Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Billionaire David Rubenstein: Owning a Sports Team Is Harder Than Anything I've Done Before

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

I am honored to be joined by my friend and repeat guest on Open Book, David Rubenstein. He has built one of the most successful careers in private equity, but he’ll be the first to tell you that owning a baseball team may be even harder. We talk about what he’s learned inside the owner’s box, why the best leaders know when to get out of the way, and his mission to bring a World Series championship back to his hometown of Baltimore. David M. Rubenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Invest, How to Lead, The American Experiment, The American Story, The Highest Calling, and Inside the Owner’s Box. He is Co-founder and Co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms. An original signer of The Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Mr. Rubenstein chairs the Boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Gallery of Art, the Economic Club of Washington, and the University of Chicago. Rubenstein is the Chairman, CEO, and principal owner of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles. He hosts The David Rubenstein Show on Bloomberg TV and PBS, and Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein on Bloomberg TV. David is brilliant, and this book provides amazing insights into the life of a sports owner: Inside the Owner's Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports. Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

When you let people that have expertise do something, you're probably better off. In my case, I wouldn't have the ability to tell our players that they should be traded at this point, or tell our back office, we should trade for this player or we should draft this player. I don't have that expertise. Fortunately, we have people that do. All teams in Major League Baseball and football and basketball have large teams that do that. If you actually have people that are good, you should probably let them make the decision. Now, some people have been very successful doing things themselves.

George Steinbrenner, when he owned the Yankees, he made decisions without telling it, general manager sometimes. He would sign of a player at a certain price, and he would tell them general manager, this is what we're going to do. Those kind of personalities don't generally exist as much as they used to. And the kind of people that now run baseball teams or own teams are generally people that have made money elsewhere by delegating things to people actually know what they're doing. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is New York Times bestselling author. He's also the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubenstein. He's the author of a new book, Inside the Owners Box, Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports.

David, great to have you with friends a long time. You've interviewed presidents, investors, historians, business leaders throughout your career. What made you decide to switch your attention to sports other than the fact that you're an MLB baseball owner? Well, I grew up in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Orioles were always an important part of my fabric growing up. And then I moved away to college and law school and then a professional career. But I felt Baltimore could use some revitalization. And I thought if I could buy a team revitalize, it would help Baltimore. Baltimore's had some real challenges over the last 50 years or so.

But I haven't yet been able to revitalize a team. It was in first place in the American League East when I bought it. Now it's your last place. So I've got a work to do. But I did it as a philanthropic kind of gesture. I thought I would be able to help Baltimore because Baltimore was a city. My parents grew up in. My parents are married in.

They raised me in. Our parents are buried there. I'm going to be buried there. And I just thought I owed more to Baltimore than I had already given. Well, this is an amazing story. And obviously your philanthropy is wide ranging from a lot of different things that you do. But this seems like a labor of love, though. Is this something like you were manifesting as a child?

I mean, we all have these childhood fantasies. Someday we can own the team that we love. Well, as a child, my fantasy was to play a baseball. When I was seven or eight, I thought I would be a great shortstop for the bottom of Orioles. And then when I got to be nine or ten, I realized my athletic career had peaked. I did well in Little League, but it was a Jewish Little League. And probably, you know, there weren't going to be that many Sandy Kofaxes in that Little League. So probably, you know, everybody has, all of life is about realizing when you can't do certain things.

You know, you realize you've met the limit of your abilities. and I kind of realized I met the limited of my baseball abilities at about eight or nine. But what about the dream, though? What about the ownership dream? Well, the ownership dream, well, when I was growing up, both you and I had blue-collar backgrounds. And growing up in a blue-collar setting, you don't really think you're going to own a baseball team. Because in days when I was growing up, baseball teams were owned by what I thought to be really, really wealthy people. They were called millionaires.

