Hating on the Angelos family has been a favored pastime of Orioles fans for the better part of 30 years, basically ever since Peter Angelos bought the team.
In fact, it’s almost become a cliche to hate on the Angelos family, but lately, John Angelos, chair and managing partner of the Orioles, has really taken things to a new and almost impressively asinine level.
By this point, I’m sure you’re aware of the news that broke recently saying Orioles announcer Kevin Brown was suspended (or at least, hasn’t been on air) ever since he ruffled some feathers during an Orioles game in July.
If you’re not familiar, here’s the quick rundown, as first reported by Awful Announcing and later confirmed by The Athletic: On July 23, Brown made the factual statement that the Orioles had won more games at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay in 2023 than they had in the last three years combined.
This statement was in the game notes (presumably put there by a team of people, including a graphics team and a producer, not just Kevin Brown doing some free-form stats improv), and that statement made “ownership,” i.e. Angelos, unhappy because they believed “it made them sound cheap,” Brittany Ghiroli reported for The Athletic.
Putting aside the fact the Orioles rank 29th in MLB payroll which, one could argue, objectively makes them kind of cheap, this seems to be a pretty foolish and capricious decision for the Orioles to make given Brown has been a very popular fixture in the Orioles’ broadcast booth during the best and most exciting season the Orioles have had in years.
As an aside – the fact that Brown (and Ben McDonald as well) has made listening to the Orioles so much fun after the team cut half their broadcasting team, including Gary Thorne (one of the best to ever do it), Jim Hunter, and basically the entire pregame show gang, has really been a boon for the team.
Anyways, what’s more, Ghiroli reports that ownership “has enacted a new policy mandating that their broadcasters wear only team gear when on-air” and that broadcasters “have also been reprimanded previously for mentioning past Orioles players who are no longer with the team.”
Which is so very strange. I’m not even sure what that last part really means in practice. Is Jim Palmer getting in trouble because of some random story he tells about the time he and Tippy Martinez ate too many gummy bears and threw up? (Disclaimer: this is not a real story)
I have no idea. But to me, what this points to is another example of John Angelos being a fragile child with an ego you could crack with a strong breeze. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this from him either.
Let’s not forget back in January when Dan Connolly took a moment to ask Angelos during a very rare press conference where the Orioles were announcing a $5 million commitment to the CollegeBoard Foundation about the very real concerns people have/had about the Angelos family’s commitment to the Orioles.
For some background, at the time there was an unresolved (and since resolved) lawsuit among members of the Angelos family over the Orioles, and there still hasn’t been a new lease at Camden Yards negotiated between the Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority.
So it makes sense that Connolly would ask such a question. And in response, Angelos berated Connolly for having the audacity to ask such a question during a press conference on Martin Luther King Jr. Day:
“It’s really not important at all in the grand scheme of things to people that are clear-thinking and who mean well and have a perspective to, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, while we’re talking about putting kids that don’t have a shot in hell of anything, because of where they were born, through college, to be talking about those kinds of things,” Angelos said in response. “So, I’m going to object to that question today, in this forum, before the mayor of Baltimore and all these people. Do we understand each other? Do you understand my complaint?”
Angelos, who is worth over $2 billion it should be noted, then had the incredible lack of cognitive dissonance to say Connolly’s question “is completely out of touch and has no perspective whatsoever on what real-world people face.”
And even more, he then asked Connolly if he was even “from here,” which I mean, if your family has owned the Orioles for 30 years, I’d hope you’d be more aware of your local beat writers, but okay.
Do you know what Angelos could have said if he really didn’t want to answer that question?
“I’m not here to talk about that right now, but I appreciate your question.”
That’s all.
But the man’s fragile ego couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t. Just as he couldn’t handle Kevin Brown stating the objective fact that, hey, the Orioles have sort of kind of been pretty bad the past few years. Or as he (presumably, but perhaps someone else in the organization) couldn’t handle Orioles PA announcer Ryan Wagner having pretty innocuous thoughts on his personal Twitter account.
Basically, it comes down to this: If you want to own a baseball team, own the baseball team. Own the process you’re going through to make the baseball team better. Enjoy the successes, own the failure, be honest and transparent.
Unfortunately so far, it seems like that might be too much to ask from John Angelos.
Ben Palmer has lived in Maryland his whole life and currently spends his days working as a health care journalist. He also previously wrote for and was a site expert for the FanSided blog The Baltimore Wire and currently works as managing editor at Pitcher List where he writes about fantasy baseball.