BALTIMORE — The phrase was everywhere. On placards placed on the seats, the Baltimore Orioles’ scoreboard and all over the team’s website: The Next Chapter.
For Baltimore, that’s exactly what Thursday’s Opening Day represented, as a new ownership group — led by Baltimore native David Rubenstein — was officially unveiled to the media, making a day always charged with emotion one the city will perhaps never forget.
The reigning American League East champions, with reigning Manager of the Year Brandon Hyde and reigning Executive of the Year Mike Elias, had new ace Corbin Burnes on the mound, the kind of frontline starter the Orioles have long craved. The days of a downtrodden franchise, one that lost 100-plus games thrice in four seasons from 2018 to 2021, feel like yesteryear. The Angelos family said goodbye officially Wednesday to three decades of ownership, first by a unanimous vote by the other 29 MLB owners and later, in a private, emotional changing of the guard.
This is the Orioles’ “Next Chapter,” and it’s scary how good it looks.
There is the on-field team and its successes, coming off a 100-win season for the first time since 1980. The Orioles are brimming with young talent, from reigning Rookie of the Year Gunnar Henderson to franchise cornerstone Adley Rutschman.
Baltimore has the top farm system in baseball and a one-two punch with Hyde and Elias that led Rubenstein to quip to The Athletic earlier this week, “What am I going to tell those guys that they don’t already know?”
What Rubenstein can do, though, is invest in this team.
He can give Elias the resources to sign free agents, to lift the Orioles out of the bottom of baseball’s payroll rankings and into a more respectable middle ground.
He can find a resolution to the decades-long MASN dispute and secure a ground lease to develop the area around Camden Yards into a year-round destination.
He can bring back the mystique of being an Orioles fan, in a blue-collar city where the sounds of summer are the cracking of crabs and the sound of the ball hitting the mitt.
Rubenstein knows this. He is from here, born and raised and a proud product of Baltimore public schools. One of Rubenstein’s first moves, adding franchise icon Cal Ripken Jr. as part of the new ownership group, is the kind of slam dunk the previous regime resisted.
“Baltimore is a unique city,” Rubenstein said. “I know the pluses, I know the minuses, I know the challenges, I know the opportunities. And we have now a political team in the city and the state that I think can really help make this city live up to all of its potential. I hope the Orioles can play a small part in that. I hope what can happen is that the Orioles can, by winning, by unifying the city, by recovering the kind of greatness that it had in 1966 or ’70 or (’83), we can win a World Series again.”
Rubenstein was officially introduced by Gov. Wes Moore, and the pair have a clear rapport built from a friendship of more than 20 years. They went to lunch Saturday to discuss how to get the ground lease executed quickly, and Rubenstein, who cracked jokes and kept calling up others to share the stage, made it clear: He owns the Orioles, but they belong to the city.
“This is more than a baseball team,” Moore said. “The Orioles are the soul of Baltimore. … This team reminds us of what we are made of.”
Moore spoke in what has been a tragic week for the city and the state of Maryland in the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Both the news conference and the Orioles’ opening ceremonies featured a moment of silence for the victims and first responders. The bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning after a container ship lost power and crashed into it, sending people and vehicles falling into the frigid Patapsco River.
The Orioles, who played in front of no fans in 2015 due to civil unrest after the death of Freddie Gray, have lifted a city before. But this 2024 team, which has legitimate World Series aspirations, has a chance to leave an indelible mark on the city as the beginning of what many in baseball view as a brewing dynasty.
“I know the healing power of baseball,” said Ares Management co-founder/CEO Michael Arougheti, who is part of the ownership group and called Rubenstein a special leader. Arougheti, whose parents were public school teachers, said the new ownership group has “a deep sense of civic responsibility to advance the franchise, to advance the neighborhood,” but more than anything, he and Rubenstein are aligned on one thing: winning.
“We are together in our steadfast hunger to bring a World Series championship back to Baltimore as soon as possible,” Arougheti said.
The Orioles ushered in their “Next Chapter” with an 11-3 win over the Los Angeles Angels, as Burnes dealt and the young studs hit and a sellout crowd consistently got to its feet.
“This is our year!” yelled a fan clad head to toe in orange on a cold, windy afternoon, the picture of Opening Day hope.
Maybe this “Next Chapter” is more than just the excitement of a new season and a fresh slate. Maybe this year, one full of expectations on the field and blinding optimism off of it, belongs to the city of Baltimore.
“I don’t want this to be the high-water mark,” Rubenstein said. “I want the high-water mark to be in the fall when we go to the World Series and we show what we are. A city that supports a great team … a city that is represented by a great team. And we unify the city in a way that only the Orioles can really do.”
(Photo of Corbin Burnes: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)
