Dear David:
I’ll begin this first of what-will-be many open letters to you and your partners with the same gentle yet foreboding wisdom I offered your emissary on Opening Day in the club level, when three innings into your administration (and after being denied access to your introductory Warehouse press conference) I was chased down by Christopher Ullman, who repeatedly assured me that he would be my “biggest ally” in getting my Baltimore Orioles press accreditation rightfully reinstated by the new ownership group, as your partner Michael Arougheti staged a billionaire reality-show-orchestrated mass beer gifting across the street, purchasing authenticity and fresh goodwill as best he could for a couple of hundred bucks.
“There’s been a lot of trauma here…” I quietly began with Ullman back on the afternoon March 28th at Camden Yards. “I hope you respect and fully understand what’s gone on here the last 30 years.”
Two innings and 20 minutes later – after realizing that he whistles much better than he understands any facet of baseball (this was clearly communicated as I was standing under a pair of giant Luis Aparicio and Mike Flanagan portraits behind Section 246 and they and everything else were unrecognizable to him) – and with literal tears in my eyes wearing the Orioles bullpen jacket Alan Mills traded me 25 years ago, I hugged your personal representative and told him the truth:
“No one with the Orioles has ever been kind to me at Camden Yards in well over 20 years,” as I profusely thanked him. “I’ve become completely accustomed to being treated like shit by everyone here – from the minute I arrive, until the minute I leave. Sneered at, un-welcomed, restricted, uninvited and sometimes even berated because everyone who worked there could get away with it. It was The Angelos Way. It’s why I don’t come very often, and never give the Baltimore Orioles my money. I sincerely hope that can change because I don’t deserve that and never did.”
“We all want the same things” is where I left what I felt to be a pleasant enough conversation that it brought me to tears.
Mind you, sir, it’s not the Orioles fans who mistreat me at the soon-to-be-rebranded for cash Oriole Park at Camden Yards. On the packed club level, Ullman literally had to pull me away from inebriated Opening Day listeners and friends so we could meet off the concourse without interruptions. I offered to have a truly private conversation – a coffee sit-down and a real chance for a face-to-face to connect to discuss the history of baseball in my city, your franchise and the “wounds” that are evident with every empty seat and skybox on summer nights. I also wanted to share my work and offered him The Peter Principles, so he could get caught up on everything any of us Orioles lifers over the age of 40 have endured since Memorial Stadium turned to Camden Yards.
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Ullman quickly confided that he knew absolutely nothing about baseball. I made it clear I knew a lot about baseball because I’ve been doing this all of my life. I truly believed he was seeking some institutional knowledge about the franchise that only someone like me could provide because I’m the one-of-one who famously didn’t pledge eternal fealty to Peter Angelos and his son after 40 years of covering Orioles baseball professionally in the Baltimore media.
People like me who’ve watched it all and endured it all have been eagerly awaiting someone like you to purchase it and fumigate it.
The Orioles fans – my listeners and readers and supporters – who have truly been paying attention (as well as the MASN cable television bill) over my 33 years of discussing the bearing-very-little-real-fruit soap opera of the Baltimore Orioles franchise every day of my life on WNST-AM 1570 and all over this community – and the same people who watched Abe Pollin move our NBA team, Robert Irsay steal our NFL institution and Art Modell bring another one from Cleveland for Steve Bisciotti to use as a profitable modern purple money machine – point to the publicly-funded press box at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and tell me that I belong up there with my employee, Luke Jones.
Because I am a real media member and always have been.
The sports fans of Baltimore and real members of this community remain keenly aware of my unique work – and the heart-on-my-sleeve greater intentions for this city.
Yet, I still get mistreated by every Orioles communications representative or any of the many in The Warehouse with eternal loyalty and family ties to the Angelos folks, who for two decades were directed to treat me like a born enemy of their franchise. Nestor Aparicio was an outsider who doesn’t belong – and the long-held mantra that I am a nasty “Bad Guy” because I have shined a consistently bright light and held steady a clear mirror with the track record in the standings and the community of the previous ownership, whose lack of integrity never took a day off.
They even told the wives of the uniformed personnel that I was a “Bad Guy” (whatever that means?):
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I can only imagine what they’ve told you…or your people, like Chris Ullman.
