[Baltimore Sun] Orioles owner Peter Angelos dies at 94
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Longtime Orioles owner Peter George Angelos, a Baltimore political power broker and one of the most successful class-action attorneys in U.S. history, died Saturday. He was 94.
Angelos, who had been in declining health for about six years, “passed away quietly,” the team said in a statement. Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson confirmed that he died at the hospital Saturday morning, but declined to provide the cause of death.
His death came as his family prepared to sell the team to Carlyle Group co-founder and Baltimore native David Rubenstein, a purchase that is awaiting final approval by MLB owners. The deal values the ballclub at $1.725 billion
“I offer my deepest condolences to the Angelos family on the passing of Peter Angelos,” Rubenstein said in a statement. “Peter made an indelible mark first in business and then in baseball.
“The city of Baltimore owes him a debt of gratitude for his stewardship of the Orioles across three decades and for positioning the team for great success.”
Tough-minded and ego-driven, Angelos rose from blue-collar roots to amass great wealth as a lawyer, particularly from suing companies that had exposed workers to asbestos. Casting himself as a defender of steelworkers against corporate irresponsibility, Angelos won more than $1 billion in damages from asbestos companies during the 1990s and built a veritable empire on the commissions.
He used his fortune to buy the Orioles for a then-record $173 million in 1993. Angelos — who was born on the Fourth of July, grew up in Highlandtown and was the son of a tavern owner — believed the Baltimore Orioles should be owned by Baltimoreans. It was something that, along with his early willingness to spend on free agents, endeared him to hometown fans.
“I became involved because I thought a local group should own the franchise,” Angelos told The Baltimore Sun in 2004, “and I set out to put such a group together.”
Among his partners with deep local ties: Novelist Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson, tennis great Pam Shriver, philanthropist Harvey M. Meyerhoff and broadcaster Jim McKay.
“His legacy is Baltimore first. Peter just loved his hometown. It’s where he made his business, his law practice empire. He made his mark as owner of the Orioles,” Shriver said in an interview with The Sun. “His family remained there, his kids. I feel like that’s what Baltimore is about, maintaining your love for the city and wanting to leave it in a better place when you have the ability and the wisdom and wealth to make Baltimore a better place.”
Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. was among those paying tribute to Angelos as news of his death circulated.
“Peter Angelos was a proud native of Baltimore who deeply appreciated owning the Baltimore Orioles,” he said in a statement. “He championed the Orioles’ historic 1999 series with the Cuban National Team. Peter ably served the game on our Labor Committee, and I will always remember his personal support when I was first elected to this role.”
A demoralizing string of Orioles’ losing seasons and Angelos’ propensity for micromanaging the Orioles prompted some fans to turn on him over the years. But in political and civic circles, Angelos ultimately will be remembered for all he brought to the city he moved to at age 11 with his Greek immigrant family from Pennsylvania.
“He will certainly go down in history alongside the likes of William Donald Schaefer and James Rouse and any others whose names one might think of as an individual who Baltimore should be incredibly proud of and is significantly better off for as a result,” said David Nevins, a longtime marketing executive and one-time president of cable sports network Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic.
That Nevins would speak of him in the same breath as Schaefer, the late Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, and Rouse, the visionary behind Harborplace, is fitting: Angelos was a generous donor to his law school alma mater, the University of Baltimore, and multiple local hospitals and cultural institutions, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
While a 1963 run for Baltimore City Council president and a 1967 race for mayor both failed — he lost both times to his good friend, Thomas J. D’Alesandro III — he served one term as a council member and went on to become a major Democratic Party donor.
Unbound by tradition, Angelos had run for the council presidency on the first integrated ticket in city history, sharing a slate with state Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell III.
Angelos was a staunch liberal who hobnobbed with politicians both local and national. Once, he put off a meeting with then-President Bill Clinton to take in an Orioles game.
Former Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening recently remembered Angelos complaining to him about how little the state paid him for handling the state’s litigation against tobacco companies, with Angelos using the word “only” in reference to “$150 million.”
Angelos’ initially was to receive 25% of any money recovered. But after the state received about $4 billion, it ultimately negotiated the fee down to $150 million. Glendening said he subsequently saw Angelos at an event in Baltimore, where the lawyer griped that he had been “cheated.”
University of Baltimore president and former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke lauded Angelos’ wide range of contributions to the city.
“I have been honored to know Peter Angelos throughout my professional career, from my time as a young prosecutor, to when I was mayor, to more recent years through his strong support for The University of Baltimore,” Schmoke said in a statement. “He was both a personal and professional friend to me, and I view him as an individual who left quite a mark on our community, in his capacity as a businessman, a political advocate, and as a philanthropist.
“Peter will be greatly missed,” he said.
Burial will be private, the Orioles said in a statement, adding “the family asks for understanding as they honor that request.”
“Mr. Angelos had been ill for several years, and the family thanks the doctors, nurses, and caregivers who brought comfort to him in his final years,” the statement said.
