The Runback: Like Father, Like Son
Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow on Facebook, Twitter, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
News and Politics
Ohio Referendum Was Doomed to Fail: Issue 1 in Ohio the Onever had a chance of passing because Ohio Republicans picked a stupid fight at the wrong time.
American Eats
Our new 50-part series on great restaurants across America continues.
Ohio: Dean Martin ate here.
Oregon: How did the Pacific Northwest get good sausage gravy?
Pennsylvania: Authentically Pittsburgh
Rhode Island: A surprise in the Ocean State
South Carolina: The Palmetto Way
South Dakota: Do. Not. Go. Here.
Tennessee: The best damn ribs on earth.
Food For Thought
Steven Calabresi: Trump Is Disqualified from Being on Any Election Ballots
More Food For Thought
Conservative Case Emerges to Disqualify Trump for Role on Jan. 6
Even More Food For Thought
Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach
The Monday Thought
The Apple does not fall from the tree. And now, I’m not talking about Donald Trump, Jr.
I’m talking about America’s newest villain du jour, John Angelos.
John Angelos is the “Chair and Managing Partner” of the Orioles. He holds that position considering his father, Peter Angelos, is the majority owner of the team. John Angelos. He’s been in a front office role with the club, first as Chief Operating Officer, since 1999. After all, since he never made billions as a lawyer like his dad, he needed a gig.
This of course came right after the period where his father, Peter, got into trouble for various annoying things. It was a quick heel turn.
People don’t remember this now, but Peter Angelos was a conquering hero in Baltimore. Peter Angelos bought the Orioles out of bankruptcy, saving them from being purchased by out-of-town interests. After Baltimore’s attempt to secure an NFL expansion franchise failed, Angelos launched a bid to purchase the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and move them to Baltimore.
Baltimoreans at the time practically acted like Angelos could walk on water for everything he was doing to save the city, which is why he was touted as a candidate for Governor.
Angelos immediately plunged millions into free agency in his first offseason as owner, signing free agents like Rafael Palmeiro, Chris Sabo, Sid Fernandez, Lee Smith, and others in an effort to compete quickly. The spending continued later; Randy Myers, B.J. Surhoff, trading for Bobby Bonilla and David Wells, Eric Davis, Jimmy Key, and others. The club was rewarded with two playoff appearances and would have probably won the World Series one of those years were it not for Jeffrey f***ing Maier in 1996 or a bizarre series against the Indians in 1997.
The wheels came off the onfield product quickly. The wheels were coming off off-the-field too. Popular broadcaster Jon Miller was let go by Peter Angelos after the 1996 season for not being enough of a homer. Manager Davey Johnson resigned due to a dispute with Peter Angelos the same day he won the Manager of the Year Award in 1997.
Things were on a downhill trajectory with Peter Angelos and Orioles fans ever since. Even during the team’s 2012-2016 era of success, Orioles fans were done with Peter Angelos, his meddling, and his lack of spending on salaries.
When John Angelos took over, it was seen as a potential sea change with the franchise. Among his first public comments since becoming Chair John Angelos famously said, “As long as Fort McHenry is watching over the harbor, the Orioles will be in Baltimore.”
None of that of course tampered down rumors of a move to Nashville, where John Angelos and his wife maintain a home due to his wife’s songwriting career.
But John Angelos the son has started looking a lot more like Peter Angelos the father this year. Just look at the number of controversies that have popped up in 2023 alone:
He got into a fight with Orioles beat writer Dan Connolly on Martin Luther King Day over the Orioles finances where he promised to open the Orioles financial books, only to renege on that promise two months later;
He has refused to sign a lease extension at Camden Yards with the state, despite the General Assembly pledging $600 million on ballpark improvements;
He most infamously suspended all-world Orioles broadcaster Kevin Brown for saying something that “made the team look bad” despite it being a positive statement on a graphic produced by MASN TV, which John Angelos also controls;
Now, he wants ANOTHER $300 million from the state on ballpark improvements and development rights around Camden Yards itself.
The latest fiasco surrounding the lease and development is what makes the least sense of all of John Angelos’s many many failures.
The problem with John Angelos’s dreams is that he is enamored by The Battery, a ballpark development surrounding the Atlanta Braves ballpark in suburban Atlanta. Emphasis on “suburban”. The Braves were not trying to redevelop already existing infrastructure in the state.
The Camden Yards complex is only 85 acres in total. Of that, 68 acres are covered by existing structures (the two stadiums and the Warehouse). That leaves 17 acres of what is basically parking.
The Battery in Atlanta consists of 85 acres. The plans John Angelos has are just physically impractical and impossible.
What’s more, part of John Angelos’s development plans involves developing on some of the parking lots. A plan which the Baltimore Ravens, their neighbors across the parking lot, knew nothing about. And the lease the Ravens have with the state makes certain guarantees about the availability of parking in general and the lots John Angelos wants to develop on specifically.
John Angelos certainly sounds like he is pissing in the wind, looking for a reason not to sign the lease and to bolt the city, a touch subject with plenty of people who remember what Bob Irsay did. But even that won’t happen because Commissioner Rob Manfred has guaranteed that Major League Baseball would never approve of the Orioles leaving Camden Yards.
The whole thing is a damned mess of John Angelos’s creation and one that is distracting from the Orioles onfield success.
Amusingly, on Friday former Orioles executive Jim Duquette torched John Angelos on SiriusXM’s Power Alley saying that Peter Angelos he was afraid that his sons “burn the team to the ground” and that is why they were never brought into to run the team.
The best thing that could have happen was for me to have won the $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot and bought the team myself is for a wealthy Baltimorean or a group of wealthy Baltimoreans to throw the Angelos family $2.5 billion or so as a parting gift to get the entire Angelos family away from the team and for the drama they create that distracts from the business of playing baseball.