steroids, performance enhancing drugs, human growth hormone and the cheating, lying and black market use of mules and drug pushers for its players. Keep in mind – the Major League Baseball Players Association was still at war with every aspect of ownership and didn’t want to subject its union to any demands of ownership regarding this issue that somehow was viewed as a privacy issue for the players.
In the end, it wasn’t the embarrassment but more the overall health of players who were falling prey to many tendon issues that created another risk for the owners’ money in signing players who had gained 20-to-40 pounds of muscle mass during this era where foreheads expanded and home runs were king.
Major League Baseball even ran ads that stated: “Chick dig the long ball!”
Much like every team in MLB, the Orioles had plenty of players users steroids during the Angelos ownership era. This era, still in the pre-testing era without any verbiage in the Basic Agreement with the MLBPA, was particularly rife with potential candidates.
But, with or without drug-enhanced production, the Orioles were a bottom five team in MLB for talent in 2001.
The Orioles still had history on their side and still had Cal Ripken coming back for one more year of baseball but the civic thirst for the team had begun to dry up amidst the town’s passion for its new girlfriend and local love – the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL.
On January 28, 2001, the upstart Baltimore Ravens led by Ray Lewis won Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa, Florida and the city would never be the same again as a sports town. From the local businesses wanting to reach to the new champions to the way fans perceived the value of Ravens tickets and the team’s hands-on approach to marketing and immersing in the culture of the city’s legacy regarding the Baltimore Colts and its
