Back in the 1980s, baseball coverage at The Evening Sun was sacred and Jim Henneman was the sage leader of Baltimore Orioles’ coverage and made quite an impression on a teenager who wanted to be a sportswriter. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the incredible baseball life of “Henny” and all of the old-timer Baltimore sports media legends who kept the stories of Brooks and Frank alive over the years.
Nestor Aparicio and Luke Jones discussed the life and legacy of Jim Henneman, a legendary Baltimore sportswriter and official scorer. Henneman’s contributions included his baseball notes columns and his role in the Orioles’ press box, which now bears his name. Nestor shared personal anecdotes and newspaper clips from his time at the Evening Sun, highlighting Henneman’s impact on his career. They also reflected on the decline of print journalism and the importance of honoring media figures while they are alive. The conversation concluded with plans for the Maryland Crab Cake Tour and a tribute to Henneman.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Jim Henneman, Baltimore sportswriters, Orioles, Camden Yards, press box, baseball notes, Ken Rosenthal, Brooks Robinson, Baltimore sports history, Maryland crab cake tour, sports media, newspaper clips, sports legacy, Baltimore positive, sports journalism.
SPEAKERS
8Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 Taos of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, and we are taking the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs. We will have these next Wednesday. We’re going to be green mount station in Hampstead. Come on out. Say hello, and beautiful Carroll County. We’re going to get back out to fade leaves on the 13th of June. I’m also a working of some special first time stops out in Baltimore County, as well as in Baltimore City for the Maryland crab cake tour, all presented by the Maryland lottery. In conjunction with our friends at Liberty pure as well as curio wellness and our friends at Coppin State, where they just graduated, a bunch of folks on Friday. It was a long holiday weekend. Luke and I burned up the edges last week when I got back from Las Vegas on all things Orioles and the hideous losing streak and falling 18 games under 500 the ravens are going to get back out onto the field. The next couple of weeks, they have OTAs and then a mandatory mini camp into the middle of June. The calendar sort of slid a little bit on that. And you will hear on AM 1570 if you’re out of Baltimore positive, you will hear and see some thoughts about the loss of Jim Irsay last week in Indianapolis, and the earth say name in Baltimore, and my relationship with Jim, and Jim’s relationship with the Colts and all of that. But along all of this, we lost a colleague of mine and someone that I think Luke has gotten to know over the last 20 years, someone that I was a colleague and a coworker with in the late 1980s he was already a made guy, a baseball beat writer and a sort of a legendary baseball character at that point, went on to be an official scorer, went on to write and continue to write, a press box amongst other places for many, many, many years. And the press box, which I’m still banned from, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, bears his name, Jim Henneman and I worked together, and I want to bring Luke in right now, because I think Rick Vaughn is going to join me later in the week. And I went sort of through my mind of searching for the kind of people that I would reach to to talk about Jim Henneman and a lot of editors and people I worked with I saw racig had jumped on, but, you know, I was a kid that loved being at the ballpark, and I had a press pass in the late 80s, and Henneman was the beat writer. And listen when Henneman was replaced on the beat by Ken Rosenthal. It was, um, it was a big thing to be replaced by a 24 year old guy, Ken Rosenthal. So I lived through all of that as a 17, 1819, year old guy, and I’ve known Jim feels like all my life, and a real fixture at Orioles games in all the time I’ve ever gone or been out there to see him, if he felt eternal to me, and I don’t know that I should be shocked by a man of his age passing in the way that it happened, but I was kind of taken aback, and I know a lot of people were. We’re going to gather and honor his life a little later on this week, but I wanted to give you some oxygen, because I’ve never had a press pass when you’ve had what’s the lie you want to had a press pass for a couple of games in Kansas City in the playoffs. You and I had a press pass in Arlington a year and a half ago, but I have never been in the Oriole Park at Camden Yards press box while you’ve been there, even though you’ve been my employee for going on 16 years, 17 years. Yeah,
Luke Jones 03:33
