No matter what this October portends for the Orioles, the immediate and perhaps extended future appears to hold considerable promise for the franchise.
Here’s hoping Baltimore baseball fans get to experience the joy of rooting for a championship-caliber team in person at Camden Yards after suffering through such a miserable past couple of decades or so.
Now, you’re probably asking ‘where’s this guy been?’ More than usual, that is. Didn’t he hear that the Orioles and the state of Maryland have locked arms on a 30-year lease to keep the Birds in Baltimore deep into this century?
Wasn’t that our new governor, Wes Moore, in the owner’s box the night the team clinched the American League East, yucking it up with Orioles CEO John Angelos, as the new deal was announced?
That was the conclusion that we were supposed to draw from all that hoopla. But, as our good friends in Public Enemy admonished us so many years ago, don’t believe the hype.
Indeed, the very next morning, we found out that the impression we were left with, that five years of protracted negotiations between the Maryland Stadium Authority and the Orioles had come to an end with the Birds agreeing to stay in their nest for the next three decades was a false one.
Instead of signing a binding lease, the two parties entered into a memorandum of understanding, the legal equivalent of one of those promise rings folks give and receive before engagement and marriage.
Not a lot is known about what’s in this MOU. The two sides have kept things close to the vest, especially since Moore took office and installed Craig Thompson as the MSA chairman.
We don’t know whether Thompson or Moore, who has a friendship with Angelos, is the principal negotiator. We don’t know when the MOU will be replaced with an actual lease or how long the negotiations will go on.
Everything about this process has been out of the public sunlight. In fact, things have been so private that MSA members reportedly agreed to the MOU in a phone call and not in a public meeting.
The Baltimore Banner reported that Thompson called each of the members of the authority and got their approval, which he deems to be legal.
And perhaps it is, but it sure doesn’t seem like the way business should be done. Not when the Orioles can receive up to $600 million in state bonds to renovate their 30-year old ballpark. Not when the Orioles will be freed from the requirement that they pay rent for Oriole Park, as one of the terms in the MOU seems to indicate, in exchange for taking over management of the park.
Not when the club would apparently get the right to develop some of the land around the stadium, a potentially lucrative chit.
So far, Moore has been publicly seen in an Orioles jersey, but hasn’t been heard uttering much more than platitudes about what happens next in terms of getting his buddy John Angelos to put actual pen and ink to that 30-year lease.
A promise ring or MOU is nice. A marriage contract, or, in this case, a lease, would be better.
And that’s how I see it for this week. You can reach us via email with your questions and comments at Sports at Large at gmail.com. And follow me on Threads and X, formerly known as Twitter, at Sports at Large.
Until next week, for all of us here, I’m Milton Kent. Thanks for listening and enjoy the games.