Ring: The Orioles and Nationals are suing each other, again
From Sheryl Ring at FanGraphs on April 16, 2019:
The best rivalry in baseball right now might not be the Yankees versus the Red Sox, or the Dodgers against the Giants. Instead, it might be the one between the Orioles and the Nationals, a feud that has landed in multiple courtrooms and has been literally litigated almost non-stop for over seven years.
The dispute arises from the teams’ joint ownership of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), though it also seems to have been fueled by what appears to be genuine antipathy from Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos for his team’s southern rival. Back in 2004, when the Montreal Expos were about to move to the District of Columbia, Angelos “went on Baltimore radio station WBAL-AM and pronounced that ‘there are no real baseball fans in D.C.’” Angelos was later the sole dissenting vote against the Nationals’ move, and given territorial rights disputes, having the Orioles on board became a matter of some necessity. So the two teams “worked out a deal whereby the Orioles would hold a majority partnership profit interest in MASN and get to telecast Nationals games at a substantial discount from 2005 to 2011. After that, MASN would be obligated to pay the Nationals ‘fair market value.’”
Read the full article here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-orioles-and-nationals-are-suing-each-other-again/
Originally published: April 17, 2019. Last Updated: April 17, 2019.