Loverro: The Orioles could be sold this winter

[spiritof66]

12 hours ago, ScGO's said:

Are franchises looked at as separate entities/companies, or are all the 30 teams part of one company?  Should owners be called owners then?  Do they really own their team?  If I owned a house and I died and left it to my sons, could all my neighbors come in and say they can't own this house.  Or If I left them a car, would all the other car owners in my area vote to stop them from getting the car?  Can't Peter give the team to whoever he likes?

If not, then the plot from Little Big League is blown out of the water and has no credibility.  Childhood voided. 

Each team is a separate business, owned by a corporation or a partnership that is a distinct entity. But in some ways a professional sports team is not like a "normal" business, which competes (normally) to get more business and make more money, with the aim of weakening its competitors or, at least, without regard for the health of its competitors. Professional sports teams compete against one another for (some) talent, and to win games and championships, but they also depend on the financial health, stability and sound management of the very teams they compete with. It's an unusual situation.

One of the ways in which MLB deals with this situation is to have the "normal" ownership rights of each team and its owners subject to the MLB Constitution. Everyone who buys a team knows that his or her ownership is subject to that Constitution. That Constitution limits the rights of each owner in a number of ways, in order to protect the other owners. One of those limits, to which all the owners have agreed, is that a controlling interest in a team can't be sold or given away or passed on the owner's heirs without the consent of the other owners. There's another set of limitations, which might come into play if there were a real fight about approval of a transfer of the Orioles, that enables a Commissioner to revoke under certain circumstances. Those rules do make the ownership of an MLB team different from owning an ordinary business.

The closest analogy I can think of is a cooperative apartment. The owner of a coop apartment (actually, shares in a corporation that entitle him to live in the apartment) buys an apartment knowing that he won't be free to sell or give away or pass the apartment on to his heirs without the approval of the coop corporation's Board of Directors. The courts have recognized that such approval can be withheld for any reason or no reason at all -- so long as it's not driven by racial or other discriminatory animus. That's just the deal.

When Peter Angelos bought control of the Orioles, he knew -- like every other owner -- that his ownership was subject to the limitations in the MLB Constitution. He benefited from that protection for 25 years: each time there was a proposed sale of a team, Angelos got to vote on whether to approve it. He, like every other owner, was entitled to vote not to approve a proposed sale if he thought the proposed new owner had insufficient funding to keep that franchise strong, or was disreputable, or might associate with criminals, or wouldn't get along with the other owners, or would support divisional realignment or rules changes he disfavored, or anything else. When Angelos tries the sell or pass on the team, it will be his turn to be subject to those same rules. 

That's the way it works, and every owner knows it from the time he first considers buying control of a team.