IS ANGELOS BLACKMAILING THE MARYLAND STADIUM AUTHORITY?

If your an Orioles fan it's been a little bit of an emotional roller coaster for the past year or two. From the team just not being any good to just missing the playoffs last year Then the excellent season that we're currently in trenched in now. There's been great peaks and low valleys but what really starts making the spectrum of emotions start to get erratic and low are when the owner plays games with the beloved hometown team. Around last June there were rumblings of the O's moving to Tennessee. As absurd as that sounds where there's smoke there's fire. That was also around the time they were pissing and moaning about attendance for they're 100 loss, lowest budget in the league team. At one point Justin Verlander was making equal or greater than the O's payroll. Now I'm not mad at that because that was part of the equation to forming this fantastic ball team we have now. I dig what they're doing with going young and cheap formula but there gets to be a time where it's time to start spending money.

Also don't expect great production from a crappy product. But all in all the team could never move do to the historic value it brings to the league. The MLB simply would not allow it. It just can't happen but at the end of the day there is a lease that needs to be agreed upon.

Which brings us to now where the lease is up January 1 and Angelo's wants $300 mil more added to the original $600mil in public funds available for renovations around the ball park. Not only that he wants one of the Ravens parking lots along with complete control over the renovations. Now I'm local fan that has a blog so when it comes down to all the finances of what goes into these lease I'm not a wiz. But if the Ravens signed they're lease in January which is probably identical what the O's lease is. Why should The O's get all those extra funds and "power"? Quite frankly I don't think they earned it. Haven't had a World Series contender since 2014? Which is crazy to say that was almost 10 years ago lol. Now don't get me wrong they did good on this team but that fact he's coming out now saying this in The NY Times "The hardest thing to do in sports is be a small-market team in baseball and be competitive, because everything is stacked against you - everything, he said. And he conceded that it might not be feasible for his popular young core to be career Orioles like Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken Jr.

Without major changes, he sees only one way the team could retain all of its young stars.

"We're going to have to raise the prices here

-dramatically," he said.

iWe were top 15 in payroll 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, and 2013. That's not a small market team. Mid market team sure we're not going to put spend the Boston and New York but I mean come on you can't tell me we can't keep a lot of these special homegrown talents we have in our Organization. Now I'm talking about the Rutchmans, Hendersons, and Rodriguez's of the world. Not Makenna and Stowers. The farm system that they might have a couple more of those names in that bag. But point being is there's no reason to come out and say we can't afford these contract extensions when you are close to last in payroll with a mid market team. Along with the fact we the O's have no bad contract situations. Like none! Your going to raise ticket prices and hold it over the fan's head? I don't know man it just seems like some sort of power move to get after the Maryland stadium authorities lease agreement bid. I hope that's not the case because the Orioles have a great fan base that is loyal if your loyal to them. Between all this drama with the lease and the Kevin Brown situation it's taking away from the fantastic team that this organization put forth on the field this year. The lease needs to get resolved sooner than later because the Tennessee Orioles just doesn't sound right.