that’s true. And I mean, let me, let me be clear. I mean, I certainly knew Henny and had great respect for him. I’m not, I’m not going to pretend that, to act as though I was as close with him as many of the Orioles reporters you know, who have you know, either on the beat for a long time, had since moved on. You know, the Tim Perkins of the world and Ken Rosenthal, as you mentioned. But anyone who’s covered the Orioles for any period of time, even just a couple years, I mean, you certainly knew Henny, and I knew him much more. As you know, he was the, the biggest fixture as far as the official scores. You know, usually there’s a rotation of 345, official scores that will do games over the course of a full 81 game home schedule at Camden Yards. But when I first, you know what was on the beat? You know what 2010 was my first year covering the Orioles, you know Penny was the guy for I don’t know if there was 81 home games, 50, maybe 55 right? I mean, if not more. So I knew him through that. And I think for any of us who are privileged enough to find ourselves in this space of sports media, whether we’re talking about what you and I do over the radio or here online, or, you know, print it. Broadcasting TV, whatever it is, for those not talking former players talking those that this is as close as we get to it, without having played the game at that high of a level, I think there’s always a striving for having an opinion, having, you know, whether it’s you know, you’re a beat reporter breaking news, whether it’s opinions, whether it’s calling the games, whatever your space is, whatever your niche is, I think there’s a longing to be a voice that that inspires some trust. You know, it’s not to say that everyone’s going to agree with everything you say. Not everyone’s going to love every opinion you have. But I think there’s a thought that you strive to to become a fixture in some way. And he’s on that list, you know, as Baltimore writers go as as Baltimore media goes. I mean, what a legacy. You know, you’re talking about someone who you go back to the International League, Orioles, right? You go back to the earliest days, you know, before the Orioles glory years. You know the idea that he was a PR director for the Baltimore bullets for five years. I mean, that’s pretty special. And I think when you you talk about someone who’s done it that long, they become an authoritative voice, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the only voice, or the only opinion or the only take that matters. But it’s someone who you go to. It’s someone who you read on a regular basis, you know, just in the same way that you know, if you’re a radio person, someone wants to let they catch your show. They love segments on your show, whatever, I think. You know in this business, you’re always striving to be something like that, and, you know, to do it as long as Henny did it. I mean, that’s special, you know, that that’s, that’s pretty that’s impressive, you know? And that’s where I just had a great deal of respect for him. I was honored to be on the list of invitees to when the Orioles announced they were going to name the press box after him. It was, I think it was the week of the AFC Championship Game Two winners ago. And, you know, I just didn’t get that press release understood. I understand, but I’m just, like, just just being invited to see how emotional he was over that. I mean that I’m sorry I missed stuff like that. I know, and I agree with you, but, but just to, you know, to have that kind of a legacy for any of us in any walk of life, when you do a job that long in some capacity, and you last that long, one of the cool things about the fact that the Orioles did that for him, they did it while he was still here with us. You know, this wasn’t something done posthumously. We’re very good as a society of giving flowers when someone’s passed away, when someone isn’t with us anymore, we need to be as a society, not just sports or sports media, just in general. You know, the people in our lives, our family, our closest friends, we all need to be more deliberate and better about giving people their flowers when they’re still here. You know, to show them what so like, just to be the tiniest little piece of that. Again, I might have, he might have known me the least out of everyone that was in the room that day, but it was just, you know, it was an honor to see that and to kind of think that someone can do something for that long, you know, I just, I think that’s special. And from that standpoint, I know he did what he did the coffee table book. When the Orioles did their, it was their 60th anniversary back in, you know, I got that. My mom gave that to me as a Christmas present that year. And, you know, just to even be able to do something like that, and the way you’ve chronicled both Raven Super Bowl teams, right? I mean, it’s special getting to do something like that, you know, regardless of, you know, even you know how profitable it is, or any of that, just to be able to chronicle something for that long, you know, in the way that he did that, I think it’s pretty special.