Of course, a millionaire isn't what it used to be. But the millionaires that brought the Baltimore Orioles to Baltimore in 1954 paid $2.2 million. That's all the cost to buy the team. And I didn't really think I'd ever be an owner. And over the years, as I built my private equity firm, I had lots of opportunities to buy sports teams. But I always was afraid that my investors would say, wait a second, you're supposed to be managing my money. What are you doing buying a sports team and focusing on that? So not until I gave up being the CEO of Carlauer, the co-CEO,

that I really think I could at least justify buying a team if one came along. And because Baltimore is my hometown and an opportunity came along, I did it. But, you know, I obviously have a long way to go before I've achieved the success I want, which is a World Series championship. Baltimore hasn't been in the World Series, the World Series champion since 1983 in a long time. I mean, listen, I love it. You're going to buy a sports team, Anthony? No, am I going to buy a sports team because I don't have a B in front.

of my name or my last name. Not yet, David. We'll have to say... Are you will? No. I owned a piece of the Mets there for a period of time. And I'll tell you why, there was one capital call after the next during that. You know, when Steve Cohen took us out of the thing, it was during COVID. I think there was a little bit of a relief in the limited partnership. Of course, you know, one of the more famous lines that I heard in sports ownership was from a limited partner of the Yankees. He said, there's nothing more limited than being a limited partner. This was from Mr. Milstein. I remember him, but he said

there was nothing more limited than being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner. But you put, speaking of limited partners, you put quite a list together here. I've got some of the names, Grant Hill, Cal Ripkin Jr., Mike Bloomberg. I think my friend Rick Reeder is one of your LPs. Correct, correct. Tell us a little bit about that infiguration. Well, when I was buying the team, I really didn't tell people I was doing it until I kind of knew I had the deal. And then I basically decided I wanted to have partners who actually were able to help me or bought them or connected or had other virtues. So, for example, I wanted to have a real partner and I pick Mike Arrogetti.

Mike is a person who knows baseball. He's a gigantic baseball fan, played baseball in high school, followed it closely. He had once called me and said, if you ever buy him. baseball team he had heard that I was thinking about it include him if I could and I did and he's a terrific person he's built the firm called Aries and then I wanted to have some people from Baltimore so there were some existing investors from Baltimore I asked them to stay I asked Bill Miller who had been one of very famous investment people based in Baltimore from Lake Mason he asked him to invest

Grant Hill's father grew up in Baltimore and Grant and I are friends from Duke University and grants, you know, on behalf of his father really wanted to invest. Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore, a friend of mine for 60 years. I asked him to invest an African-American leader in Baltimore as mayor for 12 years. And then Mike Bloomberg, is somebody who's given more to Baltimore financially than anybody in the history, he's given about $7 to $8 billion to Johns Hopkins University. Obviously has a real affection for Baltimore. So, and Cal Ripkin is somebody who was the most famous Oriole, probably Aver,

ever, and he is a person I got to know, and I thought I wanted to involve him. He had been kind of not involved in the team in recent years, but I thought if I could involve him, it would be good. So that's how I put it together. You know, when you buy one of these teams, there's a lot of fanfare and there's excitement, and then you transition into the operational struggle of owning a team. And I think all of us have found that it's a little harder than it looks, right, from the outside, right? Tell us a little bit about. the chasm between the dream and the operational reality. Well, you're never so happy as the day you close the deal, but then everything goes downhill

in some extent because you realize you've got to, you're in charge now. And, you know, you've got to deal with the payroll of the players, all the labor issues that are associated with baseball. You've got to deal with a business operation. You know, baseball is not just operating a good team on the field. You've got to sell the tickets. You've got to sell sweets. You've got to sell suites. You've got to sell season tickets. You've got to have promotions to get people into the stadium beyond just the ability to see a good baseball team. There are many different aspects. And so we hired a lot of people who had experience this. We took the person who was in charge of baseball operations and let him stay. And he's very good. Mike Elias, I'd say executive of the

year a couple years ago. And we recruited from Seattle, the woman that was running the business side of the Seattle Mariners, Katie Griggs, and she came in. And so, So we hired a lot of new people. We increased the payroll by at least double from what a baseball payroll from what it had been. So we did a lot of things, but hasn't yet proven out on the field to work out. Now, you're a New Yorker and you're a Mets person. You know that we were able to sign a person named Pete Alonzo. Pete Alonzo has done it terrificly well for us. He's hit 30 home runs so far and he plays every single game. But, you know, we still haven't made a winning team, so I'm still working on that.

