New owners for Orioles and Commanders means new hope for fans

Little did we youngsters suspect that enduring these incompetent owners who were also greedy louses was just prelude.

Is our nightmare of lousy owners stretching back to World War II ending at last?

Finally, with the flight of Daniel M. Snyder to the high seas and the death of Peter G. Angelos on Sunday — after his decades of trying to spite and blight baseball in D.C. — it’s possible that an awful multigenerational era has ended.

It’s tough to get roasted on your Wikipedia page, but Snyder managed it: He “is widely considered to be one of the worst owners in the history of professional sports, with the team managing only two playoff wins and six playoff appearances in his 24 years. Snyder’s ownership was also marred by the enablement of a toxic workplace culture, financial improprieties and allegations of sexual misconduct.” Wow, Dan nailed the Triple Crown.

They say, “Speak no ill of the dead,” which constrains me on Angelos, who passed away at 94. Many in baseball who had been harmed by him came to me to share the details. As a mild example, one ex-Orioles GM told me that, to grasp what it was like to work for Angelos, I should see the movie “The Devil’s Advocate.” A young lawyer works for a practice where the head of the firm, played by Al Pacino, intimidates, tempts or corrupts everyone. That boss is the Devil. “I got shivers watching it,” the GM said.

Washington fans aren’t out of the woods yet. For years I considered Ted Leonsis a harmless “C” of an owner. Unfortunately, Leonsis has devolved into a sports-arena-as-casino, District-dumping “D,” who’s working on his “F” résumé. Money-loving double-talking blowhards are so common in sports ownership that D.C.-area fans should probably expect one Leonsis on the scene. At least he’s just distasteful, not despicable.

I choose to see the bright side. The Commanders now have a new owner in Josh Harris who may already have made his most important decision — picking his general manager, Adam Peters. The roster demolition and rapid reconstruction that Peters has already pulled off this offseason seems so sensible, coherent and promising that, for the first time in over 20 years, I don’t feel like a fool to look forward to the team’s draft in April and its season in September.

My adult son, whom I may have lured into being a Washington NFL fan, much as my father did to me, can hardly believe the list of credible additions, none of whom busted the budget. They include future Hall of Fame linebacker Bobby Wagner, who led the NFL in tackles (183) last year; pass-rushing linebacker Frankie Luvu, versatile running back Austin Ekeler and two desperately needed offensive linemen who should be instant starters, center Tyler Biadasz and guard Nick Allegretti, who were valuable in Dallas and Kansas City.

Oh, and Peters also signed — all of them with decent to quite good credentials — two defensive ends, three defensive backs, a tight end, a solid backup quarterback, a kicker and a long snapper. What can’t he do? Apparently, Peters couldn’t find a buyer for Snyder’s hideous $49 million mansion, set on deforested shores, which Dan took off the market and has given to charity for the tax break.

“Long, long ago, Washington had good football general managers,” I told my son, “But you’re barely old enough to remember. You’re only 37.”

There is also less cheerful news for local sports fans, but at least it’s not disastrous. The Lerner family — “C’s,” to be sure — still runs the Nationals. You could do better. But Washington almost did a lot worse last year when Leonsis bid more than $2 billion to buy the team. Sometimes you don’t know the bullet missed your head until it hits the wall behind you.

Now, Leonsis’s key partner in that Nats-acquisition plan, David Rubenstein, is instead buying the Baltimore Orioles from the odoriferous Angeloses.

See how all this is falling into place? It’s not fabulous, but it’s good. The Commanders and O’s may now have average, or even beneficial owners. And Leonsis, who’s now mistrusted-to-disdained in both Alexandria and D.C. for his double team-moving grift, will probably never get his DraftKings mitts on the Nats.

Who owns the Orioles is not only important to Baltimore fans, but to Nats fans, too, who have watched the Angelos family try to strangle the Washington franchise financially by slow-walking and bad-faith nuisance-litigating every inch of the MASN agreement between the teams.

The spirit of the original TV rights agreement is odious enough, from a Nats perspective, but the Orioles have not even been willing to pay up on what everyone in baseball knows they owe. The O’s have used every legal ploy to stall the Nats for five years — or is it 10 years now? — and avoid paying tens of millions to the Washington team.

If MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred can help sort out the MASN mess, that, along with cutting 24 minutes off the average time of a game last season, may raise his grade. Manfred needs all the extra-credit points he can get since he doesn’t seem to care if, someday soon, 8-year-olds can place prop bets from their seats on whether the next pitch is a ball or a strike.

Spring is the time for optimism, especially when the Commanders have the second pick in the draft to grab their next quarterback and Nats prospects Dylan Crews and James Wood look like they may hit as much in their early-career seasons as Anthony Rendon and Ryan Zimmerman.

There are also false springs. It takes time to change horrible, no good, very bad situations into pleasant ones. Both the Commanders, learning to breathe without Snyder’s fingers around their throats, and the Nats, in last place four straight years, are in the midst of total rebuilds.

We’ve waited decades for dark clouds to lift. Let’s not reach for those sunglasses too fast. But, pretty soon, it’s probably going to brighten up enough that we’ll need those shades.