group and a 135-61 record against the expansion team. There was never a \u201crivalry\u201d per se, because the Senators were perennial doormats, doomed early in the season and vanquished into irrelevance in a summer world with no wild card teams or league divisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Williams and Lucchino were always viewed as Washington, D.C. men who had an empty hometown market that would always be an escape route if the $12 million investment in the Baltimore Orioles went awry in the 1980s. But, Williams kept his word and made good on his promise: \u201cIf Baltimore supports the Orioles and people come to the stadium, the team will remain in Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And despite the authority and ability to leave Baltimore, the two Washington men found pleasure in building a legacy that included a permanent home in downtown\u2019s Inner Harbor for the Orioles for the next generation because of Oriole Park at Camden Yards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here was Angelos pointing a finger at the group Lucchino was fronting and had literally been at the finish line four months earlier working on his third ownership group that would only push his vision for the Orioles\u2019 success to the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even more strange was the provincial \u201chometown\u201d view when the Orioles had made it abundantly clear over the past two decades that they were built to service not just Baltimore and Washington, D.C. but parts of six other states via a regional cable television deal and the overwhelming interest in Camden Yards and the beautiful retro ballpark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lucchino was among the first to realize that for the vitality of his friend EBW\u2019s investment, the Orioles would need the Washington, D.C. market to be engaged and recruited to earn more revenue to continue to buy and retain the best players in Major League Baseball amidst exploding salaries and free agency. The most successful MLB teams tied their brand to a broader area, made more money and had greater success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though much of the engrained Baltimore parochialism toward Washington D.C. was negative energy, for the future viability of the franchise it was imperative that Lucchino regionalize the franchise and find new streams of revenue and new verticals for the Orioles brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1979, Lucchino inherited a team that was purchased for $12 million amidst a changing industry for the sport, labor and media deals. It was losing money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1988, after nine years on his watch, the club was sold for $70 million and he was in for a 9% stake in ownership. Now, with the team making $25 million per year and drawing 3.7 million fans to Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles were going to fetch somewhere north of $150 million in an auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team was being sold for such a massive price in no small part because of the hard work of Lucchino and his vision. DeWitt recognized this early and thought of Lucchino as one of the assets of the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lucchino oversaw the entire process of everything that represented the Baltimore Orioles. All of through glory and growth years, this mostly quiet attorney moved into the sport and oversaw the success of a team that was about to shatter all previous franchise sales in the history of North American sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even stranger in the process was that fact that Lucchino owned 9% of the Orioles as a part of Eli Jacobs group. When the deal was consummated to buy the team in 1988 after the death of EBW, the three partners \u2013 Jacobs had 87% and Sargent Shriver held the remaining 4% \u2013 had all agreed to a special \u201ctagalong\u201d clause, which stated that the Orioles must be sold as 100% full stock whenever they were relinquished by Jacobs\u2019 group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the sale of his stock being sold in this pending transaction \u2013 and at a rising value, no less \u2013 Lucchino desperately wanted to stay in Baltimore as the C.E.O. & President and remain involved in ownership and see through what he began building for his friend Edward Bennett Williams in 1979. After watching the Colts leave, the Orioles stay, Camden Yards get built and the legend of Cal Ripken and the baseball team growing over the years, Lucchino\u2019s vision of a regionalized franchise was in full bloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, despite all of this success, Lucchino was the one in awkward position in 1993 \u2013 running the team and doing business as usual while trying to get a stable ownership group for the Orioles now that a lot of the hard work had been done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eli Jacobs \u2013 being intensely private \u2013 never really formed a personal bond of any kind with Lucchino or anyone in Baltimore involved with the Orioles. DeWitt and Jacobs knew each other through being active in government and both Republicans. When DeWitt was doing his due diligence to leave the Texas Rangers ownership with George W. Bush, he and Lucchino hit it off and were planning on keeping the already-proven structure in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The DeWitt ownership team, aided by Lucchino as he oversaw the Orioles, had been working