Mister Rubenstein, you’re from Baltimore. You’re a wildly wealthy, successful and intelligent man. You’ve said you’re a baseball fan of the Orioles from way back – including your name dropping of my cousin Luis Aparicio as your favorite childhood hero on the 1966 World Series champions, so I shouldn’t have to list the franchise’s record on or off-the-field, along with the overall track record of how Peter G. Angelos handled his stewardship of the Baltimore Orioles, as a citizen or a baseball owner. In the spirit of my mentors John Steadman and Charley Eckman, I wrote a detailed book chronicling his handling of the first 15 years in destroying the core of the franchise and emptying the soul of the city on summer nights.
Start here at The Peter Principles and learn – or if you’re a real fan, relive the nightmare of what got us here.
And got you here, David, to controlling this civic trust and once-beloved asset at a crossroads with ownership, leadership, our troubled-yet-resilient city and its relationship to the community that (whether you acknowledge it or not) has been greatly damaged by the group that preceded you.
The $20 tickets available on Tuesday morning for your first Wild Card game is a real barometer of the heart, depth and wallet of your fan base. And I hope you’re not telling yourself it’s the weather or the kids at school or the price point.
It’s the true barometer of where you are…
These next few days of playoff baseball and the promise of a World Series here later this month or sometime in the future (yes, I still believe) will fill the stadium (at a price point far lower than you want) and what’s left of the downtown business community in a way we see all too infrequently here over the last three decades.
8It’s a beautiful thing. It’s ripe with possibilities for the future of the Orioles and the city and state.
It’s all I ever fought for…a full stadium and a vibrant downtown on game days and beyond.
Ask anyone…
As I impressed upon Professor Ullman, who wasn’t impressed with me, twice in our grand total of 45 minutes of communication time – 20 of it on the club level in public view on Opening Day upon demand in the middle of a game with a beer in my hand, and 20 more on a performative, chilly phone call during Preakness week – we all want the same things here: for the city, for the franchise, for the community. That is what “Free The Birds” was all about in 2006 and its what I’m about in 2024 and what I’ll always be about.
Click anywhere on this website and it’s obvious what the goals of my decades of conversations represent for my platform and what my Baltimore Positive message and branding stand for in this community where I have run a small local business born of a sports radio station at WNST-AM 1570 for 33 years.
For 19 years beginning in 2003, I lived two blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards on the 23rd floor at Harbor Court at the Inner Harbor overlooking the city I love.
I saw everything.
8I don’t know everybody in Baltimore – but I know somebody who knows everybody who knows somebody. I’m a lifer who bought downtown and invested in the neighborhood around Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
And I nearly lost everything, including my wife to leukemia twice and a whole lot of money buying a condo that I tried to sell two decades later. The guy who bought my condo in 2022 is using all of the money he saved from the $250,000 discount to become the Cal Ripken, Jr. of local fans by attending every Orioles home game the rest of his life. (No, I’m not kidding. But, then again, I’m kind of a big baseball, fan too. I’ve also done some crazy things with a sense of purpose using my love of baseball.)
And 30 years after destroying anything any of us would remember as The Oriole Way or Orioles Magic, you paid Peter Angelos’ wife and sons handsomely for a franchise that Sportico industry expert Kurt Badenhausen told my audience was “a depressed asset” at $1.725 billion, which came with $600 million of free money from our citizens in Annapolis to fix up Camden Yards and figure out ways to charge us even more money for less stuff downtown every summer for the foreseeable future.
I’m a citizen. I’m a sports fan. I’m a lifelong media entrepreneur. I won’t bore you with my words about who I am or where I’m from because Greg Landry at Blue Rock Productions and some Baltimore friends and Hall of Fame legends and humans (and the pictures and deeds) can tell you more about me and my work and legacy.
Here’s my resume, my “credentials”:
Get to know me, Mister Rubenstein. Ask for my references. There are hundreds in the video above. It speaks for itself, who I am and who I’ve always been. And even though Brady Anderson once told me that I “should leave Baltimore” when he was an executive in the Angelos baseball tree, I’m not going anywhere.
Not ‘til I die, anyway…
8As I told your handler Ullman, I’m one of the good, honest humans in Baltimore. It’s the only ethos and reputation that would allow me a reason, purpose and the core value to still be here alive and doing this work 40 years after being trained as a newspaper reporter.
