Can we please get rid of this?

[Tony-OH]

This makes me think that a urinal trough dedicated to Bob Irsay at M&T Bank Stadium would be extremely popular.

Add in a Paul Tagliabue one and create a contest of who gets used the most. lol

[Tony-OH]

Jerry Hoffberger, he was simply the best.

Was he? How many championships would the Orioles have won in the late 70s and early 80s had he just spent a little in Free agency? Imagine the Orioles having Bobby Grich and Don Baylor in 77-82? Imagine them not trading Doug DeCinces for Dan Ford? The Orioles won a lot in the late 70's and early 80's but only had one WS to show for it and only two Division championships (79-83). I haven't gone back and done the analysis and I don't know the whole story, but it always seemed that Hoffberger's reluctance to enter free agency cost the Orioles their core that could have seen them have another dynasty in the late 70s-early 80s.

[Dipper9]

Was he? How many championships would the Orioles have won in the late 70s and early 80s had he just spent a little in Free agency? Imagine the Orioles having Bobby Grich and Don Baylor in 77-82? Imagine them not trading Doug DeCinces for Dan Ford? The Orioles won a lot in the late 70's and early 80's but only had one WS to show for it and only two Division championships (79-83). I haven't gone back and done the analysis and I don't know the whole story, but it always seemed that Hoffberger's reluctance to enter free agency cost the Orioles their core that could have seen them have another dynasty in the late 70s-early 80s.

But wait, that can't be....everyone says Peter Angelos is the cheap one and he should be more like owners of the Orioles past.

See, I keep trying to tell you guys....Uncle Peter is the greatest owner.....EV-VER!

[Redskins Rick]

But wait, that can't be....everyone says Peter Angelos is the cheap one and he should be more like owners of the Orioles past.

See, I keep trying to tell you guys....Uncle Peter is the greatest owner.....EV-VER!

[Dipper9]

They have medicine you can take for that!

For those who know me, my post stands as posted. For those who don't, maybe I should have added one of these....

[OFFNY]

Was he? How many championships would the Orioles have won in the late 70s and early 80s had he just spent a little in Free agency? Imagine the Orioles having Bobby Grich and Don Baylor in 77-82? Imagine them not trading Doug DeCinces for Dan Ford? The Orioles won a lot in the late 70's and early 80's but only had one WS to show for it and only two Division championships (79-83). I haven't gone back and done the analysis and I don't know the whole story, but it always seemed that Hoffberger's reluctance to enter free agency cost the Orioles their core that could have seen them have another dynasty in the late 70s-early 80s.

The Orioles won 2 pennants and only World Series in the late 70's and early 80's, but I don't believe that it was necessarily due to their reluctance to go all in in free agency.

For one thing, there was no wildcard in those days, so teams like the 1980 Orioles who won 100 games and had the 2nd best record in all of baseball, the 1977 Orioles who went 97-64 with one rain-out, and the 1982 Orioles who went 98-64 all did not have the chance to play in the postseason. I don't believe that the Orioles were victims of their reluctance to spend in these cases, but rather the system which (at that time) often kept teams excellent records out of the postseason ...... something that you still occasionally see today, but not nearly at the rate that you did then.

Secondly, playoff series in baseball, while not as fickle as is the case in football (one and done), are still subject to upsets which are rather common. The 1979 and 1983 Orioles went 3-1 in 4 playoff series, hence their one Gold and one Silver. I don't believe that the 1979 team that lost to the Pirates in that year's World Series were necessarily victims of Hofberger not indulging in free agency so much as they were the victims of their own bats going cold in the final 3 games of the series (they scored 2 runs total in those final 3 games), which allowed the Pirates to come back and beat the Orioles after having been down 3 Games to 1.

Regarding Don Baylor, we traded him for Reggie Jackson in the 1975-76 off-season, one year before the free agent damn broke between the 1976 and 1977 seasons ...... one year after the Messersmith-McNally cases, when 28 players filed for, and were declared free agents. Baylor became a free agent the same season that Reggie Jackson did, and he signed a 6-year $1.6 Million contract with the Angels (huge money back then). The two main guys in the trade were Reggie Jackson and Don Baylor, and they both became free agents and subsequently left their respective teams (Orioles and Athletics) at the end of the 1976 season. In the end, we essentially replaced Don Baylor with Reggie Jackson for that one season. Baylor, like Jackson, had eyes on getting much more money than either Hank Peters or Charlie O. Finley would have been willing to dish out for 1977, so ultimately, Baylor for Jackson was essentially an even swap for players that had similar years in 1976.

However, even though the Orioles lost Jackson to free agency in the 1976-77 off-season, they improved pretty drastically in 1977, going 97-64 with one rain-out and taking the Yankees down to the final weekend of the season before being eliminated. Trading Ken Holtzman and company for Rudy May, Scott McGregor, Tippy Martinez, and Rick Dempsey wound up getting the Orioles more than they lost in the other part of the trade Baylor-Jackson trade (Ken Holtzman for Mike Torrez) from the previous off-season.

So yes, the Orioles were indeed reluctant to spend in the infancy stages of the free agent area. And I suppose that you could argue that they might have been better had they been more inclined to invest more in free agency at that time. But like today, there were numerous other areas of which contenders and champions were built, and the Orioles were still excellent (at that time) in bringing players up through their farm system, and acquiring key players in shrewd trades (such as the big one with the Yankees in June of 1976 that I previously alluded to.) And as previously stated, just getting into the playoffs in those days was considerably more difficult than it is today because of the absence of a wildcard and a 3rd division winner.

Looking back on it all, I am as disappointed as any other Oriole fan at the fact that the Orioles only won 2 pennants and one World Series in that era (the late 70's and the early 80's.) But if the postseason format were more flexible then, as it has been since the advent of the wildcard and a 3rd division winner in each league since 1994, we may have seen the Orioles win more pennants than they did, or at the very least, seen some great playoff series between the Orioles and the Yankees, the Orioles and the Red Sox, the Orioles and the Royals, etc.

[eddie83]

Since you want to pick nits.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-09-02/news/1992246162_1_stadium-authority-lease-orioles

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/structure/organizational-structure/understanding-writing-contracts-memoranda-agreement/main

So the agreement signed in 1988 was for 15 years not 25 and it looks not to have been sufficiently binding to keep Jacobs in Baltimore if he wanted to leave.

So I was off 10 years. The idea that a new owner is going to move the team after a stadium agreement was in place prior to his ownership is comical.