Informal overtures by Major League Baseball officials toward Peter G. Angelos over a deal to bring the Montreal Expos to Washington have gone nowhere, a baseball official familiar with the discussions said yesterday, setting the stage for a showdown in Milwaukee today between the league and the Baltimore Orioles' owner.
Baseball's relocation committee, which has been seeking to find a home for the Expos, is leaning toward recommending that the Montreal franchise be moved to Washington and will make a report at today's meeting of the league's Executive Council, baseball sources said. Angelos, who sits on the eight-member council, has insisted that he would fight any attempt to move the Expos to the District, saying it would financially damage the Orioles and hinder their ability to compete.
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The baseball official familiar with the issue said Angelos has been unyielding in what the official described as informal discussions about possible compensation for the Orioles owner if he agrees to an Expos move to the District.
"What is happening is that Major League Baseball is talking to him about trying to find some financial way to help the Baltimore Orioles through this, and he is saying 'no.' He is saying, 'Hell no,' " the official said. "He does not want a franchise in Washington."
The official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said it was unclear what strategy Angelos would take should baseball defy his wishes. "He doesn't know what he's going to do," the official said.
Angelos has said the Baltimore-Washington area is not large enough to support two franchises and that a team in Washington would be financially untenable for both franchises.
Legal experts said the Orioles' owner could face a tough time in court trying to block the action and that a far more likely scenario is a brokered agreement whereby the Orioles are compensated tens of millions of dollars for the arrival of another team in the area.
"At the end of the day, I don't see any legal theory that [Angelos] could use successfully" to block the Expos' arrival, said Gary R. Roberts, director of the sports law program at Tulane University Law School.
That certainly isn't to say that Angelos couldn't try.
A trial lawyer who made a fortune handling asbestos cases, Angelos has never shied from using the courts to advance his business interests. In recent days, those close to him have said he is mulling his legal options.
To keep the Expos from coming to Washington, Angelos would have to convince a court that the contractual relationship between baseball and its owners is broader than has been commonly understood, legal experts said.
The Major League Constitution defines the Orioles' "operating territory" as the city of Baltimore and Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Howard, Carroll and Harford counties in Maryland. A team could be chartered in the District with no infringement upon that geographic territory.
The Orioles have in recent years argued that the team's home territory should not be defined so narrowly, however, particularly in the age of cable television contracts.
Angelos, who declined to be interviewed for this story, recently told The Washington Post that putting another franchise so close to the Orioles would cut into his team's fan base, particularly in Washington's Maryland suburbs, and siphon off more than half of the Orioles' television revenue.
