BALTIMORE — Peter Angelos, proprietor of a Baltimore Orioles staff that endured lengthy shedding stretches and shrewd proprietor of a regulation agency that gained high-profile circumstances in opposition to trade titans, died Saturday. He was 94.
Angelos had been in poor health for a number of years. His household introduced his demise in an announcement thanking the caregivers “who introduced consolation to him in his last years.”
Angelos’ demise comes as his son John is within the means of promoting the Orioles to a bunch headed by Carlyle Group Inc. co-founder David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos’ public position diminished considerably in his last years. In line with a lawsuit involving his sons in 2022, he had surgical procedure after his aortic valve failed in 2017.
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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 agency in his personal title after receiving his regulation diploma from the College of Baltimore in 1961.
In August 1993, Angelos led a bunch of traders that purchased the Orioles. The group included author Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson and tennis star Pam Shriver. The worth tag of $173 million — on the time the best for a sports activities franchise — got here in a sale pressured by the chapter of then-owner Eli Jacobs.
Whereas remaining lively in a regulation agency specializing in private damage circumstances, Angelos assumed a hands-on method to working his hometown staff. Few participant acquisitions had been carried out with out his approval, and his popularity for not spending hundreds of thousands on high-priced free brokers belied his internet price, which in 2017 was estimated at $2.1 billion.
In 1996, his agency introduced a lawsuit on behalf of the state of Maryland in opposition to tobacco large Philip Morris, securing a $4.5 billion settlement. The Legislation Workplaces of Peter Angelos additionally earned hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by the settlement of asbestos circumstances, together with a class-action go well with on behalf of metal, shipyard and manufacturing facility employees.
Angelos made headlines in baseball as nicely. In 1995, he was the one one among 28 homeowners who refused to stick to a plan to make use of alternative gamers throughout a union strike that started throughout the 1994 season.
“We’re responsibility certain to supply main league baseball to our followers, and that may’t be achieved with alternative gamers,” he insisted.
On the time, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. was solely 122 video games from breaking Lou Gehrig’s document of two,130 consecutive video games performed. The streak would have ended if the season began with alternative gamers and Ripken remained on strike, however the homeowners and gamers reached an settlement earlier than Opening Day and Ripken finally ended up extending his document run to 2,632.
Angelos additionally fought for years to create an exhibition sequence between the Orioles and Cuba’s nationwide staff, a quest that reached fruition in 1999. On March 28, the Orioles performed in Havana whereas Angelos sat alongside Cuban chief Fidel Castro. The groups met once more on Could 3 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
The sequence marked the primary time the Cuban nationwide staff had confronted a squad composed solely of main league gamers, and the primary time since 1959 {that a} large league membership performed in Cuba.