The Baltimore Sun took up the question today of what exactly is the deal with getting the Orioles owners to sign a new lease in exchange for getting $600 million in renovation subsidies to Camden Yards, and learned that, well, this for starters:
“The Orioles have represented to us that he [John Angelos] is CEO of the Orioles and Controlling Person under the MLB Agreement, and MSA will continue to work with him and team leadership until we are told differently,” Thomas Kelso, the stadium authority’s chairman, said in reply to questions from The Baltimore Sun. “We have an excellent working relationship with John and the team’s senior leadership.”
John Angelos, who claims to be in charge of the Orioles despite being sued by his brother over leadership of the team, has represented that he is in charge of the Orioles, and the state will keep negotiating a lease with him until told otherwise! By somebody! This is the opposite of reassuring, but still resulted in the Sun headline “Angelos family split won’t halt lease negotiations to keep Orioles in Baltimore, stadium authority says,” so it seems to have done its job, PR-wise.
What else?
The current lease contains a clause barring “the relocation of the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball Team from Baltimore, Maryland.” … While it’s not certain that any new lease would contain a nonrelocation clause, the stadium authority said in a statement to The Sun that “clauses similar to the one in our existing lease are common to such agreements.”
Wait, it’s not certain that in exchange for the subsidy, the state would even require the team owners to promise not to move? Isn’t that the whole point of the $600 million, such that it has a point? What did state officials have to say about this?
Spokespersons for [Gov. Larry] Hogan, a Republican, did not return messages Monday seeking comment on whether they would require a nonrelocation clause in any lease they approved, but a spokeswoman for Democratic State Comptroller Peter Franchot said that would be the case for him.
“The comptroller would absolutely require that those terms be in any new lease,” Franchot spokeswoman Susan O’Brien said in an interview.
That’s even less reassuring, even if Franchot is running for governor and Hogan is term-limited out. A lease extension could easily be agreed upon before a new governor takes office — Kelso told the Sun that lease talks are in a “deliberative” phase while the two sides figure out exactly what to spend the $600 million on. So whether Hogan plans on tying the Orioles to Baltimore or letting the team’s owners, whoever they turn out to be, to demand even more money down the road is kind of a huge deal. It may be time for my to unleash one of my patented fruitless messages to the governor’s office, watch out, interns who are paid to hit “delete” on any incoming emails!
Baltimore needs to give them money to stay, otherwise a bunch of Mayflower trucks will show up in the middle of the night and take them away.
The city of Indianapolis will happily take a Major League Baseball team.
Don’t know what we’ll do with it, given we’re overly saturated with a minimum of 8 teams within a 6 hour drive, but we’ll think of something.
Marylan-ders keep on Marylan-der-ing.
If you must move a MLB team move the A’s
How about if the O’s move to Oakland the A’s move to Baltimore? [sound of my hands slipping/slapping each other twice as problem solved]