And if you loved what Luis Aparicio did on the field at Memorial Stadium back in the 1960s, you should be even more proud of what his family has built off 33rd Street in the media space in Baltimore as a baseball Hall of Fame legacy whose life in America was built around the promise of the sport for a poor Venezuelan family of broken means in a corrupt South American country.
I have made it a life goal to know every business owner and every Baltimore citizen I come into contact with on the streets of the only place I’ve ever called home – and invite them into my non-paywalled media asset here at Baltimore Positive to hear intelligent conversations with impact on the community and collective conversation.
Go back and watch the film above for real truth about who I am and what I’ve always stood for – and never fallen for – in the local media.
I’ve rolled my sleeves up. I seek to lift Baltimore. We support local business, industry and the land of pleasant living.
I don’t discriminate. Neither does the truth about my work and track record.
The facts of my life story are inarguable. I’m proud of the way I’ve lived my life. I walk my talk. And I speak truth to power, which I’m doing right now.
8And no one is cheering for you more than me, especially after what the Angelos group did to baseball in our community, which has always had a natural competitor for hearts, time and money with kids who play lacrosse.
And if I never utter another word or even at the hour of my last breath, just know that I remain fiercely proud of everything “Free The Birds” stood for in 2006 and remained gloriously hopeful then and now – we are Baltimore Positive, after all – that someday, someone “new and different” like you would own the Baltimore Orioles and seek to do what longtime journalist Barry Bloom recommended on my airwaves in the spring: “Patch all those wounds!”
But first things first, David: you have to have the courage to admit that there has been trauma, wrongs to be righted and a new path to make vividly clear with the transparency, integrity and professionalism that has been so sorely lacking here that it’s not even recognized as possible by the Stockholm Syndrome of your fan base.
The bar is extremely low, just like the prices for playoff tickets this week.
And you are extremely wealthy. And wickedly smart, if not wise about your wisdom.
As Hall of Famer Lenny Moore said every time he came on my show: “Kindness doesn’t cost you a penny.”
This letter has nothing to do with winning or losing or how much money you’ll be spending on payroll. You’ll have your own track record on all of that to be examined as it unfolds. And, as you pointed out on that CNBC Squawkbox visit back in June, you and Arougheti and the billionaire partners will only print money in this MLB ownership arrangement because no one ever loses money buying professional sports franchises in North America.
8But the rampant dishonesty and despicable acts of your predecessors is not so far removed by the wins of Mike Elias and Brandon Hyde or the bats of Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman that anyone from around here with any wisdom or perspective – or anyone who can do the math of your baseball financial ceiling vs. the New York Yankees’ payroll over the next 10 years – wouldn’t have a lot of questions about what your intentions are or the real strategy of the baseball franchise moving forward.
No one has given honest, straightforward answers or provided a whit of integrity or accountability or truthfulness around here since Peter Angelos lied to Larry Lucchino and then threw him out in the summer of 1993.
I have been on the radio every single day of it. I was the exhausted radio call-in complaint department for two decades.
Your predecessor John Angelos was actively lying and leveraging the Governor of Maryland just 10 months ago. Then his father died, and you took over quicker than most folks even thought possible, and you immediately started putting yourself into every frame of the brand on MASN broadcasts, commercials, in the stands, behind home plate at road games, looking for more investors to buy $50 million chunks, etc. You win the award for owner giving out free hats and making hype videos and dancing on the dugout.
It’s clear you’re doing everything they tell you to do.
And, at 74, you look like you’re having the time of your life being famous, a hero to the fans and greeted with “It’s an honor to meet you” from everyone wearing an orange cartoon bird and wanting a selfie with your wealth and a photo op with the billionaire who looks like Steve Martin or the fourth character in “Going In Style.”
Hey, Dave, we all wanna be loved, man. I respect the hell out of that. Besides, someone has to own the team? Why not you?
8But don’t bury your head in the sand to the recent past and its impact and significance on the credibility, reason for the empty (or cheap) seats and quite frankly, a slew of less-than-professional or kind behavior inside the walls of The Warehouse that has gone on for as long as I can remember.
I was treated poorly. Always. And long before Free The Birds.
Being mistreated is why I did Free The Birds…
And that was 18 years ago.