Angelos stopped working in 2018 as his health deteriorated and he became incapacitated, according to documents in a 2022 legal battle that pitted the younger son, Louis, against Georgia and John Angelos. In February 2023, the parties settled all litigation arising from Louis’ claims that his mother and elder brother had sought improperly to seize control of the patriarch’s assets, including his real estate holdings and the Orioles.
Decisions about the team were being made by Georgia Angelos, who had been designated by her husband to act on his behalf as his “attorney in fact.” She had been trying to sell the Orioles for several years, according to court documents, saying her husband wanted the team sold after his death so that she could benefit from the proceeds.
His renowned law firm, which unlike others operated with him as the sole partner and the other attorneys as his employees, recently sold to three of its senior members. The family has also unloaded some of his extensive real estate holdings, with his downtown landmark, One Charles Center, where the law offices are located, on the market, as well.
During his active years as the team’s owner, Angelos was an iconoclast. He swam against the tide on labor issues, took Major League Baseball back to Cuba for an exchange of games between the Orioles and the Cuban national team and refused to give an inch as he negotiated compensation for the Washington Nationals’ move into the Baltimore-Washington market.
As part of Angelos’ fight over the Nationals being allowed to encroach on his territory, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) was created. It carries both teams’ games, with the majority of the profits going to the Orioles.
He owned the Orioles through one of the darkest periods in club history — 14 consecutive losing seasons accompanied by a steady decline in attendance and the exodus of the Orioles’ sharpest executives, some of who found themselves at odds with Angelos’ autocratic, heavy-handed approach.
The Orioles pulled out of a long tailspin in 2012, making a surprise playoff run led by widely respected manager Buck Showalter, whom Angelos had aggressively recruited. In 2014, they won the American League East for the first time in 17 years.
The winning seasons, and Angelos’ renewed willingness to spend freely to keep signature stars such as Adam Jones and Chris Davis, prompted a reassessment of his record as an owner. Even that was complicated by the club’s subsequent return to the bottom of the standings in 2017, with the Davis deal and other moves proving disastrous, and Angelos playing a reduced role as his health declined.
“Though there are those who will lean toward some negatives of his legacy, there are significant accomplishments to support a positive legacy,” longtime Baltimore sports agent Ron Shapiro said in an earlier interview.
“There’s no one you’d rather have on your side,” Alan Rifkin, the longtime primary outside counsel to the Orioles and a friend, said before Angelos died. “He put ordinary people in the asbestos and tobacco cases on his shoulders and lifted them up, and that’s who he was.”
Jones, a former Orioles center fielder, paid tribute to Angelos on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Mr. Angelos was an incredible man and we both shared a deep love for the city of Baltimore and the Orioles,” Jones said. “Sending my condolences to the Angelos family during this difficult time. Rest in Power Mr. A.”
Thomas Minkin, whom Angelos hired in 1966 as a newly minted lawyer, remembered how in every other job interview, he had been asked about case law and procedures.
“Pete asked me, ‘Were you in a labor union when you worked as a meat cutter, when you worked at a warehouse?’” Minkin said.
The two bonded over their shared background, working to put themselves through law school. And in fact, Minkin said, the meat cutter’s union that he indeed had belonged to later became their client.
“Pete always was the champion of the working guy,” he said.
It was through their work with steelworkers and building trade unions that the firm began representing workers harmed on the job by asbestos — and winning big judgments and settlements. Soon, “a tidal wave” of clients flowed into the firm, and the city’s circuit court became so jammed with asbestos litigation that thousands of cases were consolidated, extra courtroom furniture had to be ordered and even additional judges named to the bench.
Even now, Minkin marvels at what “a brilliant guy” Angelos was, and how he would “kick the collective” behinds of opposing “creme de la creme” lawyers.
“Everything he touched, he did well,” he said “His mind could absorb anything. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Perhaps the only thing that stands out more than his smarts, Minkin said, was his generosity. He and others can rattle off instances, beyond Angelos’ institutional gifts, when he helped someone.
“He was the type of guy who would do things for people but didn’t want anyone else to know that he did them,” said Jim Palmer, former Orioles pitcher and Hall of Famer. “He didn’t want that attention. That’s who he was.”
Nevins recalled how he had approached Angelos to contribute a portion of the costs of creating a sports pub in the private Center Club, where the Os’ owner regularly ate lunch and where Nevins served several years as president.
Not only did Angelos give the club permission to call it the Orioles Pub, he insisted on paying for it entirely, Nevins said. But then Angelos saw a Sun story that noted he covered most of the cost of constructing the pub.
“Nevins!” Angelos called him over next time he saw him at the club, wanting to know why it didn’t say he covered all of the cost.
“I said, ‘We ran over budget,’” Nevins said he told Angelos, who replied, “Then I owe you another check.”
“A commitment is a commitment.”
Baltimore Sun reporters Childs Walker and Mike Klingaman contributed to this article.
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