Yeah, listen, he was a fan favorite in New York. I'm obviously a longtime diehard Met fan. It was sad for us to see him go, and I'm glad you picked him up, and I'm glad he's doing so well. And he's got a great personality, by the way. I got a chance to know him while he was in New York. We'll talk about some of these conversations, David.

Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, Jeff Lurie, Tom Ricketts, Ted Leonis, Joe Sy, etc. Tony, Tony Ressler. Every one of them, like you, have been, been to the Salt Conference. And every one of them, I think, has a different personality for sports. I have found from my distance that owners do a much better job in terms of their success. If they let the football, baseball, or basketball people run things. I feel like the owners that are meddling are the ones that, you know, if they think they're better or smarter than the

GM, they probably fumble things. Am I right in thinking that? Or what did you learn from these people that you talk to. Well, I interviewed many of these famous owners, and I learned that they care more about winning than making money. Winning is everything, and they care about the local city, the community that they represent. They realize that they're only there temporarily. They're not going to be there forever, and their family may not own it forever, but they want to do the best job they can for the community and for the local city that they represent. Many owners are very close to the players. Some owners don't get that close because they recognize that they have to negotiate with them from time and time or trade them. But everybody who's an owner is happy they are

an owner. Owners generally are happy even if they don't win championships. They all feel that they have a responsibility to their community and that it's beyond just making money. Of course, you want to make money. But that's one of the standards of success in business. But I think most of the owners, if not all, would rather win a championship than make money. Okay, but let me rephrase the question then. Somebody like Jerry Jones as an example, he fired his best friend. He won two Super Bowls, fired his best friend Jimmy Johnson, and then he became the general manager of the Dallas Cowboy.

Yeah, I got your point. Well, he was a football player at our University of Arkansas. He knows football better than I know baseball, so I'm not going to second guess his ability to do that. But as a general rule of thumb, it appears that, that when you let people that have expertise do something, you're probably better off as a general rule of thumb. So in my case, I wouldn't have the ability to tell our players that they should be traded at this point or tell our back office. We should trade for this player or we should draft this player.

I don't have that expertise. Fortunately, we have people that do. And all teams in Major League Baseball and football and basketball have large teams that do that. I concede your point, though, that if you actually have people that are good, you should probably let them make the decision. Now, some people have been very successful doing things themselves. George Steinbrenner, when he owned the Yankees and the Steinbrenner still owns the family of the team. But when George Steinbrenner was there, he made decisions without telling a general manager sometimes. He would sign of a player at a certain price and he would tell them general manager, this is what we're going to do.

Those kind of personalities don't generally exist as much as they used to. and the kind of people that now run baseball teams or own teams are generally people that have made money elsewhere by delegating things to people actually know what they're doing. I think one of the things I got out of your book was that there's some luck involved with this stuff, right? Like which owner in the book made the best trade of their life, and yet they didn't even know it at the time? Yes. Trades are a crapshoot. You know, you don't know what's really going to happen. The best trade, the board, Boughtum Orioles ever made was heavily criticized at the time. They traded milk Pappas, a good pitcher for the Orioles for a guy named Frank Robinson, who was said to be too old at 30 years old, and he was traded.

