JOHN ANGELOS NEVER REALLY SAW himself going into the baseball business. After graduating from the Gilman School, arguably Baltimore’s most prestigious independent preparatory school, and then Duke University, he went on to law school at the University of Baltimore, like his father, Peter. Law was the family business and his presumed career destiny. But in 1994, his father became the new owner of the hometown baseball franchise, the Baltimore Orioles, and wanted his sons, John and Louis, working in the business with him. Early on, John took on what he thought would be a temporary project. The Orioles were moving from seventy-five-year-old Memorial Stadium to a new park, Camden Yards, that would help anchor a rebuilt and reimagined downtown Baltimore.
Downtown Baltimore, bordered by its waterfront, used to be a collection of rat-filled docks where cargo ships came and went at a frenetic pace. Goods were traded, money was made. Not exactly a beauty at first glance, but there was a grace in its industriousness, a music in its cacophony of cultures and accents, foods and histories. Then, between 1958 and 1965, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., the thirty-ninth mayor of the city (and father of the eventual first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi), began the process of transforming the docks—a transformation that wasn’t simply visionary but existentially vital, as shallow water levels and the growing size of container ships made reliance on shipping revenue foolhardy.
Mayor William Donald Schaefer first introduced an idea of an “Inner Harbor,” where the now-dormant dockyards would be reborn as a social and shopping destination, like South Street Seaport in New York or the Historic District in Charleston, South Carolina. It would be a place where tourists and Marylanders alike could congregate and grab a good meal, walk along the waterfront, or catch a baseball or football game. Docks for container freights became plats for restaurants. Loading spaces became plazas. Sports would be the hub for other revenue-generating spokes. But the transition from homely and beloved Memorial Stadium, the open-air forge of memories for generations of Baltimoreans, to a freshly designed, newly built, trend-setting stadium was not simple. For one, Baltimore hated the idea.
Some detractors protested the amount of taxpayer dollars that had to go into the stadium—approximately $210 million—and how the congestion it generated would impact traffic on game days. Others pointed out that the city was dotted with neighborhoods that had been burned out decades ago and neglected for generations. These neighborhoods—both their buildings and the souls within them—were starved for attention and aid, yet when the Orioles and their wealthy owners needed a new stadium, the city jumped to pour millions into it. But public resistance wasn’t the only obstacle. There was another challenge, seemingly trivial in comparison but incredibly important to those diehard Orioles fans lucky enough to care: What will happen to my season ticket seats in the new stadium? This was now John’s problem.
John’s job was to figure out a way to make the old and new season ticket holders happy. He would sit at the office until ten o’clock at night surrounded by charts and seat maps and stickers and lists of names, a mad scientist in his lab, studying patterns and designs only he could understand. This wasn’t just about seats. It was about history and ego. Fairness and trade-offs. Art and math. And it was there that John fell in love with the work and its balance between operational details and the swirl of nostalgia, passion, legacy, and hope that defined fans’ relationship to their home team. Most people who get into the business of sports aspire to go into player management, making personnel decisions: Whom should we trade for? How much room do we have before we hit the luxury tax threshold? Is this player worth the money his agent is demanding? John found his passion in a small room by himself, sitting with seating charts and equity holder equations, focusing on the fans, not the players. What started off as a one-off project turned into twenty years of his life.
When he moved up to the post of executive vice president in 1999, John used to receive updates during games from his deputy Neil Aloise on everything from attendance to rain delays to fans who had been ejected for bad behavior. Neil’s comprehensive descriptions of every detail of what was going on in the ballpark impressed John. But now Neil was the head of ballpark operations, fully in charge of game-time issues. John hadn’t seen Neil’s name come up on his phone during a game in years, but on this Saturday afternoon in late April 2015 Neil called John around four o’clock, two and a half hours after the one-thirty first pitch—the game must be in its late innings, John thought.
“Hey, John, just want to keep you updated on some developments here.”