Nestor Aparicio 08:48
So he passed, and, you know, I saw it on my on my Facebook, and you know, I began to work at the evening sun in January of 1986 so I was 17, my parents had to sign a permission slip to work there, and my dad was a news American reader, not necessarily an evening sun reader, although we got the evening sun on Saturdays because my dad bought the Saturday and Sunday sun. So we get the Saturday. So I would read Jackman, I would read the paper that I then would go to work for the evening sun. But we were news American readers, not evening sun readers in my house. So the writers in my house, it was more Steadman, it was more Bernie micklas, it was more. It was just a different set of writers. But Henneman was like one of those guys that was he, he always had the baseball notes columns, and much like Peter Gammons, was very plugged in everywhere through the sport. And when Ken Rosenthal was very, very young man in 1987 taking over that beat 8780 he was 86 or 87 It was very, very early on. And Henneman then went to, like, write a baseball column. And it made our baseball coverage that much better at a time when Earl Weaver come back to manage, right? It was 8687 88 we’re going into the dark hole of 88 and then 89 is the why not year during that period of time. So when he passed, I have a box of of newspaper clips that, you know, my wife sort of laughs at, but she just has such reverence and and I think I’m keeping it for my kid. My kid’s 41 he doesn’t care about any of this stuff. I guess there’s no one in the world that cares about it other than me, which makes it special, right? It’s what makes it unto you, right? And maybe the people that were involved in making the newspaper sections whenever I’m with Mike Marlowe or Bob Nestor, Larry Harris, who’s been battling some dementia of late, we all get together at the Guinness brewery, Stan Rappaport, Molly Dunham, all these names from evening sun past Jack Gibbons, of course, the godfather and my boss, Chris Zhang, longtime editor, as well. These were all my big brothers and parents, really, when I was a 19 year old kid. So I have this box, and it means everything to me, that box, like there’s some stuff around, like you can have this, you can have that, don’t you know, the old tapes that I have, of the shows, the old clips, they’re all in a couple of boxes. They don’t mean anything to anybody, but on a day when Jim Henneman dies, I reach for that box and and I knew I was connected to him in a way, and nobody would know it. Like in the last 20 I don’t think I’ve talked to Jim in 20 years. I haven’t been in the press box, right? I mean, I Well, like once I got thrown out in 2006 I maybe I ran in the gym at a at a Babe Ruth event, but they’ve excommunicated me too, like they had a party, and nobody calls me. I’m I’m not a black sheep. I’m a brown sheep. That’s a inside joke for the Whistler, because I’m Hispanic, I’m not black, but I’ve been brown sheep, and so I don’t really see the media people, you know, I’m a I’m a literal pariah. I’m a leper. You know this? You’ve seen it. You’ve seen how you get treated differently. When I’m in the room, I see it when I go to Jamie Costello’s goodbye. I mean, just people that are associated with the baseball team are not allowed to speak to me. They have to, they have to, or they used to not be allowed to they I don’t know about anything, but it was that way for 30 years. It was tyrannical. So I never saw Jimmy. Saw us working press box. I wouldn’t say that we had a bad relationship or a great relationship, was professional, you know, like, I had a press pass for many, many, many, many years, like, 15 years after, we weren’t colleagues. I saw him out there, 5060, 80 something. Hey, Nestor, I could do his voice, you know, like, that’s how well I knew any um. But I didn’t sit in, like, do a lot of deep baseball discussion with him, really, much of ever, because he was watching the games. He was the official scorer. I was a different age group, just in a like, sure, there was never anything, but we were, like, real colleagues that like a young whippersnapper like you, when I get the box out of the stuff that I was involved in, and I just shared these, and I want to story tell a little bit, because I really didn’t story tell when it came to these pictures, but I want to share, I hope we’re Seeing the right one, the mike Bilecki one, and this one was like the craziest thing ever, because Rosenthal wrote the lead story is my mother’s birthday, August 3 of 1989 so you think 89 right there. This is why not summer Orioles are good. They, they’ve won another game here. Down six to nothing.
8Luke Jones 14:00
And Fenway six nothing comeback game, yeah. Okay, so that was, like, that was one of their big because they, they were reeling on that, on that road trip, and it kind of, they righted the ship a little bit,
Nestor Aparicio 14:11
yeah, says my Oriole historian. It was, how old were you five, right? I five.
