Bird Tapes 2025: An Interview with Jon Miller (Part 3)

In the final part of our recent interview, the Hall of Fame broadcaster dives deep into why he left Baltimore for San Francisco, a move that still rankles Oriole fans nearly three decades later.

When I interviewed then-Orioles owner Peter Angelos in 2000 for my book on the team’s history, Angelos said he was on the way to signing a new deal to retain Jon Miller, the team’s popular broadcaster, after the 1996 season, but Miller’s “advisors” talked him out of it.

That’s not true at all, Miller told me when I interviewed him recently.

Angelos also told the New York Times that he offered Miller the job during a conversation in Angelos’ law office after the 1996 season.

Never happened, Miller told me.

Before my recent interview with Miller, I teed up a recording of Angelos making those and other charges about Miller’s controversial departure, for which the owner was widely castigated. (My interview with Angelos is in the Bird Tapes archive.)

“If you’d like, I can play this clip of Angelos for you to hear right now,” I told Miller.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Miller replied.

I didn’t blame him. It all happened nearly three decades ago. Miller took a job that he still has, calling the San Francisco Giants’ games -- his dream job when he was a youngster growing up in the Bay Area. Angelos passed away in 2024.

“All the ‘he said, he said’ is irrelevant,” Miller told me.

Yet once he was on the subject, Miller took one of the deepest dives I’ve heard into the circumstances that led to his departure from Baltimore. And again, I didn’t blame Miller. Once I gave him a short summary of Angelos’ version of the story, which he has heard before and never ceases to irritate him, he couldn’t help himself.

The last part of my interview with Miller is available below to paid subscribers, and like the first two parts that ran recently, it offers the pleasure of a wonderful baseball storyteller telling baseball stories. Only this time the story is about the storyteller himself.

Angelos insisted that he didn’t fire Miller because the broadcaster always wanted to “go home” to San Francisco. But that’s simply not true. Listening to Miller’s version of events, it is clear, at least to me, that he easily could have stayed in Baltimore beyond the 1996 season.

He’d been the Orioles’ play-by-play broadcaster for 13 years at that point. He loved the job. He and his wife and children were entrenched in the community. His wife fully expected him to stay, Miller told me. Although his contract was up after that season, his agent, Ron Shapiro, sought to begin negotiating a new deal months before the season ended. There was no reason to think he was leaving.

But a problem arose.

“Ron told me, ‘I can’t get a call returned from the Orioles,’” Miller recalled.

According to Miller, the business-side operatives who oversaw the team’s broadcasts weren’t calling his agent back to start talking contract. Curious why he was hearing nothing from them, Shapiro called Angelos, and during their conversation, was surprised to hear the owner criticize Miller for not always being fully supportive of the Orioles on the air.

“Peter said, ‘Why should I be paying someone who doesn’t bleed orange and black enough for me?’” Miller recalled.

“Bleed orange and black” — a comment that lives in infamy among fans who recall those years.

As he explains in the interview, Miller was more baffled than hurt by the criticism. Angelos had owned the Orioles for nearly four years at that point without voicing concern to Miller over what was being said on the air. “I thought it was a non-issue,” Miller told me. And in any case, it’s in Miller’s DNA to honestly relay to listeners what’s happening on the field, regardless if it reflects well or poorly on the home team. His listeners loved him for it then and still do. There’s nothing better than the truth. Miller is in the Hall of Fame for his ability to convey it so well.

From his conversation with Angelos, Shapiro deduced that Miller now at least needed a Plan B if things didn’t work out with the Orioles. And in what Miller labeled an amazing stroke of “dumb luck,” an attractive Plan B opened up just when he needed it. Hank Greenwald, the Giants’ play-by-play broadcaster, was retiring, and the Giants loved the idea of having Miller replace Greenwald.

That’s exactly what wound up happening, although another eye-popping Plan B arose (think pinstripes), potentially complicating matters. In the end, though, the decision was clear. The Giants actively pursued Miller. The Orioles never made an offer. Miller and Angelos did eventually meet in the owner’s office, but it was after Miller had made up his mind. (“You sound like a lawyer,” Angelos said, according to Miller, as they discussed what had happened.)

Miller doesn’t mince words about how it all worked out. Leaving was “the best thing that happened to me and a lucky thing,” he told me. Lucky not so much because he was able to go home and take his dream job — an admittedly nice scenario — but rather, because the Orioles soon entered a long, depressing losing cycle while the Giants remained contenders, their games and seasons interesting to broadcast. (They’ve made four World Series appearances, winning three, since Miller became their play-by-play broadcaster.)

It was clear throughout our long interview that Miller retains a deep affinity for Baltimore, the Orioles and the team’s fans. He easily could have stayed.

But the progression of events that led to his departure are easy to follow in hindsight, however much Angelos tried to muddle them. I can’t blame Miller for leaving and having zero regrets. He has gone on with his life, and it has been a wonderful life, with no one telling him what he ought to say on the air.

(Note from John Eisenberg: It takes a paid subscription to hear the Miller interview as well as my other interviews with former Oriole players, broadcasters and figures from the team’s history. To upgrade from free to paid, click on the “subscribe now” button.)