Local Ownership

Dennis Townsend was sitting on a portable counter in the lobby of Du Burns Arena last Saturday, admiring his latest purchase, when a stranger asked him a question that's been posed to him time and again from friends and colleagues: Why would you want to buy the Baltimore Thunder?"

Rumor and speculation that the Bandits were for sale, which started several weeks ago, were confirmed yesterday, when owner Mike Caggiano announced he was seeking a buyer."

Havre de Grace. -- Total attendance at major league baseball games is down sharply since the recent strike. Some think it may never recover. Attendance at Orioles games is down too, but not as much. What accounts for the difference?Is it because Baltimore's baseball company runs its business better than baseball companies in other cities? Because Orioles fans are just more tolerant of all the ways that major league baseball has found to irritate its customers? Or, perhaps, because Baltimore is always one of the last places to get the word about what's in and what's out?

A lot more opens today at Camden Yards and ballparks around the country than just another baseball season. The Orioles, now settled comfortably in their trend-setting new stadium, will field the strongest team in years. That the club will do so is largely due to its new local ownership. That alone launches a new era for the Birds. And baseball itself is embarking on an era of its own, with three divisions in each league and expanded playoffs. Some fans like the idea, others detest it. But it marks change in a sport that changes very slowly.

Peter G. Angelos rode the Metroliner from New York to Baltimore's Penn Station yesterday afternoon and walked through the gates of Oriole Park for the first time as anything but a paying customer.The soon-to-be managing partner of the Orioles will not take control of the club for at least another six weeks, but Angelos immediately ushered in a new era of local ownership and tried to forge a close relationship with the media and fans.The Baltimore lawyer spent nearly an hour in the auxiliary clubhouse fielding questions and sparring lightheartedly with a crowd of reporters that had not been this close to an Orioles owner since the earliest days of the Eli S. Jacobs era.It had been 24 hours since his ownership group had joined with a competing partnership led by William O. DeWitt Jr. to purchase the team at auction for a record price of $173 million, and Angelos still was explaining himself.

Months after the Orioles were put on the market, months after a Cincinnati group made its bid, four Baltimoreans say they're interested in buying. They've got the money, they say. And they've got something else: They're from here.The hometown connection may not mean much to major league baseball or to Orioles owner Eli S. Jacobs' creditors or bankruptcy judges. But for some Baltimore sports fans, local ownership means everything.This is a city in which some fans have spent nine years brooding over Robert Irsay's abduction of the Colts, a city whose Bullets now play in theWashington suburbs, a city whose citizens worried for years that Edward Bennett Williams had really bought the Orioles to carry them off to Washington.

FANS"Local ownership or not, are they going to have the wherewithal to go out and get the impact players that the Orioles need? Obviously, they're not going to pull a San Diego and take the team apart, but it's going to be tough to pull off what they need to do. . . . It sounds like this afternoon was a high-stakes poker game. The art dealer from New York [Jeffrey H. Loria] bluffed them out. Edward Bennett Williams spent $13 million for the team in 1979. He must be laughing in his grave."-- Rob Mueller of Anne Arundel County"That's a remarkable price to pay, but it's got to be wonderful to own a ball team."

Attention bargain shoppers: Today's column is a 3-in-1 value. Three columns in the space of one. A Kellogg's Variety Pack column, sort of.* Obviously, local ownership would be the first preference for our NFL expansion team.Just as obviously, Tom Clancy's commitment to bringing a team here is earnest and emotional.But in reference to Clancy's opinion that anything other than local ownership is "lunacy," please see: Mr. Ed DeBartolo, owner, San Francisco 49ers.The best free-agent-buying, championship-team-building owner in the NFL.Born, raised and still doing business in Youngstown, Ohio.

Assessing Baltimore's chances for local ownership if the Orioles are sold, former team owner Jerry Hoffberger yesterday painted this pessimistic picture:"I didn't see anybody around [locally] when I was selling the team for $10 [million] or $12 million."The price has gone up a bit since Hoffberger sold the team in 1979 to Edward Bennett Williams for $12 million. Orioles owner Eli Jacobs paid a then-record price of $70 million for the Orioles in 1989.Now, with the team up for sale again and a new stadium on the way, Jacobs reportedly is seeking upward of $120 million.

Brain-flossing, criss-crossing, pillow-tossing:Jack Luskin holds down prices the way Eli Jacobs holds down the Orioles' payroll. The cheapest guy in town buying the team from the cheapest guy out of town? Luskin's nephew, attorney Steven L. Miles, says, "Let's talk about it!"We say: Bring back Boogie.Luskin, of course, has no chance of buying the team -- yo, Jack, that stock is going the wrong way -- but it's sure fun to think about. Would big-screen TVs become a regular giveaway? Would minority owner Miles do more obnoxious commercials?