Luke Jones 14:16
It was, I read up on that team. A little more retro. You were five though, right? But it was more I, it was probably two or three years after that that I started like, you know, it’s, it’s like, I pieced it together. It was five memories in
Nestor Aparicio 14:30
81989 and I was 20 okay. I, I turned 21 in October. Okay, so Jack Gibbons sent me up to Philadelphia to chase Mike belecki around, who was having this monster year. He and I share. We’re both in the Dundalk high Hall of Fame. So I got to throw that in. But I went up to do this piece on Mike belecki, and I went over to his parents house, and I sat in their living room over on seals road, they live by two blocks away from Kevin. My best friend right behind where mine bridge had all the baseball cards. And this clip, to me, was the primary clip when I tried to get a job that I was on the front page of the sun, I did this full take out. It was a really long piece about black he’s background, and pitching in Hawaii, and how he wound up in this pennant race and the Cubs, and like all that, he went up pitching in the playoffs eight weeks later. This is August of 89 and I knew all along that Jim Henneman SIG and Jim Henneman was on that, and I was searching for this. I’m like, I remember Henneman was on the front page of this. It’s cool. So you start to think about, like these, these games and these nights, and obviously these clips had something to do with me, because they my, my story was there, so I ripped the Tear Sheet, or I have the whole section. This is another really, really special one, and it began another special one that I found, but, but, but this year was the day after the changing of the Murrays. So I got to attend the press conference where a brother replaced. Imagine Brandon Hyde’s younger brother taking his job.
Luke Jones 16:13
That’s what happened with the caps, right? Jim Harbaugh taking John Harbaugh’s job? Yeah, it almost happened, I’m sure, a couple times,
Nestor Aparicio 16:19
uh, January 17 of 1990 says, about six months later, I’m covering hockey, right? So, uh, J Tibbs and Joe or select, are the headlines? Hall of Famer, Joe or select? Yeah, they say. I may throw that in there as well. Milton Kent’s got a headline. The great Phil Jackman is involved in this. And Mike farrabaugh, my, my one time I, by the way, Faribault had the place in Ocean City that I rented during Senior Week. It, it didn’t help our relationship. I just want to say that I loved my fair ball, though. But Jim Edmund, with the lead story there and there, I am, brother, what a day for the caps Murray. And it was the first day of Terry Murray’s job as the head coach of the caps. And I covered it. And Phil Jackman and I drove together because we I was save on expenses. Jack will appreciate that. One guy will take one car down. So Phil drove me down that night. He said, You do the game story. I’m going to do a side bomb. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do a column. I’m going to do a column on Murray. So he did a column on Murray that night. So there’s winter of 1990 so I feel like I’m taking you to school, young man. I got another one here for you. Let’s see if I can pull this one up. Because it, you know, when it’s Henneman, it’s all baseball stuff, right, right? So, so here you go. Now, this here, Luke, it. This is all self bragging on myself here to show my incredible versatility. But in the summer of 1991 June of 91 HeMan covering the Orioles, still 20 runs sweep lacked for little 20 runs against the Kansas City Royals, Brady Anderson, Mike Devereaux and Joe or select high fiving. We’re in the middle of Wimbledon, so we had a, we have a wire piece, very unusual wire piece of the front page. And then Phil Jackman was up in Delaware, covering the women’s LPGA and little nasty Nestor covering the triathlon where the leader got run over by a cop and lost the race. Because, yeah, there it is, right. Bud Light triathlon, Brett rose, so Perry thorsvik took those pictures. So there it is. Jim Henneman with the lead story and Nestor Aparicio evening sun staff escort to agony, triathlete and triathlon leader felled by Police Motorcycle. You think they didn’t put me on the big stories, Luke? You think Jack Evans didn’t trust me with that front page story, and then I got the last one for you. And I just want to put this up, because this is indicative of Jim Henneman, not game stories. He did a million of them out on the front page of the thing, but Henny had his notes column, and this is where, you know, I think he and I’d love to have Rosenthal on to talk about Hanneman, because that was such a combustible thing to have a 23 year old kid thrown in on the beat at that Teddy Murray’s here, the whole mess, Earl Weaver. I mean, whatever, if I ever sat with Rosenthal, just sitting with him for an hour, talking to him about that point in his life and where his life has gone, sitting at dugouts and bow ties and 30 World Series and all that stuff. But these were my guys, and I always brag to you, I did. I do brag that I work with these guys. These are the tear sheets that I have that