Over my three decades in dealing with the emissaries of Peter G. Angelos, this was not considered a bug but far more of a feature – pettiness, anger and retribution. I can only say this: Ask around…
The people currently at the top of your organizational chart were a part of suspending your lead MASN broadcaster for a month last summer for citing open baseball statistics on the team-controlled screen in front of real baseball fans. “Free Kevin Brown” was a movement inside your fan base 14 months ago and a national media disgrace. Oft times the MASN broadcasts (the only way I’m experiencing your brand) have felt more like a hostage infomercial for the cartoon bird instead of the presentation of a baseball game over the years. Jim Palmer (the greatest Orioles player in franchise and there should be no debate) would probably tell you that if you gave him truth serum.
Seriously, we’ll do another whole letter on the Mister Angelos and Sons Network and the future of the Washington Nationals and the business of baseball, streaming, subscriptions and the future of MLB media money in the next “Dear David” salvo. Plenty about digital assets, sponsorships and revenue will also be featured in my forthcoming “Dear Catie” series.
8No one has followed the filthy trail of the MASN money and all of its litigation and lies closer than me over the last 20 years.
My personal mistreatment at the hands of the Angelos team even pre-dates the MASN money gravy train, even before The Oriole Bird assaulted me at a game when I helped sell out the right field stands in a May 2004 promotion that WNST was never fairly compensated for because – and you can ask around – negotiating and shaking hands with anyone with the former regime was often a recipe for disaster, disappointment and frustration.
And that’s even when they did pay the bill without threatening litigation.
Integrity was always optional in dealing with the Baltimore Orioles and far too many times, it wasn’t even expected anymore. The team lost for 14 seasons in a row. I was on the radio every day taking calls from frustrated fans of the franchise. And the Angelos family failed to communicate anything to anyone beyond intimidation or obstinance, and always avoidance.
Peter Angelos sat with me for two hours at The Barn in 1997. It’s the only conversation I ever had with him. It’s a bit of a comedy piece all these years later because most of what he said were lies.
He told me me he “was a very available individual” and never spoke to me again. It became a three-decade punchline.
As Peter Schmuck once presciently said to me but never seemed to write in The Baltimore Sun: “He hated everything he couldn’t control and abused everything he did.” That never left me even when The Baltimore Banner “reported” that Peter G. Angelos “never punched down” in his all-too-kind and semi-fictional biography upon his death back in March.
8This is my personal favorite from our infamous summit:
I’ve had thousands of business transactions as an owner of a radio station and local business since 1991. Sure, I’ve had a handful of deadbeats not pay their bill or dispute money. I dealt with a lot of semi-addled bar owners who ducked paying a bill and a few semi-sober business owners who argued over a few bucks.
But I’ve only had one transaction in my business life where someone tried to actually move a decimal point in a financial transaction knowing it had no integrity. It happened in the spring of 2004. You never forget something so brazenly sleazy, when one of Angelos’ flunkies is on the phone trying to justify that a 2003 promotion that cost $30,000 was somehow only $3,000 for the same media buy in 2004 because of a first-draft typo. And after WNST had already sold 800 tickets for a Friday night game in May. And then I got assaulted by the Oriole Bird in front of my listeners, wife and family in the right field bleachers on the night before the Preakness, already knowing the Orioles were never going to pay their advertising bill.
Two weeks later, I received a certified apology letter from the Baltimore Orioles, literally signed by the cartoon bird. It was signed: “The Bird”
Some of the same humans continue to hover over your current administration two decades later, folks who made sure the Texas Rangers were involved in restricting my legitimate MLB media access this time last year in Arlington for ALDS Game 3. This was literally the last act of the old regime – sitting me and Luke Jones on the roof of the new Rangers stadium and intimidating us both from entering the clubhouse of an elimination game and doing our jobs after flying to Dallas. Only because John Blake has integrity and John Blundell in New York does too, did Luke Jones get a clubhouse badge in the 6th inning.
Me? Well, I got to drink out of the alternate journalistic water fountain. I got sat at the kids’ table in Texas after doing this work for 40 years.
And, as usual, I got sneered at and deemed as “less than an accredited working professional media member” by people I’ve never even met. People who were told by other people that I’m a “Bad Guy” apparently because I didn’t play ball with Peter Angelos 20 years ago when the Orioles were trying to rip off my company in a bad faith deal that remains unforgettable to me in its lack of dignity or integrity.