He then won the Triple Crown the next year in the Baltimore Orioles won the World Series. So when you do trades, we did a trade recently at the Orioles where we traded our catcher, Ruchman, for four prospective players or prospects. And, you know, we were, you know, some people weren't that happy. with it because we traded a major leaguer who'd been an all-star three times or four potential good major leaguers. But, you know, who knows what's going to happen? You never really know how these trades are going to work out. Yeah, that's one of the things about the game. You know, there's a little bit of capriciousness there. We traded a guy named Nolan Ryan in 1973 for Jim

Fragosi. It didn't work out for us, but it did work out for the California Angels. I want to talk about quarterly letters and nightly returns. I feel like you went from quarterly letters where people were grading you quarterly to now they're grading you nightly. How has that affected you, if at all? Well, it's different. In the sport and the world of private equity, when you're publicly traded, we do have quarterly letters and we have to every quarter try to show that we're doing better than

the previous quarter. in baseball, the financial bottom line every quarter is not as important as how the price might be affected at the end of your ownership. So you don't operate baseball teams to get increased quarterly earnings since a different phenomenon. In terms of every day, yes, every day people pay attention how you're doing. And every day somebody's calling you a bum. And every day somebody's not happy with you. If you don't have a thick enough skin to deal with that, you shouldn't buy a baseball team. When I first bought the Orioles, people were very happy because the previous owners had had it for 30 some years and people were getting tired of them, rightly or wrongly.

I think they did a good job, but rightly or wrongly, people wanted a change. When I came in, people wanted my autographs, people wanted my selfies. And I kind of said to these little eight-year-old boys in one of my autograph, look, I'm not a player. I really not that important, but rather than try to persuade them that it wasn't worth their time, I would sign the autographs or do the selfies. And now when I walk around the stadium, I don't notice that people are asking for my selfie as much or my autograph because the team hasn't done so well. So maybe people are being polite. They're not booing me. But right now, they're suspended judgment about how we're going to do this year.

We're very hopeful of getting their playoffs, but we're not there yet. Guys, thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Open Book. You know we've got 200 authors on this show. It's been a lot of fun for me. but I'm also an author now too. And I've got all the wrong moves available. Go to scaramucci.net, backslash all the wrong moves. You can buy your copy today.

It's a lot of fun and lots of commentary about what's gone on in the U.S. over the last three decades. You're being hard on yourself, David. You're one of the fan favorites. I saw you out in the bleachers there doing the selfies and the autographs. I admire that in you, your ability to self-deprecate, but you're a fan favorite. I want to ask you about these owners. You interviewed many of them.

Anyone ring your bell with an answer to a question where you said, okay, that's informing my thinking in terms of the way I'm going to organize and run the Orioles. Well, I talked to a lot of them after I actually bought the team, though I knew some of them before. And one of them I knew before was Ted Leonesis. Ted owns the Washington Caps and the Washington Wizards. and he and I, as I said in the book, we're thinking about together buying the Orioles at one point. That didn't work out. But Ted is somebody that's for 30 years has owned those two teams,

and he's really made it his full-time occupation practically, and he's there almost every night there's a home game. He spends a lot of time trying to cultivate the fans, and he really enjoys it. You have to enjoy the sport, and you have to enjoy ownership of it. Otherwise, you're not going to be very good at it. And, you know, some owners of teams,

you know, probably got there because their family got them involved. They're not that interested in the sport. Other owners, really, this is what they do full-time. I mean, in Major League Baseball, there are 30 owners. And I'd say, you know, more than probably a third of them, this is their full-time occupation now. They do this full-time. And those owners are ones that, you know, go to every game

and are very, very familiar with everything is going on. I have some still other jobs I'm doing, so I don't go to every game, and I'm not full-time in owning the Orioles. But I do try to go to as many games as I can and try to talk to the fans, see the fans, open up the owner's box, and talk to the players when I can. David, I want to talk for a second about the future of ownership. You know, we've seen some sovereign wealth funds own some of the European soccer teams. We've seen some of our billionaires go into the Premier League in the United Kingdom.