sort of make it good, you know, make it like legit. So I got a Tear Sheet here. This is from my mother’s birthday, July 26 1991 so that was my mom’s birthday. This is Friday, and it was on page three. I had a little story here about a about the Baltimore bays, Maryland base, Kevin Sloan, who went on the play for the blast. I got a quote here from Kenny Cooper, the whole deal 1991 so I was a I was at 2222 years old. I was coming to the end of my run at the sun. I left, and I left six months later. But Henny had his Friday Notes column for the week. He really published Monday through Friday. There was no Sunday notes because the evening sun, our notes columns were Friday, and I guarantee you this was Sports Extra. Our Friday was always Sports Extra. We got a couple extra pages so Henneman could get his notes in. So Henneman notes here. You got Ben McDonald in here. You got Johnny Oates in here. You got John sherholtz, the Baltimore native who gave up a teaching career to be one of baseball’s top executives. So little notes column here, and a little piece for me, and an ad from Antwerp motor cars with Frank Robinson and Lee Oldsmobile. Ernie Swanson’s Lee Oldsmobile. So yeah, Hanneman and I, I’m sure we shared many a newspaper together. I found a couple. These was the couple I found off the top, and I thought they were just awesome, you know, just cool. Writing about soccer, writing about the triathlon. Henneman on baseball. Henneman on a lead story had him in independent race. Jackman on a sidebar with Terry Murray, dude you want to make you’re going to make me cry. You know what I mean? And it’s funny, I,
Luke Jones 21:17
as I was kind of reflecting on Henny a little bit these last few days. And, you know, I thought about Brooks Robinson and him passing away a couple years ago. And, you know, and I don’t even say this as much to pick on what the Orioles have become, because we’ve done that plenty, and it’s very easy to do that in the midst of this disaster of a season they’re currently having. But, but there is a sense of sadness for me, thinking about all those connections to the glory of the glory days for the Orioles, right? I mean going going back to the mid 60s through the early 80s, and what that organization was. And you know, three World Series pennants, you know, division playoffs, all you know, Hall of Famers, all of that. And you know, when you’re talking about a Jim Henneman or individuals of that help chronicle that that era, you know you just when you start losing more and more pieces to that and obviously that’s secondary to his family and his friends and anyone who knew him on a personal level. But just speaking more in the Baltimore sports fan sense, you know, you lose those ties and you know, it’s a reminder of just how long ago that that was. And, you know, I mean that that really hit for me big time. You know, when Brooks Robinson passed away, I mean, for me, it wasn’t so much my memories of Brooks as much as knowing what my dad’s memories of Brooks were, right? And just so, when you lose some of those individuals, you know whether you’re talking about someone who chronicled it in the media, like a Jim Henneman, or whether you’re talking about those heroes themselves. You know, knowing that Earl’s gone and Frank’s gone and Brooks is gone, and and just thinking about that, that’s where you do get sad that what these last 40 years have been for the Orioles in comparison to what those 20 years prior to had to have been. And that’s where, that’s where I get frustrated and and look at this thing all over again and saying, you want it to be great again. You want to have more memories like what that was. And, you know, you sharing, you know, some of you, some of those press clippings. I mean, that’s, you know, even though we’re talking
8Nestor Aparicio 23:29
about Bradley today,
Luke Jones 23:31
and you know, I mean not that, not that, 1990 and 91 were the glory days, because obviously that was already getting into, you know, the glory days being over for the Orioles. But, you know, just when you lose those individuals, it’s a reminder of just how special that era was, and also a yearning of having more of that. You know, I’ve said this to you a couple times recently, you know, I don’t need to tell you this. We’ve talked about this for the better part of 15 years, save for a couple years here and there that, you know, we’re going on two generations of Orioles fans who all that stuff is just history, you know. I mean, I didn’t live Brooks Robinson i i didn’t live 1983 like other than being two weeks old when Scott McGregor, you know, completed the shutout and game barely live. Mike Devereaux, yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. I mean, like, my memory of Cal Ripken was a great hall of fame player, but not really playing on very many good teams over most of his career, right? So, and again, I’m not saying that to pile on the modern era as much as just seeing what that once was, knowing those stories and hearing them from my grandparents and from my parents, and reading the likes of Jim Henneman and others, you know, hearing