Longtime Orioles proprietor Peter Angelos dies at 94

BALTIMORE — Peter Angelos, proprietor of a Baltimore Orioles crew that continued prolonged losing stretches and a shrewd proprietor of a law firm who won excessive-profile cases against alternate titans, died Saturday. He used to be 94.

Angelos had been sick for several years. His family announced his death in a assertion thanking the caregivers “who brought comfort to him in his final years.”

Angelos’ death comes as his son John is in the strategy of selling the Orioles to a community headed by Carlyle Community Inc. co-founder David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos’ public feature diminished severely in his final years. In line with a lawsuit fascinating his sons in 2022, he had surgical treatment after his aortic valve failed in 2017.

“I provide my deepest condolences to the Angelos family on the passing of Peter Angelos,” Rubenstein said in a assertion. “Peter made an indelible label first in enterprise and then in baseball. The city of Baltimore owes him a debt of gratitude for his stewardship of the Orioles all the arrangement thru three an extended time and for positioning the crew for astronomical success.”

Born on the Fourth of July in 1929 and raised in Maryland by Greek immigrants, Peter Angelos rose from a blue-collar background to commence a firm in his be pleased name after receiving his law stage from the University of Baltimore in 1961.

In August 1993, Angelos led a community of traders that sold the Orioles. The community incorporated creator Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson and tennis superstar Pam Shriver. The set label of $173 million — at the time the supreme for a sports activities franchise — came in a sale compelled by the financial ruin of then-proprietor Eli Jacobs.

Whereas remaining lively in a law firm specializing in internal most hurt cases, Angelos assumed a hands-on technique to running his say of initiating crew. Few participant acquisitions had been implemented with out his approval, and his popularity for no longer spending hundreds and hundreds on excessive-priced free agents belied his salvage price, which in 2017 used to be estimated at $2.1 billion.

In 1996, his firm brought a lawsuit on behalf of the say of Maryland against tobacco massive Philip Morris, securing a $4.5 billion settlement. The Regulation Offices of Peter Angelos moreover earned hundreds and hundreds of bucks thru the settlement of asbestos cases, at the side of a class-action lope well with on behalf of steel, shipyard and manufacturing facility staff.

Angelos made headlines in baseball as effectively. In 1995, he used to be the supreme one of 28 owners who refused to adhere to a thought to use replacement gamers in the end of a union strike that started in the end of the 1994 season.

“We’re responsibility sure to provide Well-known League Baseball to our fans, and that can’t be achieved with replacement gamers,” he insisted.

At the time, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. used to be supreme 122 video games from breaking Lou Gehrig’s file of two,130 consecutive video games played. The crawl would non-public ended if the season started with replacement gamers and Ripken remained on strike, but the owners and gamers reached an agreement sooner than Opening Day and Ripken indirectly ended up extending his file dart to 2,632.

Angelos moreover fought for years to non-public an exhibition series between the Orioles and Cuba’s national crew, a quest that reached fruition in 1999. On March 28, the Orioles played in Havana while Angelos sat alongside Cuban chief Fidel Castro. The teams met all over again on Would possibly possibly presumably presumably even 3 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

The series marked the principle time the Cuban national crew had faced a squad quiet fully of most foremost league gamers, and the principle time since 1959 that a mighty league membership played in Cuba.

“He’s repeatedly had an hobby in politics, especially foreign policy. That, and his involvement with baseball, made it a natural thing,” John Angelos said.

The Orioles under no circumstances won a World Sequence with Angelos as their proprietor. The crew indirectly ended a dart of 14 consecutive losing seasons in 2012, reaching the postseason below supervisor Buck Showalter. Baltimore made it to the American League Championship Sequence in 2014. Nevertheless in 2018 the underside fell out when the Orioles achieved 47-115, the worst file in the majors and worst for the explanation that franchise relocated from St. Louis in 1954.

Showalter used to be fired, and a significant rebuild started the following season below rookie supervisor Brandon Hyde. The Orioles capped a swift upward push from their rebuild by profitable 101 video games and a division title in 2023.

Even supposing the crew used to be hardly ever sensational, its home deplorable absolutely stood out. Sellout crowds had been the norm after Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992. The enduring structure used to be constructed predominantly with brick, mortar and steel — noteworthy in the similar trend as passe-time ballparks — and used to be the blueprint for other stadiums to coach.

In an generation when owners regularly promote the name of their crew’s stadium or enviornment to advertisers with the supreme dispute, Angelos under no circumstances succumbed to this kind of transaction.

“Peter Angelos used to be a proud native of Baltimore who deeply appreciated owning the Baltimore Orioles,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a assertion. “Peter’s lifetime of philanthropy severely benefited a great deal of noteworthy causes in the end of his say of initiating. He championed the Orioles’ historical 1999 series with the Cuban Nationwide Personnel. Peter ably served the game on our Labor Committee, and I’ll repeatedly keep in mind his internal most relief after I used to be first elected to this option in his home city in 2014.”

As he neared his ninetieth birthday, Angelos indirectly settled into the background and entrusted the operation of the crew to his two sons, John and Louis.

John Angelos moreover is president of the Mid-Atlantic Sports activities Community, a regional network that televises Orioles and Washington Nationals video games. Even supposing each and every teams portion possession of MASN, the Orioles defend a ample majority hobby.

Louis, the younger of the brothers, is an attorney at the Regulation Offices of Peter Angelos and a representative of Orioles possession.

Even supposing is called the proprietor of a baseball crew and profitable law firm, Peter Angelos’ attain in Maryland went a ways deeper. He had a political profession that started with an unsuccessful dart for say senate in 1958, but after that he held a seat on the Baltimore Metropolis Council from 1959 to 1963.

In 1967, his dispute to alter into Baltimore’s mayor ended in the Democratic most foremost.

Angelos moreover used to be a participant in the horse racing alternate. He sold several horses and named one after his supervisor at the time — Showalter, who won his debut dart as a 2-365 days-passe at Laurel Flee Route in 2015.

Recordsdata from The Linked Press used to be inclined in this file.