for eight months to get a deal done so they were quite deep into their relationship and trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lucchino had no idea that Jacobs was on the brink of the bankruptcy so when the deal fell apart in March, he was dealing with the reality of an auction and losing control of the franchise he had built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, a few months later, in an effort to refute the \u201cout of town\u201d label that Angelos conveniently placed on them during the spring, Lucchino recruited Harvey \u201cBud\u201d Meyerhoff, John Laporte, Jim Rieppe and other executives from T.Rowe Price and Alex Brown and Sons \u2013 all legitimate local business leaders \u2013 to DeWitt\u2019s ownership group to give it a more Baltimore flavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos continued to insinuate publicly that the team was somehow \u201cat risk\u201d by being owned by an out of town group, playing to the deepest, darkest provincial fears of a corps of previously abused Baltimore sports fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe control of the club will reside in Cincinnati, Ohio,\u201d Angelos told The Sun<\/em> of a potential DeWitt-owned team. \u201cThe control of the Orioles belongs in Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though the team was openly going to auction, Jacobs was still adamant that DeWitt would be the eventual owner of the team. On June 12, when he officially ceded control of the team\u2019s destiny to the courts in bankruptcy, Jacobs issued a statement to the media: \u201cI am proud of the Orioles and believe the club and the community have benefited enormously by the new ballpark which we helped to build for the team. I am also pleased that the DeWitt . . . group will be as committed as I have been to building this great sports franchise and retaining its home in Baltimore at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the excitement of the second season of Orioles baseball at Camden Yards underway and the promise of hosting the Major League Baseball All Star Game in July 1993, Baltimore had become an attractive centerpiece for the sport during the spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On June 22, 1993, Angelos\u2019 legal team, represented by Stamas and attorney Mark Friedman, went to New York for what was to be a procedural hearing outlining the rules and terms of the bankruptcy hearing in August. Judge Cornelius Blackshear welcomed the two prospective bidders \u2013 Angelos\u2019 group and the group led by DeWitt\u2019s team \u2013 and upon welcoming was told by Stamas that their group \u201crepresented the home team, and that the home team wanted to bid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stamas said his group was prepared to offer $145 million. DeWitt’s attorney offered $146.25 million. Angelos\u2019 group upped the bid to $148.1 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both sides were feeling each other out, trying to seize the day in an attempt to convince Judge Blackshear to grant them a victory. Instead, with $3.1 million floating around in a matter of minutes and a responsibility to maximize the sale price on behalf of the many creditors of Jacobs, Blackshear sent both groups home to get better organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The date was set. On August 2, 1993, someone would emerge from Judge Blackshear\u2019s courtroom with full control of the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n That evening Angelos called out the competition: \u201cFrom what transpired today, it would appear that the DeWitt side and our side mean business, and whoever else wishes to participate should be prepared for a very spirited bidding contest. It\u2019s quite clear the bidding is not over. One might say it has just begun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n NO ONE BELIEVED ANY BASEBALL team could be sold for more than $160 million. Certainly the Angelos group that was doing the bidding would\u2019ve been far more nervous if they didn\u2019t have access to the ledgers and spreadsheets of the now \u201cbankrupt\u201d Baltimore Orioles. Because Jacobs was in such dire straits with creditors, none of the money from the Orioles operating account had been touched in almost 18 months. Besides, the more cash the Orioles had stored away, the larger Jacobs\u2019 lone prime, liquid investment would look upon resale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe Foss, who would become the team\u2019s long-time functioning president and No. 1 business advisor with the Orioles, came in from Minnesota in late May in a banking arrangement seeking to finance the deal on behalf of Peter G. Angelos. No one actually pulls out a check for hundreds of millions. Banks extend lines of credit and finance these deals. Having the best bankers in the industry was the only way to make these mega-deals happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the discovery process and doing due diligence for Angelos, who was acting far more with his heart and ego than he was being led into this deal via accountants, the bankers quickly noticed a significant positive item in the potential deal. It would dramatically change the \u201cvalue\u201d of the Orioles at the New York auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Due to the abundance of success the team was having the first two seasons in Camden Yards and the explosion in sales of tickets, merchandise and concessions, combined with the glare of the 1993 All Star Game that was played three