Ferris, Baker Watts Inc., one of a vanishing breed of small independent brokerages in an industry dominated by Wall Street giants, has agreed to sell itself to Canada's largest bank, which will fold the firm into its Minneapolis-based money manager RBC Dain Rauscher Inc. The deal with Royal Bank of Canada marks the end of local ownership for a firm that has survived two world wars, the Great Depression and countless boom-and-bust cycles while building a...

Sylvan Learning Inc. said yesterday that it is selling most of its corporate-owned tutoring centers that were beset with financial problems last year as the Baltimore-based company hopes to expand its franchise business by persuading others to open its classrooms nationwide. The company also announced that it is piloting a program that sends tutors to children's homes, a departure from its 27-year model of teaching students at its centers. And, it is expanding its live, online tutoring program.

On May 24, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Web site Philly.com were bought by a group of local business and civic leaders, ending 36 years of corporate ownership and possibly ushering in a new era of local control of major metropolitan newspapers. The new owners have no media experience. In March, the 32 newspapers owned by Knight Ridder - then the parent company of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. - were purchased by McClatchy Co. of California. McClatchy then turned around and put the Inquirer and the Daily News, plus 10 other newspapers, up for sale.

It was a time when Peter G. Angelos was known as the "king of asbestos." He was cast as a civic white knight, using the millions he had earned representing workers with asbestos-related illnesses to return the Baltimore Orioles to local ownership. On Aug. 2, 1993, Angelos and his band of merry Marylanders bought the club at an auction in New York for $173 million - nearly $50 million more than had ever been paid for a baseball team. "It's like another era, isn't it?" Angelos said in a recent interview in the conference room of his Charles Center law offices, which, interestingly enough, features a statue of Johnny Unitas and a LeRoy Neiman painting of the Three Tenors, but nothing that says baseball.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Anne Arundel County businessman Stephen Bisciotti bought himself an early birthday present yesterday. Bisciotti, who turns 40 on April 10, was given unanimous approval to buy 49 percent of the Ravens -- with an option to buy the other 51 percent in four years -- by the 31 NFL owners at their annual March meetings yesterday. "We've got a winner and the league has a winner," Ravens owner Art Modell said as he introduced Bisciotti at a news conference after the owners approved the transaction as their first order of business.

Dennis Townsend was sitting on a portable counter in the lobby of Du Burns Arena last Saturday, admiring his latest purchase, when a stranger asked him a question that's been posed to him time and again from friends and colleagues: Why would you want to buy the Baltimore Thunder?"

Rumor and speculation that the Bandits were for sale, which started several weeks ago, were confirmed yesterday, when owner Mike Caggiano announced he was seeking a buyer."

Havre de Grace. -- Total attendance at major league baseball games is down sharply since the recent strike. Some think it may never recover. Attendance at Orioles games is down too, but not as much. What accounts for the difference?Is it because Baltimore's baseball company runs its business better than baseball companies in other cities? Because Orioles fans are just more tolerant of all the ways that major league baseball has found to irritate its customers? Or, perhaps, because Baltimore is always one of the last places to get the word about what's in and what's out?

A lot more opens today at Camden Yards and ballparks around the country than just another baseball season. The Orioles, now settled comfortably in their trend-setting new stadium, will field the strongest team in years. That the club will do so is largely due to its new local ownership. That alone launches a new era for the Birds. And baseball itself is embarking on an era of its own, with three divisions in each league and expanded playoffs. Some fans like the idea, others detest it. But it marks change in a sport that changes very slowly.

Peter G. Angelos rode the Metroliner from New York to Baltimore's Penn Station yesterday afternoon and walked through the gates of Oriole Park for the first time as anything but a paying customer.The soon-to-be managing partner of the Orioles will not take control of the club for at least another six weeks, but Angelos immediately ushered in a new era of local ownership and tried to forge a close relationship with the media and fans.The Baltimore lawyer spent nearly an hour in the auxiliary clubhouse fielding questions and sparring lightheartedly with a crowd of reporters that had not been this close to an Orioles owner since the earliest days of the Eli S. Jacobs era.It had been 24 hours since his ownership group had joined with a competing partnership led by William O. DeWitt Jr. to purchase the team at auction for a record price of $173 million, and Angelos still was explaining himself.