Peter Angelos died at the age of 94 on Saturday, three decades after he purchased the Baltimore Orioles and just days before his family’s sale of the franchise he bought for $173 million was expected to be finalized.

Angelos, who made his fortune as a Baltimore attorney specializing in employee liability cases, was in failing health the last several years and in 2018 ceded control of the club to his son, John. After years in which his children, John and Louis, and wife Georgia were embroiled in court battles over the future course of the club, the family agreed in January to sell the club to Baltimore native David Rubenstein, at a reported price of $1.725 billion.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred indicated in February that the league and its 29 other owners would fast-track approval of the sale, in which Rubenstein was expected to purchase a controlling 40% stake of the club and pay the rest upon Angelos’s death.

That plan was designed to avoid capital gains taxes on the significant profit the family enjoyed off the franchise, but Peter Angelos’s death would figure to accelerate the timeline for Rubenstein to take full control of the franchise.