MILWAUKEE -- A two-hour meeting by Major League Baseball's executive council produced no final decision yesterday on whether the struggling Montreal Expos will move next season to Washington, but it made plain the chief obstacle to baseball's leading relocation plan: Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos.
Angelos, one of eight team owners who attended the closed-door meeting in Commissioner Bud Selig's downtown office, made his case for the first time formally that relocating a team so close to Baltimore would threaten the Orioles financially and hurt their ability to compete.
Whether he won over fellow owners was not clear; MLB chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said it would be a matter of "days" before a decision is announced.
"Peter Angelos has made his views known with regard to the effect that he believes a team in the D.C. area will have on the Baltimore Orioles, and he articulated those views," DuPuy told reporters after the meeting. "Mr. Angelos' concerns, which are shared by the commissioner and have been all along, have always been a serious issue here."
Angelos avoided reporters in Milwaukee and did not respond last night to phone calls seeking comment. The likely deadline for a decision is the end of the regular season, which is Oct. 3.
The battle looming after that could be an ugly one. A gruff and street-wise trial lawyer who brought down the asbestos industry and took on Big Tobacco, Angelos made plain a decade ago that he was willing to tangle with fellow baseball owners when he refused to field replacement players during the strike in 1995.
Still, the relocation showdown could be one of his toughest fights yet, with few attractive options.
Baseball could try to compensate the Orioles for the sudden influx of competition with a multimillion-dollar payment, but Angelos has signaled he is not interested in a cash settlement that would not protect the Orioles' long-term financial health.
Angelos could choose what for him is a familiar option -- going to court -- but legal experts say a lawsuit could put him in a hard-to-win spot: arguing to preserve a monopoly.
"Basically, what [Angelos] would be complaining about is that the relocation of the Expos to D.C. would result in economic competition between his club and the Expos," said Matt Mitten, a law professor and director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University. "An antitrust claim, I don't think, would be viable."