8But, hell, that was 20 freaking years ago. And the only thing I have to apologize for is the way I treated my friend Mike Flanagan, when he tried to call me the next morning. I was far less than civil to him, probably because we were such good friends. He and I greatly patched things up before his tragedy. But I have never spoken to an Orioles front office communications employee since Greg Bader greeted me under the canopy on Opening Day 2007 and told me that I wasn’t a real media member anymore.
It’s now a year removed from the Arlington disgrace and its playoff time once again and you’re in charge. And folks are asking me why I’m not in the press box this week and why I’ve been getting rejection letters all season when everyone in your fan base knows that I’m qualified and should be professionally accredited by the Baltimore Orioles, especially when the folks at Major League Baseball have never, ever denied me a media credential over 32 years. I also had an Orioles media pass for 21 seasons before Angelos rescinded my pass after “Free The Birds” in 2007.
I am a deceased owner removed and 18 years past “Free The Birds” and I’m still in the orange and black jail, locked out of a citizen-funded stadium and your Games 1 and 2 Wild Card matchup with the Kansas City Royals this week at Camden Yards, while Luke Jones is credentialed.
I’ve been silent all summer, patiently awaiting a chance to write you an appropriately thorough note.
I know it might sound a little like bragging, David, but I’ve been professionally credentialed for 42 World Series games, 15 All Star Games, countless MLB playoff games, etc. over my 40 years of covering baseball professionally. Pat Courtney, John Blundell, Michael Teevan (and Rich Levin before them) and the professionals at Major League Baseball in New York vividly and rightfully see me and WNST Baltimore Positive as a legitimate media entity (just like your franchise has always seen the radio station and web entity as legitimate by having a press pass with Luke Jones’ name on it) and have since last century.
I could literally wallpaper the walls of your office with the thousands of press credentials I’ve been professionally issued since 1984.
8My first Baltimore Orioles media pass was issued in 1986 by Bob Brown and Rick Vaughn and I covered the team on a daily basis for 21 years until Angelos took it in 2007 in a fit of his infamous rage and petty retribution.
That said, owning an FCC license and broadcasting 24 hours day for 26 years and having more than 100,000 local fans follow our work has afforded us the rightful professional status from your Major League Baseball headquarters that sanctions and credentials the ALCS and World Series and any other league event.
I’ll be writing to you and your new No. 2, Catie Griggs quite regularly – because it’s clear neither of you truly know much of anything about Baltimore or its people and you can certainly use my best free advice because it comes from the best possible place, my heart – whether you give me legitimate media credentials or not.
You’re asking me and every Baltimore sports fan I know for our wallets and to become a stakeholder in the “next chapter” Orioles – and I’ll be asking you what that entails in the modern era.
And the fact that you’ll read every word of it – and so will everyone down the hall at The Warehouse – speaks to the fact that I really am a working professional, lifer Baltimore journalist.
Luke Jones being in your press box this week speaks for itself about the legitimacy of WNST-AM 1570 and what we’ve built with community support at Baltimore Positive and our trusted name in news and information.
I cover sports for living. This is all we’ve ever done. And it’s all I’ve ever planned or wanted to do, as “No One Listens; Everyone Hears” promises – be a Baltimore sports journalist.
8David, I am appealing directly to you and your personal integrity in how you will treat the few legitimate local media left in in the city. And I’m also asking the question every local Baltimore Orioles fan should be asking:
How’s it gonna be different with you?
What’s the plan?
…and why should we buy in?
The old ownership (and its representatives in your organization) have been universally directed to mistreat me for more than half of my four decades as a professional journalist and that has led us to the denial – once again – of my Orioles press credentials and a personal mistreatment of me that I really hoped and believed would be ending when I met with Chris Ullman on Opening Day.
Instead, I have been led down a path of continued bad faith by the present Baltimore Orioles. I’m still locked out.
And that orange road leads to you, David.
8In a season of great promise and hope for the fans who approach me every time I leave my home, they all say the same thing around Baltimore:
“You’re going to get your press credentials back, right? The Rubenstein people are going to treat you the right way, right?”
Well, I believed that in April…
And why wouldn’t I?