There's been an opening. It feels like there's been a little bit of an opening into the world where private equity can own. some of these teams, obviously corporates like John Malone have owned the Atlanta Braves, etc. MSG owns the Knicks and the, what is the future of sports ownership? Is it going to be less family-centric like it was when you and I were growing up and more corporate? How do you envision that in the ensuing years? Well, in the early days of baseball, the wealthiest people in the United States were not owners. they were people who were very modest business people who basically their net worth was mostly

tied up in the baseball team. And then later on, people who made a little bit of money would buy baseball teams, but they were not the wealthiest people in the country. When George Steinbrenner bought the New York Yankees in 1972 for, I think, a net price of about $8.8 million, he only put in $250,000 of his own money. The rest he had to syndicate. And you should say to yourself today, why didn't the wealthiest people in the United States show up to buy the New York Yankees for sale because in those days sports ownership was not

considered the profit-making kind of enterprise it has since become and therefore George Steinbrenner had very little competition relatively speaking. Today the price for these teams has skyrocketed so much so. We just saw recently that the LA Lakers sold for $12.5 billion, the Seattle Superhawks for $9.6 billion. The Boston Celtics for $6.1 billion. Well, very few people can afford those prices, and therefore you have to bring in more people in, and you also have to get different sources of capital. In the NFL, they now allow private equity firms to buy up to 10% on a passive basis. Increasing, I think you'll have more funds that are private equity-oriented funds raised

for the purpose of investing in sports. I know there are a number of them that exist already. And increasing, I think you'll have sovereign wealth funds be allowed to invest in. I think Major League Baseball doesn't have the right to have. have sovereign wealth funds invest yet, but other, the NBA allows it and I think the NHL allows it. I want to talk about your collectibles for a second. It's well known that you've purchased the Magna Carter, the Emancipation Proclamation, Declaration of Independence. Of course, you're someone that's sharing those with the public by putting them in museums

and so forth. But is the Baltimore Orioles a collectible in the sense that I mean that it's scarce asset. It's tied to a city that you love. And, you know, somebody said to me at Allen and Company, I think it was Hank Greenberg's son said it to me that the team has always worth 10% of whoever the richest person is in the city. It was a great axiomatic fact, but I'm just wondering how you juxtapose your collectibles and the things that you're buying that have the scarcity to the Baltimore Orioles. Is there something similar in these in these assets? They're different in the sense that I bought these documents and put them on display so Americans

can see them and learn more about American history. That's an effort to kind of educate people more about history on the theory that if you see original documents, you're more likely to learn more about American history. And that's been a major part of my life in recent years. The Orioles, I wouldn't say as a collectible, but interestingly, there are a lot of collectibles because they have bobbleheads. And there was a bobblehead of me even. people recognize that wasn't so valuable, so it's probably selling for less than a penny or so on eBay.

But some of these bobbleheads are incredibly popular, and it's amazing how many people like collectibles around the team. When I was a boy, I used to collect autographs of baseball players. That's a collectible. And now young people still want autographs, and you have to say to yourself, what do these people do with these autographs? Because I don't know what I did with mine. I can't find them anymore. But, yeah, I wouldn't say the team itself is a collectible. view it as a community asset than I'm a temporary custodian for. Because when I'm dead and gone,

somebody also own the team and they'll continue, I hopefully, to promote Baltimore. All right. Well, let's talk about Baltimore because Baltimore, to me, is one of the great old school industrial cities. It's one of the great ports in the country. It's had its ups and downs, particularly since the 1960s that we both know about. Canbin yards to me where I've been many times because I'm a baseball lover. I've driven down to see the Yankees play, frankly, once I think the Mets played there that I was able to see them. But this is a spectacular part of the city. What do you envision for Baltimore over the next five or ten years?

Well, remember, when I was growing up, Baltimore was the ninth biggest city in the United States, of the population, roughly 930,000 people. Today, the population is about 600,000 or so. And the reason for that is we've had a lot of flight out of the city. Baltimore is one of the only two cities in the United States that is not in a county. So when people move out of Baltimore City, their tax revenues and their wealth doesn't accrue back to Baltimore City.

