There is an old, hard-to-dispel canard that hangs around the Baltimore Orioles like a ghost in the attic: the Angeloses are penny-pinching meddlers who just can’t stay out of the team’s way long enough to let them win.
There are good reasons why the cheapness myth persists. Baltimore is, famously, a “small market” team. Our neighbor forty miles to the south outspent us by about $90 million last season en route to winning the World Series. Some of the big signings or contract extensions this team didn’t make still sting the fanbase: Adam Jones, Nelson Cruz, Nick Markakis, Andrew Miller, and of course, Mike Mussina.