Peter Angelos (born July 4, 1929) is a trial lawyer and the current owner of the Baltimore Orioles, a baseball team in the American League East Division. He led a group of investors that purchased the team in 1993 for $173 million.
He opposed the relocation of the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) to Washington D.C. due to concerns about a reduced share of fan revenue affecting the ability of the Orioles to compete with the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Major League Baseball compensated Angelos by establishing a minimum sales price floor for the Orioles.
The United Workers Association, an organization of clean-up workers at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, claim that in 2004 Angelos promised, and then revoked his promise, to pay the difference of what would be required to raise cleaners' wages to that of Baltimore City's official living wage. Since 2004, Angelos has been the primary focus of the United Workers Association's Living Wages at Camden Yards Campaign.
Angelos is widely despised by many fans of the once-proud Orioles franchise. Fans contest that Angelos is more concerned with making a profit by way of the Orioles instead of contending. Others note that under his ownership the Orioles visited the postseason in 1996 and 1997 for the first time since 1983, spending more on free agents than prior ownership.
He is a graduate of Eastern College and the University of Baltimore Law School.
Angelos ran for mayor of Baltimore in 1964 but lost with less than 10% of the vote. He recently has become involved in politics again, publicly supporting Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich and criticizing 2006 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Martin J. O'Malley. Some have suspected that Angelos' criticism towards O'Malley stems from the fact that O'Malley publicly supported the existence of the Nationals, thus appearing as a threat to Angelos' continued monopolization of the Baltimore-Washington baseball market and his vast collection of funds from various revenue streams. This revenue has not been used by Angelos to provide a winning baseball product, despite statistics that show the region as one of the more financially profitable baseball markets, which would seem to indicate the ability to compete with higher payrolls than those of recent Oriole teams.
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