Chuck Thompson, you know, for me, it was John Miller, even though John Miller was, you know, kind of that the tail end. Of the Orioles glory days. But, you know, just wanting to experience that again, you know, I want Baltimore to have that again, right? How, however, you’re 35 years every exactly, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t agree with, but, you know, but, but it when you lose someone like Henny. Again, the personal side of it’s far more important. You know, the baseball side is secondary. You know, the sports side is secondary, but thinking about that and acknowledging that, and it’s just, you know, all that stuff, that those glory days and the championships and all that so long, long time ago at this point in time. So, and that’s where it hurts even more, because you could sit in the media dining and just hear Henny telling stories from 50 years ago. And, you know, you’re kind of just in awe. I mean, I would just, I’d listen, you know, I’d listen, and I listen to Palmer every night, right? Exactly. And there’s a perfect example. I mean, that’s where, you know, I mean, Jim Palmer. Jim can do games as far as if it were up to me, Jim could do as many games for as long as he wants. Because I just love hearing him talk about that. You know, I love hearing the stories about Earl Weaver and Brooks and Frank and, you know him, him talking about Robin Roberts, right? And just all of that. I mean, it was just so special. And you you don’t want to lose that. So, you know, when you do lose a piece of that, you know when you know any passes away, I mean, it’s it’s also a reminder of all of our mortality. And to bring it full circle, to go back to the point that I made, you know, kind of at the beginning. You know, when you’re in sports media, you know if you can carve out a space where anyone cares to hear your opinion. I mean, I don’t know if anyone cares about my opinion on things or not. I like to think that I make it a decent point every now and then. You know, a broken clock is right twice a day. But you know to think how many people read Jim Henneman and look forward to his notes like you mentioned, or look forward to his reporting, or, you know, reading him, even in recent years in press box, and just knowing how much of an authority, authoritative voice he was on the history of the Baltimore Orioles. I mean, man, that’s special. You know, that’s a heck of a legacy. And again, we should all be so lucky if, if we could carve out even a fraction of that and whatever our life’s work is, Luke
Nestor Aparicio 27:27
Jones is here. We’re discussing the life of Jim Henneman, and we were on to Oriole baseball and the Cardinals being in town, and everything that’s going on here with the team and chronicling the team and all that. I’m just glad I got a chance to to share a little bit of my old stuff. That was cool closet that, yeah, I figured you’d like would think that’s kind of neat just pulling it up and just, it was kind of neat for me to touch it again and see it again and feel it again and think, wow, there’s an amends face right next to that big story I did. You know that? I mean, Jim, there’s legend.
Luke Jones 28:01
8It’s funny. And you know, this, obviously, in this day and age, you know, we know print journalism, like literal print journalism, is just about gone at this point, you know, like, I mean, we all see what newspapers look like, as far as physical newspapers, not reading it online. You know, I’ve, I’ve been in this business in an era where print is just rapidly, rapidly declining. And as you know, I’ve had the opportunity the last few years, you know, through Howard balls or with a lindy’s pro football preview. I’ve, I’ve written the Ravens section now, the last few years. And it’s funny, I mean literally, the byline is my name at the very end, very small print, my name at the very end of the Raven section. But, you know, it’s something that I don’t need it like to display it in my home. But if my niece is 15 years from now, look at that. Say, Oh, Uncle Luke, you were, you were, you wrote in a magazine. I’m like, Yeah, I got to do that. I mean, you know, because you know so much online writing, you don’t touch it physically. You know, you don’t have a hard copy of it unless you print it out by chance. So I
Nestor Aparicio 29:07
feel very blessed to be of that age what I’m saying, I mean, you have this stuff that I share that’s that is right style, that’s physically
Luke Jones 29:14
even someone who, let’s say, started listening to you five years ago or 15 years ago, didn’t even, might not have any idea that you wrote for the local paper, and yet can see that clipping, and Jim hennemans got a byline there, and Ken Rosenthal has a byline there, and people recognize those names. It’s that’s cool, like, it’s just, it’s a cool thing. And I think anyone who ever has done anything creatively where you can put your name on it. It’s cool to have some, you know, you don’t need to, don’t need to have every copy of everything you ever did, but it’s neat to have some, some artifacts, you know, to kind of say, Hey, I did this.
