There is no joy in Baltimore

Debbie Minnick is the kitchen manager at Sliders, a popular bar across the street from Camden Yards in downtown Baltimore.

Peter Angelos is the multi-millionaire lawyer who owns the Orioles, the team that plays at the 12-year-old ballpark.

Not much in common there, except this: Neither believes that major league baseball returning to Washington will be of particular help to their lives.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be good for our business,” Minnick said yesterday as news circulated of the Montreal Expos moving to D.C. “We have people who come in from Maryland and Virginia and say they love Baltimore and won’t change. But I’m sure we’re gonna lose a lot of people.”

Angelos, of course, has been saying all along that another team so close to his own will hurt his team and the city. The argument has fueled Angelos’ long and often bitter fight against such a thing ever happening. But the fight is over. The Expos’ debut as Washington’s team is April4.

Major League Baseball reportedly has promised to compensate Angelos for any lost ticket and broadcasting revenues. Although the full effect 40 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway remains unknown, many have some idea what it might be.

“I think Baltimore will suffer, no question about that,” said Aris Melissaratos, secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. “From an economic point of view, this is not a good thing.”

Former Orioles slugger Boog Powell, now the owner of Boog’s Barbecue on Eutaw Street beyond the right field stands at Camden Yards, said he has no problems with a team playing in D.C., as long as it doesn’t hurt business. Which it just might.

“We do get a lot of folks from D.C.,” Powell said. “We just had one fellow that walked up. He comes to every single game, and he comes from D.C. … I am going to lose him. How many people like him am I going to lose?”

Studies, surveys and polls estimate that 13 to 25 percent of fans at Camden Yards come from the greater Washington area. Angelos, naturally, has stuck with the higher number. But an even dicier and ultimately more significant number is the fans the Orioles would lose in favor of the soon to be renamed Expos.

Few doubt that Orioles’ attendance will be affected, although after the Washington Senators bolted D.C. for Texas following the 1971 season, Orioles attendance declined the next three years. So did their record, but it was still a competitive, entertaining team that finished third, first and first in the American League East.

Marc Ganis, president of a Chicago sports consulting firm, promptly dismissed this fact, saying, “It’s an entirely different generation.”

Of the anticipated Orioles attendance dip, Ganis said, “The only debate is knowing how much, not whether. You can make educated guesses, but there are so many variables, from the performance of the team to how well the team is marketed.”

Ganis was asked to take a well-educated guess.

“Fifteen percent, for argument’s sake,” he said.

Story Continues →