The other one is St. Louis. So Baltimore has suffered a fair bit from losing corporate headquarters. There used to be many corporate headquarters there. Many of them have moved out of Maryland or out of Baltimore. So Baltimore has some real challenges. And then when you have a TV show like Wired or other kinds of things that happen in Baltimore that are not pleasant, it's hurt the image of the city. So what I'm trying to do with the help of many other people and the governor and the mayor working hard on this as well is try to revive Baltimore by making people want to come more to downtown Baltimore. When Camden Yards was built, it was thought that it would revitalize Baltimore downtown.

But it didn't, honestly. So now I and other people interested in Baltimore's future are working to redevelop Baltimore, if we can, and to try to make the downtown area as pleasant as it was. I was growing up, so everybody wanted to go there and spend time there. It's obviously a challenge to do that. But that's not a novel thing in Baltimore. As you probably know, in other cities like Boston or Chicago, the owners of the baseball teams have redeveloped the local area.

So walking around Wrigley Field or walking around Fenway Park, is much more pleasurable than it used to be. Listen, there's no question. I mean, it's not the only, even St. Louis has had this dilemma around the Bush Stadium. I want to go to sentiment. And I'm going to invoke Steve Cohen for a second. He's a personal friend and I have a great relationship with Steve. I have money with Steve.

Steve said something he regretted when he bought the mess. He said, well, I'm going to try to win a World Series in five years. It's six years since he bought the team, and he's come to realize, man, this is a lot harder than it looked in the beginning. What did you learn from these owners about the capricious nature of sports and how you have to think about player development and team organization and culture to get to the championship? Well, I said I wanted to bring a World Series to Baltimore as well, a championship, but I didn't put a year on it, but then that's probably a good thing. It takes a lot of time to really build a champion team. You only have 30 teams and only one's going to be the champion. I've learned that it's a very complicated business, more complicated than private equity.

You can't replace people so easily. I can't educate them myself. The owners really don't have the skill set to tell players how to hit better or pitch better. So it's a complicated, challenging game. And like chess, you've got to move different pieces around and try to make the best combination before you come out a winner. So I've enjoyed it. It's taxing whether I'm going to be able to achieve the goal I want.

I don't know. But I'm putting as much effort in as I physically can and mentally can. But as you know, from owning a team yourself, when you add a stake in the Mets, you know, you can pray for success. But it doesn't always happen. Well, I mean, when I was one of the owners before we sold the Steve, we did get to the World Series, which was one of the more exciting things. and I ended up getting a national league championship ring, which I've got stuff somewhere in my house.

But it was a very prideful moment for me. I'm sure you're going to win a World Series, David. I wish you the best of luck on that. But what would it mean to you? Tell me about the, you're a Baltimore native. I know you've traveled all over the world. You don't live there today, but this is in your blood system being from Baltimore. What would it mean to win the World Series?

I mean try to explain. If the New York Mets or the New York Yankees win a World Series, it's great. People are happy. But if they don't, New York City is still a very important city, one of the most important cities in the world. And New York City's self-esteem is not going to go down all that much if they don't win a World Series. In Baltimore, there aren't as many things going on for Baltimore that make Baltimore as big a deal as New York is to its citizens or as L.A. is to its citizens. So a championship would mean much more to Baltimore than it would mean, honestly, in my view, to New York. And I think that Baltimore has always struggled to kind of catch up with New York, catch up with Philadelphia, catch up with Washington, catch up with Boston. It's kind of a step shot in many respects with people don't pay as much attention to Baltimore. So if the Orioles can become a World Series champion, it will elevate, I think, the self-esteem of many people in Baltimore and I think help revitalize the city.

So it's a different kind of phenomenon than you have in New York. I agree with that, David. All right, we're down to the last five words. I'm going to say the word. You've done my podcast before. I'm going to mention the word. It's a little bit of a raw shot test. You're going to tell me something that comes to mind when I say the word.

