Join the dugout. Sign up here for Orioles updates in your inbox.

Longtime Orioles executive Joe Foss, who worked with Peter Angelos to secure the owner’s winning bid for the Major League Baseball organization in 1993, died on Wednesday, his family told The Banner. He was 77.

Foss served as the Orioles’ vice chairman and chief operating officer from 1993 to 2007. In that time, he witnessed millions of fans flocking to fill the newly opened Oriole Park at Camden Yards, saw Cal Ripken Jr. break the Iron Man streak in 1995 and navigated the Orioles through the relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., which resulted in the creation of Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.

Foss also directed the Orioles through the 1994-1995 baseball work stoppage.

“I have nothing but the deepest respect for Peter and the organization,” Foss told The Baltimore Sun in 2007 when he resigned from the organization. “I have had a perfectly wonderful 14 years.”

Foss is survived by his three children, Katie (Foss) Lee (Justin Lee), Annie Foss and Michael Foss (Meghan Foss), as well as three grandchildren, Brooks, JJ and Dylan, and his sister, Marie Sheffler. His wife, Dawn, died almost a year ago.

“He always seemed to set such a good example. He was definitely hard working, but he always managed to take me and my brother to the bus stop every morning,” Annie Foss said. “He would take us to the bus, then he’d work a full day, then he’d watch a full Orioles game, get home at midnight, and he’d be up in the morning to do it again.”

Added Katie Lee: “It’s a work ethic, but it’s also not sacrificing the things that are important. We were lucky growing up.”

All three children say they carry their father’s example with them every day.

“He certainly had high-profile positions and had demanding professional obligations, but he still made and had plenty of time to show up for things and people he cared about, and I don’t think that’s particularly easy for people to do,” Michael Foss said. “It’s this whole balancing act that a lot of people struggle with.”

Foss worked in various fields beyond the Orioles. He was in banking, which is how he and Angelos formed a close bond — the pair worked closely on financing Angelos’ bid to buy the Orioles. He also served in executive roles at SC&H Group, Erickson Retirement Communities and Geppi Family Enterprises.

“In some ways, he was the Ying to Peter Angelos’ Yang,” said Mark Wassermann, who worked closely with Foss when Wassermann was Maryland’s secretary of economic and employment development under Gov. William Donald Schaefer. “Ensuring that, with all credit to Peter Angelos for saving baseball for Baltimore, it was Joe who laid the foundation and put them on solid business footing, and he had a knack for seeing the future for baseball as a business and baseball as a sport.”

While Foss was born and raised in Minnesota, he became ingrained in Baltimore’s community. He served on the boards of the Y of Central Maryland, Kennedy Krieger, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake.

Foss’ Midwestern charm was “one of the angles that drew me to him,” Wassermann said. “It was fresh. It was pure.”

This story will be updated.