Nestor Aparicio 29:52
You know, when I was at the evening sun, I got the job in 86 and I’m 17, and I had a lot of bylines the news American and. You know, like everyone else, I want to buy line, right? I mean, we all like bylines, right? And my dad liked it, you know, it made him feel good. And, you know, so I got to the sun, and I started writing right away. I mean, like they loved me. I mean, I have, it’s amazing how many clips I worked there six years. And if you did the math six times 365, days, it would be 2100, days I worked there, or something like that. Dude, at least 1500 bylines, yeah? Like, I mean, I wrote sometimes two, three times a day high schools. I mean, as you can see, that’s just a mishmash of, like, triathlons that I forgot. I covered right? All the high school work, all the hockey work I did, sidebars on the bullets and all sorts of things through all of it. And you know what I kept, and what I sort of archived and kept all these years later and stuff like that, it’ll just never be done again. But when I was 17, the guys on the desk, Mike Marlow and those guys are like, and they were trying to pad my ego up to like, You got to have your name on the scoreboard page. So they, they, they took, they took the top scoreboard, the agate, all the box scores, which is my job, that’s what I put together every night. Which is, that’s my primary job, putting together
8Luke Jones 31:20
that it’s crazy to think how much when we all think back to that era with the agate and the box scores, seeing the league leaders, all that stuff, the leaders, Luke, it’s wild to think how big that was in my life at one point in time, and yet, the last time that I opened the sports page to the standing statistic. I mean, I don’t even know if that’s even printed in what passes as a newspaper today. It’s just funny, just to hear you say that, go ahead, together
Nestor Aparicio 31:47
scoreboard and they put my name a compiled by Nestor out there you go. So within a week or two of work in there, This was Jack’s kiss to me. He’s like, Hey, you’re important. Your name’s going to be in the paper every day. And then he would say, Don’t f up the lottery. Speaking of the lottery, I have Back to the Future scratch offs. I cannot screw these up. And if I could, I would, I swear I would, because I was infamous for so where the radio stations located is around the corner from where our publisher what and our publisher’s name, he’s deceased now. His name was Jack Lemmon, L, E, M, M O N, like the actor, and he looked like Lou Grant. He looked like Ed Asner. He absolutely like channeled him. So if you picture what Ed’s Azure looked like, that’s what Jack Lemmon looked like. And Jack was the big, big boss corner office publisher. He was the boss of the evening sun, and I was in charge of hitting lottery numbers. This is when lotto just kind of came on in six digits, $1 million the whole deal. I told John Martin, I screwed the numbers up a couple times. Got fired. I almost lost my whole career because I screwed up the lottery numbers. And Jack would say it’s got your name at the top. Compiled by I thought it was a blessing. It was a curse. We’re going to be doing the Maryland crab cake tour next week for everyone gathering and love. Jim Henneman, my thoughts to you and strength to everyone in the baseball world, everyone the Oriole world, press box and beyond, who love Jimmy, uh, Henny, as we all called him back in the day. I haven’t seen Jim in a long, long time. My heart to everyone out there. We’re gonna be doing the crab cake tour up at Greenmount station in Hampstead next week, on the fifth of June, then on the 13th, we’re going to be at fates down at Lexington market, and apparently Luke might be available that day. The angels are in town. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T. Am 15 70,000 Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore history, because we can do it better than anybody, because we’re Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.