I did “Free The Birds” eighteen years ago waiting for you…
Things were going to be different under your regime, right?
Instead, I was denied media credentials at Camden Yards throughout April and then told via email that my credentials were “under review,” which I later learned was a less-than-honest and quite familiar corporate trash way of being full of malarkey.
8As I wrote to John Harbaugh last week, you can treat me like a chump but that doesn’t make me one.
I was hosed off for six weeks “under review” and then received a text that Mr. Ullman would make himself available – and only via phone, when I had repeatedly and wholeheartedly agreed to “off the record and not-on-the-internet” and pressed several times to visit his out-of-town home to have a private coffee and face-to-face chat to tell him what I know about four decades of doing this work in Baltimore.
I eagerly wanted to legitimately and quietly discuss my professional working status with the new ownership group face-to-face. Like good people. Like grown-ups. Like citizens. Like a civic partner on behalf of the city.
But, David – on your behalf – Ullman was disinterested in any real relationship or conversation. He refused to sit with me.
And from the moment we got on the phone, it was quite apparent this was quite the muscularly performative corporate speaker phone set up call. I wondered how many times it was rehearsed as it was in progress. And I quickly realized as I was being treated like a chump (I’m from Dundalk, David, I’m a smart guy) that this “series of memos” emanated from the desk of humans in the previous regime.
When you’ve watched as much awful and hopeless Orioles baseball as me – and watched the Washington Nationals win a World Series while Angelos withheld most of their media money and wrecked their broadcasts – satire and comedy are all you can possibly have left to offer.
I had to discuss this publicly every day for 14 years while Peter Angelos printed money, hid and lied his ass off:
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I always joke with my friends that since 2004 I am the “brown sheep” of the Orioles family, because I’m of Venezuelan descent. I would’ve said I’d been “blackballed” by the Angelos folks (that’s the word every listener uses to my face – blackballed, certainly an ugly word) but I’m not African American, like Curt Flood or Colin Kaepernick. I’m Hispanic.
Of course, I would say all of this tongue-in-cheek except that I’m the only sports reporter of Latino heritage that I’ve ever met in Baltimore media. And I’m not the billion-dollar baseball franchise that builds self-congratulating, sponsored promotions around “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and “National Hispanic Heritage Month” and “El Béisbol Es Otra Cosa” – and then bans people like me from doing my job at your publicly funded stadium with $600 million more coming your way to build a shiny orange-themed bird disco, move the press box to left field and eliminate the seats that once housed Free The Birds in Sections 382-84-86-88.
The Baltimore Orioles are doing this to me now.
This isn’t about Peter Angelos. He’s dead and gone.
You’re now the one banning a legitimate media member under false pretenses and, quite frankly, bad faith left over from the previous ownership that you should be running like hell from if you really know any of the history of the reputation and deeds of Peter G. Angelos.
His reputation should not be yours. You shouldn’t want that for yourself or the Baltimore Orioles.
David, in a general sense and from a place of civic decency, you and your people should have to answer questions and stand up once or twice a year and be accountable to your fans, customers and the many citizens who have paid the freight for the Baltimore Orioles and for decades of mismanagement and overall civic abandonment – on and off the field.
8That is what Catie Griggs will find this offseason when her new sales team goes door-to-door in our community and asks for premium money that you will tell the fans will go back into payroll and keeping the team playoff-worthy on the field. And of course, you’ll mention your philanthropy.
I’ve gotten dozens of missives in recent weeks about the Birdland membership rewards complaints, shrinkage and your folks trying to extract more money from the current fan base who paid for Mark Trumbo and Chris Davis and endured five years of the worst baseball on the planet.
Griggs will soon find out the real economic reality of the Baltimore sports marketplace – if she’s really here to stay and not just onto the next corporate search gig in professional sports after you get the All Star Game and (hopefully) get Janet Marie Smith’s folks here at Canopy involved in rebuilding the perimeter of Camden Yards so we can pay even more for VIP and premium things, colder beer and hotter hot dogs and all gamble on every pitch on our mobile devices.
You can Google “Dear John Vidalin” and “Orioles” and I outlined a myriad of business challenges in Baltimore six years ago when the brand was entering the new rock bottom. And Sashi Brown is still out in Owings Mills counting all of the NFL money that falls off the generous tree of the shield in his job-for-life with the shielded and wildly-profitable-no-matter-what Bisciotti enterprise of purple international mystery.