weeks earlier, the Orioles bank account was completely opposite of Jacobs\u2019 personal portfolio. The team, which had handcuffs around all expenses including the roster, was swimming in money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Orioles operating account upon purchase was filled with $40 million of fresh cash. The Sun<\/em> estimated at the time that the Orioles earned a net profit of between $25 and $30 million in each of the first two years at Camden Yards and that report wasn\u2019t off target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The newspaper reports and the industry was crowing about the \u201crecord sale price\u201d of a Major League Baseball team but no one outside of the circle realized that the transaction price was far greater than the actual value of the team \u2013 hyper-inflated, really \u2013 because it was clear the team would fetch more than $150 million at auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the team also came with $40 million in cash upon sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos\u2019 group was immersed in legalese and crunching numbers all summer \u2013 recruiting that impressive list of local celebrities into the fold \u2013 but still had reservations about getting into a biding war to drive the price up to a point where the debt would be burdensome. Whoever won the Orioles that day wasn\u2019t getting a bargain by any stretch. Sure, there was a healthy revenue stream, but the sale price was unprecedented. Many investors felt it was unsustainable growth with Camden Yards\u2019 spigot only bound to get smaller, not larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the morning of the Aug. 2, 1993, auction, at the urging of Orioles President & C.E.O. Larry Lucchino, Angelos and Bill DeWitt, Jr. broke bread at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Angelos had reached to Lucchino in attempt to bring DeWitt into the fold earlier in the summer. Angelos told Lucchino that if DeWitt was brought into the partnership, they\u2019d both be a part of the management team to continue the unprecedented success the franchise was experiencing. It also figured that if Angelos really won the bid, he\u2019d need the best baseball people running the operation and Lucchino thought he could reach a sensible and working conclusion for everyone concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n DeWitt wasn\u2019t constrained or turned off by the money necessary in the deal to obtain the Orioles. The team was on the market for $200 million when his negotiation with Eli Jacobs began nearly a year earlier. No one here was na\u00efve about the reality of the price. DeWitt\u2019s Cincinnati partner, Bob Castellini, had deep pockets and also had ties to the commissioner\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For DeWitt, this was an opportunity to be a baseball owner and a key decision maker in a franchise like the Baltimore Orioles. DeWitt was a visionary, a guy who wanted to continue to grow the market share and compete. He loved baseball. He\u2019d loved baseball all of his life since his father owned the woeful St. Louis Browns before they became the Orioles in 1954. He felt it was destiny to own the team that his father once held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somehow, that morning at the St. Regis, Angelos convinced DeWitt with a blessing from Lucchino, to give up his own bid and join Team Angelos to bid for the Orioles. Angelos told The Sun<\/em> he convinced DeWitt that he couldn\u2019t win the auction. \u201cI guess the fact that I said simply that I intended to see that the team was owned by a local group,\u201d Angelos said. \u201cAnd I was hoping we wouldn\u2019t get into a bidding contest because I intended to achieve the goal that I was discussing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeWitt was convinced he was to be named Vice Chairman for Baseball. Lucchino was convinced that he\u2019d involved as Vice Chairman of Operations. And they were all convinced that there might not be another viable group to bid now that the two leading teams has essentially reached a d\u00e9tente and merged for the good of the baseball fans of the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They knew the judge might not look kindly upon the hasty merger because it could artificially deflate the sale price to Jacobs. After all this was a bankruptcy hearing on behalf of creditors. The whole concept is to maximize the revenue not depress the number of bidders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two groups, walking into the lower Manhattan courthouse arm in arm, believed that there might be no one else waiting to bid against them in what was a rare occurrence \u2013 an open auction of a Major League Baseball business in a strange, closed, anti-trust protected environment. Would some person \u2013 or entity \u2013 look to jump in and swipe the Orioles or could someone simply enter the race and drive the price north of where Team Angelos was willing to go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter Angelos\u2019 wife, Georgia, entered the courtroom that day along with the bankers. She asked how much money the bankers really had and at what point the auction would get too pricey. She was clearly a bit shaken by the stakes and the tens of millions of dollars in this pending bidding war. Remember: her husband had only come into this world of millions of dollars less than two years earlier. She told one of them: \u201cYou\u2019ve never been to an auction with my husband before. When he really wants something he\u2019ll pay whatever it takes to win it. And he really wants the Orioles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeffrey Loria, a New York art dealer, was also very interested in the Orioles. Neither DeWitt or Angelos took his interest completely seriously but he was involved with ownership of a Triple-A team and was easily bidding up $100,000 every time Angelos\u2019 representative George Stamas barked out to raise the bid by $1 million with each round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Loria was proving to be a very worthy bidder, one that Team Angelos had underestimated. