Moore on O's new lease: 'This deal is about Baltimore'

This story was excerpted from Jake Rill’s Orioles Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BALTIMORE -- Sitting in a meeting area in the warehouse at Camden Yards on Monday afternoon -- while wearing a suit featuring an orange tie and an orange pocket square -- Maryland Governor Wes Moore took a moment to share a brief message near the end of the special meeting held by the state’s Board of Public Works.

Moore wasn’t speaking only as the Governor. The 45-year-old was also speaking as an Orioles fan, one who couldn’t wait to put pen to paper and finalize an agreement that would keep the O’s home at Camden Yards in Downtown Baltimore.

“Some of our greatest memories have been watching our Birds play,” said Moore, who was born in Takoma Park, Md. “Some of our greatest moments were sitting there, and I know, for me, sitting there with my kids and watching them scream, ‘Let’s go, O’s.’ That at a time in a stadium where you had people from all over the state -- and all over the country, frankly -- who all had one common goal, and that was to watch the Birds win.”

Plenty more families and baseball fans are guaranteed to get that shared Oriole Park experience for the rest of this decade, and longer. The Orioles’ new Camden Yards lease agreement is for 30 years -- although it could end after 15 if the team doesn’t get approval from the state to develop areas surrounding the ballpark, negotiations that will need to be resolved by the end of 2027.

The Orioles have been in Baltimore since 1954, and they’ve played at Camden Yards since the ballpark opened in ‘92. They aren’t (and were never close to) leaving -- the new lease agreement features a no-relocation clause -- and that’s always a reassuring feeling for fans throughout the state, some of whom remember when the Colts departed town in the middle of the night in March 1984, leaving the city without an NFL franchise for more than a decade.

Moore, a frequent visitor to Camden Yards during his first year as Governor, knows how special it can be to attend an Orioles home game when the team is competitive and the crowd is raucous. Many other fans know it, too. So many special moments have occurred over the years.

The First Game. The 2131 Game. The Curse of the Andino Game. The Delmon Young Game.

More should be coming soon. Fresh off a 101-win 2023 season, the reigning American League East-champion Orioles are only at the beginning of a window of contention with an exciting young core built around Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and others.

Camden Yards may already be one of the best ballparks in MLB, and it should be getting better, too. Because of legislation passed by the General Assembly in 2022, the Orioles’ new lease agreement unlocks $600 million for them to fund upgrades to the ballpark.

It took a bit longer than originally anticipated for the new Camden Yards lease agreement to be finalized -- and nearly two months after the announcement of a nonbinding memorandum of understanding. But most important to Moore and the Orioles was that a deal was signed 13 days before the lease had been set to expire.

Moore was visibly excited when he and the other two members of the Maryland Board of Public Works -- Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman -- unanimously voted to approve the new lease agreement, the final step in a long process.

“This deal is about more than just baseball,” Moore said during his Monday press conference. “This deal is about Baltimore.”

And this deal was about keeping baseball in Baltimore for the fans, who -- like Moore -- will surely have many good times ahead at Camden Yards.