Angelos' Orioles: Simply Labor Of Love -- `Guy From Baltimore' Puts His Money Where Loyalties Are

The owner of the Baltimore Orioles couldn't attend his team's first two playoff games at the Kingdome this week.

Too busy.

Those in sports might not understand because this is the time of year owners' egos swell to the size of their team payroll. Some become larger than life when their teams are winning the way the Orioles - on the verge of eliminating the Seattle Mariners today in Game 3 of the American League Division Series at Camden Yards - are.

Too busy for the playoffs?

Peter Angelos has a life away from baseball that is every bit as fulfilling - and demanding - as ensuring the Birds are the word around Chesapeake Bay.

He is in charge of a major labor-oriented law firm with more than 81 lawyers and 200 support personnel in five states.

He is involved in major redevelopment projects in and around Baltimore, his hometown.

He is a member of every imaginable board for charity or otherwise.

"In Baltimore, you tend to get a small core of leaders continuing to step up," said Pam Shriver, former tennis star. "He is at the top of that list."

So that's it. After all these in-your-face, tough-guy demonstrations, Angelos turns out to be a giver.

In four years since joining the ranks of baseball's ownership, Angelos has become one of the most charismatic, and controversial, players in American's national pastime.

And although he has been recognized more for his battles with ownership over solving the game's labor problems, Angelos has had a greater impact on American life through law.

He represented 8,700 steelworkers, shipyard workers, including some in Seattle, and manufacturers employees in a famous consolidated-action asbestos suit that netted about $1 billion.

The Maryland Attorney General's Office last year hired Angelos to help bring suit against the tobacco industry for repayment of Medicaid recipients' treatment of smoking-related illnesses. The suit, one of many from Attorneys General throughout the United States, is playing a part in changing public perceptions and policy on smoking.

Maryland knew it was getting a man who doesn't give up easily, a trait that at first irked many of baseball's owners.

Angelos, 68, parlayed his share of the asbestos earnings, about $330 million, into buying the Orioles in 1993. He spent about $60 million to become principal owner in leading an investors group including Shriver, film director Barry Levinson and best-selling author Tom Clancy to purchase the team for a then-record $173 million. It didn't take long for a chasm to develop between Angelos and the 27 owners. A little more than a year into his ownership, baseball was hit by a players strike that halted the 1994 World Series. When owners tried to use replacement players at the beginning of the 1995 season, Angelos refused.

The rest of the ownership threatened sanctions, including stripping him of the team because, they said, his actions were not in the best interest of the game. Angelos, a feisty 5-foot-6 son of a Greek immigrant, took on Milwaukee Brewer owner Bud Selig, the acting commissioner. At the time, it seemed the bickering was the only thread holding the game's interest.

"After a contentious start, he and I have gotten along great," Selig said this week. "When we've had problems, he's been thoughtful and constructive in creating solutions, something that was missing and desperately needed."

At first many owners simply did not understand Angelos' ideals any better than they understood the man, a product of Highlandtown, a working-class Baltimore neighborhood. Angelos still sees himself as one of the people.

"I'm just another guy from Baltimore," he said.

And his loyalty remained with his city and the fans. "He would have seen using replacement players as breaking a contract with Baltimore," Shriver said.

As baseball's labor problems fade into memory and players and owners - including Angelos - are earning record sums, the Baltimore owner is more congenial these days.

If he doesn't have his colleagues' adulation, he at least has their respect.

"What was proposed was wrong so I spoke out against it," Angelos said of the replacement-player issue. "If I believe it is wrong and oppose it, I feel one has to speak out. That's an old American trait, a quality we urged upon people."

Such values spring from an immigrant upbringing in the most traditional sense. These deeply instilled qualities create an imperishable mosaic of a man of convictions - even when some think of him as dictatorial.

"If you don't follow your (convictions) then in the final analysis, what good are you?" Angelos asked. "That's when you demonstrate you're a person of substance."

From asbestos poisoning to tobacco smoke to baseball labor strife, Angelos will continue to be heard.

"He's like Robin Hood," said Wayne Gioioso, an Oriole investor and friend for 30 years. "Not that he steals form the rich and gives to the poor, but uses his legal powers to take away from the asbestos manufacturers and tobacco manufacturers and gives it to the people."

Gioioso brought his friend into baseball by introducing Angelos to Larry Luciano, the San Diego Padre executive who in the early '90s represented past Baltimore owner Eli Jacobs.

The first meeting didn't accomplish much. Luciano told the men they were too late to buy the team.

When Angelos and Gioioso got to an elevator after leaving the meeting, Angelos asked his friend, "Well, what do you think?"

"It's over," Gioioso said.

"That's the trouble with you," Angelos replied. "You have no fight."

"But you heard the man," Gioioso said. Angelos shook his head, and said, "We're going to buy the O's."

Friends and adversaries expect nothing less from Angelos than total commitment once he decides to tackle a project.

In four years since buying the Orioles, he has been the catalyst for the team's recent surge that includes a $10 million profit this year despite $56 million in player salaries. The previous ownership deserves credit for helping build Orioles Park at Camden Yards, an intimate ballpark that has led to new facilities across the country, including one under construction in Seattle south of the Kingdome.

But Angelos hired quality people to run the organization, which won the AL East and is expected to advance to the World Series if it dismisses the Mariners. He also found ways to make more on stadium and media revenues to turn a profit.

"Most owners in baseball are highly skilled businessmen," Angelos said, refuting the notion that the only reason teams lose money is because of bad business decisions. "Some haven't had the right ingredients for success."

"Peter is clearly a man who is self made," said John Ellis, Mariner chairman. "He is confident of his own intelligence; an emotional and demanding individual. Sometimes, he comes across as a little guy trying to be very big."

Ellis, then stopped, recalled a regular-season series at the Kingdome attended by Angelos this year.

"He was so thoughtful and considerate," Ellis said. "It was a piece I had not seen of him before."

This piece has helped make peace.

"I'm happy the owners realized I'm not someone who was complaining just for the sake of complaining," Angelos said. "But for the interest of all the game."

That interest will be focused on the Orioles, and don't kid yourself, Angelos won't be too busy to attend Game 3.

Some owners might have resented this moment four years earlier. But not today. Not when Angelos, and his Birds, are preparing for an October coronation.

Even they concede now he has been good for the game.