When I say the word baseball, what do you think? American history. Yeah, it's just such a big part of it, right? Correct. If I say legacy to somebody like you, what do you think about? I think about the great heroes of America history or in baseball, the great American figures like Babe Ruth, who, by the way, came from Baltimore. But great, you know, things that you're proud of having achieved or that other people achieved that you're connected to. Yeah, I'd tell you know, Jane Lee wrote a great book about him called The Bigfella.

I don't know if you had a chance to read that book. I did. It was a phenomenal book about the orphanage. his growth and development and how we actually treat it as a player. He wrote a great book on Sandy Kofax, too. She wrote a great book on Mickey Mantle, Sandy Kofax. She wrote a book about being baseball commissioner. I love her writing.

All right, I'm going to throw a curveball in here, okay? Okay. The 1971 Orioles had 420 game winners in one rotation. Do you remember any of those pictures? Jim Palmer, who is still an announcer for the Orioles with more than 60 years of connection with the team. Dave McNally. It's also an underwear model. Dave McNally.

Dave McNally. Mike Quayar and Pat Dobson. Okay. You got it right, Dave. That's Bravo. Okay. I'm very impressed with that, by the way. That's some real fandom, okay?

Like, I've asked some owners where they've been on this date or that date. And then I say, okay, wait a minute, they can't really be a fan of that team because they don't remember. where they were on the day where they won the World Series. See what I mean? But you pulled that out. I'm very impressed. Okay. Third, what's your favorite Oreo?

Who's your favorite Oreo? Well, it's like you asking you, Anthony, you have a number of children. Who's your favorite child? My favorite child. I have four sons and one daughter. So who do you think my favorite child is, David? Okay, come on. Your daughter.

Yeah, of course. Well, I would just say. My sons know that, and that's too bad. Tough luck for them. I will defer by simply saying Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, and Cal Ripkin are the three Orioles who spent their entire career in Baltimore, their entire professional career playing more than 20 years for the team, and they were connected with the team afterwards. So those three are the great three Orioles legends of all time. Well, and of course, Robinson arguably one of the best fielding third basements in the history of baseball. I agree.

You know, and I got my introduction to baseball when the Mets were lucky enough to beat the well-favored team of Earl Weaver in 1960. That's correct. That's correct. If I say, okay, last two words, okay, if I say private equity to you, are you thinking God's work, David? Like, what do you think when you say private equity? Well, I used to say it was the highest calling of mankind. Right. I now think that bringing a World Series Championship to Baltimore will be the highest calling of mankind.

And that's what I think I've got to do. Fair enough. It's also, I love your commentary on the taxes on carried interest as well. I mean, I love your sense of humor. Okay. Last word. And I say the city itself of Baltimore. And you say what?

A great historic port city with a great future ahead of it. particularly if we can win another World Series. You know, it's a phenomenal city. You know, when I think of Baltimore, in addition to you and Mayor Bloomberg, I think of a woman by the name of Nancy Delisandro. Who was Nancy Delisandro, David? Well, it later became Nancy Pelosi. Her father was mayor of Baltimore for several terms.

Her brother was mayor of Baltimore. And everybody in the family was in politics, and people didn't think Nancy Pelosi, the youngest child would get into politics because women weren't in politics in those days. She then met Paul Pelosi. They moved to San Francisco after they raised their children. She got elected to the House of Representatives.

I think it was 1986 and became the first woman to be Speaker of the House. And so far the only woman to be Speaker of the House. So that's who she was. Yeah, you know, I love her and her family. And when I'm sometimes in the Baltimore area, eating in that little Italy section, I can get some of the old school Baltimore natives to talk about that family and Nancy herself.

David, it's been a real delight. as always, have you on the show. My pleasure. Thank you, Anthony, for inviting me. You did a great job. You've got a future ahead of you as a podcaster. Okay. All right. Well, I'm counting on, I'm counting on your words. I may put that on my tombstone, Ruben's time. You thought I had a future in podcasting. Thank you so much for joining us on Open Book. Thanks a lot. My pleasure.