Baltimore Orioles: An Objective View of Team Ownership

Sep 1, 2015; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Orioles place 2131 on the warehouse for the 20th anniversary of Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig /

The fanbase of the Baltimore Orioles is often very critical of team ownership. How common is this around Major League Baseball?

This is a question I have often pondered as I frequently read the criticisms of Peter Angelos and the overall team ownership. Is this unique to Baltimore? Are Orioles fans simply among the most critical of baseball followers across the country? Or do the O’s fans have a legitimate complaint relative to other situations? Do fans anywhere really like their favorite team’s owners?

I have lived in several different communities and regions of the country. There are two things that are common to each place: the local hospital is viewed as a bunch of butchers, whereas the folks in the slightly bigger hospital down the road are miracle workers. The other belief in every place I have dwelt is that the local superintendent of the public school system is a total idiot; the community is never happy with him or her.

Perhaps a third truism that could be added is that the local newspaper is a total rag. Sometimes that is the truth.

So is it simply the nature of man to be discontented with people and institutions that are either of great importance to the community or are of passionate interest and investment, like a sports team?

That last thought is what lies at the foundational heart of this FanSided Sports Network — the passionate investment of fans in their teams. Our writing is from that angle most particularly. So raising the question as to the nature of the Orioles fanbase and their criticisms of local ownership is right up Main Street in our world.

Leave it to the statistically-driven folks at FanGraphs to seek to bring some objective numbers to this very question! Writer Jeff Sullivan took a survey of his readers and received about 15,000 responses to a series of five poll questions about their view of their team’s ownership.

Explaining his process briefly, Sullivan wrote:

"The polls were simple. After each prompt, you could select from two positive opinions, two negative opinions, and one middle-of-the-road opinion. People don’t usually compare ownership groups, since situations are so different, but now we can at least try to do that, with numerical data. Of course, what you see won’t be infallible evaluations. This is opinion-polling, but I think it’s just interesting to see what people think, even if it turns out plenty of people are wrong."

Before discussing results, it is interesting to note that the Blue Jays had far, far more respondents than any other team. There is some passionate discontent there that is spoken about in the article. But that is interesting, not only because of them being a divisional rival, but to think also of the Dan Duquette foolishness that went on with them a year ago. I have always disliked Toronto more than any other franchise, even the more common “enemies” to the north, but I never understood why. I’ve come to understand that more in the last year.