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t give him a lot of credence,\u201d Stamas later told The Sun<\/em>. \u201cHe hadn\u2019t really approached us. His name hadn\u2019t surfaced. He hadn\u2019t tried to reach out. No one knew him. I knew some people who used him as an art dealer, but that was about it. I actually did get a confirmation that he was kind of for real from some very close friends who were not part of our group, but very prominent Washingtonians who actually used him. But Peter and I never made much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lost in the drama of this bidding was the other qualified group from TLC Beatrice, represented by former Washington Redskins player Jean Fugett. But when the heat was turned up in the room it was Fugett, who had previously been silent, to ask the judge for a recess when the price got to $170 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the day began, the Orioles bankers only had enough to bid up to $153 million from the bankers. At that rate they\u2019d be borrowing nearly $70 million. They received another $8 million \u2013 plus some other serious options and available cash \u2013 when DeWitt joined the group in the morning. In particular, it was the deep pockets and promises of DeWitt\u2019s primary partner Bob Castellini, which allowed Team Angelos far more latitude in bidding in the new dual partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the recess, Stamas\u2019 bids had blown past the amount of money that Team Angelos could truly prove that they had in the courtroom that day. One of their downside strategies that day was that if they somehow lost the bid, they\u2019d call for a review of the finances of Loria (or whomever won). In essence, saying: \u201cWhere is the money? Do you have it today?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n During the recess, the bankers were fleeing to make calls to see how far they could extend the extra $9 million \u2013 and growing \u2013 difference in what they truly had and what they were bidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the recess, Loria immediately went to $171 million. Stamas countered with $172 million. Loria said, \u201c173.\u201d Stamas offered $174 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 16 rounds in the sweltering heat of lower Manhattan, Loria condeded defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCongratulations Mr. Angelos and Mr. Stamas, you have yourselves a baseball team,\u201d Loria said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was then when the era of the ownership of Peter G. Angelos began for the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bankers were aghast. They were only doing the loans for up to $153 million. Even with the new money of DeWitt and Castellini, it only added another $9 million. The pragmatists bean counters were as ashen faced, almost dejected at the inflated price and the debt load despite knowing about the $40 million in cash. Angelos, Stamas and Steve Geppi along with the Baltimore group had just bought what felt like a lifetime of Christmas mornings and didn\u2019t realize why the bankers were so sullen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos turned to them and said, \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s wrong with you guys? You look glum, like someone died. We just won the Orioles!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the bankers said, \u201cPeter, we have no idea how we\u2019re going to come up with the extra 12 million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angelos, ready to celebrate with Diet Cokes at a tavern down the street and come back to Baltimore a local hero \u2013 as the \u201cKing of the Baltimore Orioles\u201d \u2013 wasn\u2019t nearly as concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Angelos told the banker and the accountant. \u201cYou\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chronicling the history of the Peter Angelos era of Orioles baseball, local sports radio host, author and historian Nestor Aparicio presents “The Peter Principles,” a book on the history of Baltimore baseball in the modern era. This is Chapter 1, an incredible tale of how King Peter found the throne of every local kid’s dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Chronicling the history of the Peter Angelos era of Orioles baseball, local sports radio host, author and historian Nestor Aparicio presents #ThePeterPrinciples, a book on the history of Baltimore baseball in the modern era. This is Chapter 1: King Peter","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11696,828,11595,838,831,2,1531,855,839,847,829,1497,5357,840,825,1653,951,11624,5564,1944,841],"tags":[3355,727,3356,2290,3357,252,198,1461,3358,16776,3359,3360,3361,3362,3363,3364,3353,858,3365,3366,3367,3221,3368,1108,737,2148,189,1642,190,3369,3370,3371,3372,430,1124],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n