Potential New Ownership, Winter Meetings, and Camden Yards Lease Saga
A lot has transpired in the last few weeks, so here’s what we know.
A report from Bloomberg business reported that billionaire private equity manager David Rubenstein and Ted Leonsis’s Monumental Sports and Entertainment were interested in buying the Baltimore Orioles. This story broke last week and many fans were celebrating the possibility that the Angelos regime was going to be over with. David Rubenstein, a 75-year old business and private equity manager, who is a Maryland native, was reported to buy the O’s by the first half of 2024. Rubenstein was rejected by the Washington Nationals in his attempt to purchase them and now looks to the Orioles as his next attempt to buy a team.
Rubenstein is worth nearly $5 billion in capital assets, liquid cash, and overall wealth. Ted Leonsis is worth $3 billion and owns Monumental Sports and Entertainment. I personally would like to see Monumental Sports and Entertainment take over the assets for Mid-Atlantic Sports Network because Leonsis actually runs a pretty tight ship with his network. Joe Beninati has called Orioles games in the past when there has been a need for a fill-in play-by-play announcer.
This news was celebrated wildly by the Orioles faithful as the possible end of the Angelos regime that has produced zero titles since their acquisition of the team in 1993 for $175M. However, the news was clear from the Angelos family as they were not prepared to sell their share of the team.
Meanwhile, the Orioles finished off with a 101-win season and were celebrating the meetings because of the fact that the Orioles were hopefully going to blast off and make some big moves in Nashville. Only to see the Orioles not make any major transactions except for the signing of Craig Kimbrel. Once again, you want to know why there were no real big moves? John Angelos continues to have his hand in the business of the General Manager’s job as he prefers the Orioles just stay with the status quo of: “you will sign players only when I say you can.”
John Angelos, for the love of everything holy, the job of the General Manager is to build THE ROSTER in order to COMPETE with the rest of the league. KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT OF IT! Mike Elias was given his marching orders and he obeyed when he should’ve just disobeyed and said: “Look John, you hired me to build the team, please let me build the team, let me do my job.” Angelos continues to say: No. Which again begs the question: Does the Angelos family have ANY liquid cash to buy players? Do they?
Enough already Angelos. The fans have demanded it! Sell your share of the team and leave town!
Meanwhile, Orioles Ownership continues to fumble the ball as the hope there was going to be a brand new 30-year lease going into the end of the year. There was big news by the end of the work week that a tentative 30-year lease was signed by the Orioles ownership, only to find out that the lease was objected to by Senator Bill Ferguson (D) over the 99-year ground lease rights.
There has been a lot of disagreement over the ground lease rights mainly due to the parking lot situation (for which Bisciotti and Angelos have joint ownership of) and also the land around Camden Yards because the land that Angelos wants infringes around M&T Bank Stadium.
I want Major League Baseball and Rob Manfred to step in and put up a vote of no-confidence against Orioles ownership because this is ridiculous. Fans don’t deserve this and neither does the city.
