Angelos, patriarch of Baltimore baseball, dies at 94
wire reports
Peter Angelos, owner of a Baltimore Orioles team that endured long losing stretches and shrewd proprietor of a law firm that won high-profile cases against industry titans, died Saturday. He was 94.
Angelos’ death comes as his son John, the Orioles’ chief executive, is in the process of selling the team to a group headed by Carlyle Group Inc. co-founder
David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos’ public role diminished significantly in his final years. According to a lawsuit involving his sons in 2022, he had surgery after his aortic valve failed in 2017.
Born on the Fourth of July in 1929 and raised in Maryland by Greek immigrants, Peter Angelos rose from a blue-collar background to launch a firm in his own name. In 1993, Angelos led a group of investors that bought the Orioles. The group included writer Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson and tennis star
Pam Shriver. The price tag of $173 million — at the time the highest for a sports franchise — came in a sale forced by the bankruptcy of thenowner Eli Jacobs.
Angelos assumed a hands-on approach to running his hometown team. Few acquisitions were carried out without his approval, and his reputation for not spending millions on pricey free agents belied his net worth, which in 2017 was estimated at $2.1 billion.
In 1996, his firm brought a lawsuit on behalf of the state of Maryland against tobacco giant Philip Morris, securing a $4.5-billion settlement.
Angelos made headlines in baseball as well. In 1995, he was the only one of 28 owners who refused to use replacement players during a strike that began during 1994.
At the time, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. was 122 games from breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played. The streak would have ended if the season started with replacement players and Ripken remained on strike, but the owners and players reached an agreement before opening day and Ripken ended up extending his record run to 2,632 games.
The Orioles never won a World Series with Angelos. The team finally ended a run of 14 consecutive losing seasons in 2012 and made it to the American League Championship Series in 2014. But in 2018 the bottom fell out when the Orioles finished 47-115, the worst record in the majors and the franchise’s worst since it relocated from St. Louis in 1954. The Orioles capped a swift rebuild by winning 101 games and a division title last year.
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