I know you and Arougheti think this franchise can throw off a lot more money, profit and upside with your immense wisdom and investment. Not to mention the $600 million our Maryland citizens have gifted you. Maybe you did a study that told you that Baltimore has more money for baseball than I already know it has?
But you also bought a depressed baseball team with an aging out and lily White fan base, a crumbling media portfolio and no semblance of an industry strategy other than charging current fans more money and fighting with Scott Boras about how much money you can hide from the MLBPA in baseball’s original Garden of Eden.
But back to my very disappointing and discouraging conversation with The World’s Greatest Whistler (it was quite impressive, I must say) Chris Ullman – it wasn’t really a chat as much as it was an inquisition, a series of accusations and a reflective intimidation session over the phone, after I offered face-to-face communication very politely several times.
8Ullman didn’t call me in May to be polite or communicate in good faith. Your emissary called me to intimidate me and restrict me as the first act of your ownership – to put me in my place, upon the orders of the ghost of Angelos’ pleasure.
I told Ullman that I was profoundly disappointed that he would refuse to meet personally while restricting my access – and I meant it. I haven’t heard from him since, which tells me all that I need to know about my value and worth.
The silence speaks very loudly for itself.
All I get are automated rejection letters. I’ve already been rejected for the ALCS and World Series games that you have yet to even qualify for this month:
Your folks never had any intention of giving me a legitimate press credential because they were already poisoned by the Angelos people who were groomed to dislike me.
In May, Ullman read the script and even got performatively more angry and disappointed during the call when I didn’t feign being contrite enough, which I found really quite bizarre because he doesn’t even know me well enough to be that emotional about me and I certainly never raised my voice. You might want to get to know me before you try to shame me?
I was accused of accusing your employees of “racism” because I happen to be the only Venezuelan and/or Latino who is being denied a credential while my Caucasian employee is allowed access. (I kinda thought that almost-tongue-in-cheek pointing out my lineage is more-than-fair-game when your marketing department builds an entire platform around including people of my heritage as “equitable” and “included” whilst I drank from an alternate professional fountain in Arlington last October and do every day as a blackballed media member since 2007 without an explanation and my employee has to work twice as hard or WNST doesn’t have a reporter at your games and press conferences.)
8I don’t lead with the information that I’m of Venezuelan descent; I lead with the fact that I’m a career professional journalist.
Chris Ullman buried the lead.
There’s only 40 years of evidence of my professional work as a Baltimore reporter but we never got to the facts that I’m a legitimate journalist because Ullman was insisting that I…
“Don’t listen, which is why the Ravens threw me out…” It felt like somebody might’ve been on the phone with Chad Steele comparing notes. And for what it’s worth, Steele has never accused me of not listening; he’s never wanted to be heard, which is part of the problem.
“Am not contrite enough” to get my credentials back. I need to be sorry about something I did or said when all I’ve ever stated are facts and held accountable the humans (not named Angelos) whose names are on the executive ledger as management in charge of credentials and communication. The same people who send me rejection letters that I have literally never spoken to in my modern professional career because they’re not allowed to speak to me or know me. No one inside the Baltimore Orioles organization has returned a call or offered any communication with me since 2004. I’m not sure even how to hold people accountable who are hiding and don’t return phone calls or care to communicate. And worked for a checked-out billionaire owner who loved it that way and demanded it because he famously hated me far more than they did because he couldn’t control me and I wouldn’t lie for him.
“Was under review” (like I was applying for a paid job) and that I should’ve somehow been self-editing my thoughts, truth, experiences and words so that your franchise would find me impressive enough and acceptable as a real media member after doing this work every day for 33 years. This reminds me of when Kevin Byrne told me that I should send Chad Steele “my clips” back in 2019. It’s too comical to be truly insulting. As one of your longtime Orioles insider employees (and former journalist and colleague of mine) said to me when I told him I was “under review” when I saw him at an Orioles-Yankees afternoon game back in April:
“What the hell does that even mean?”
8It sure felt on my side like Ullman attempting to get 20 years of Greg Bader’s angst out on his behalf in 20 minutes back in May.
I can promise you this: I offered Ullman a friendly and quiet private coffee and gave him a hug with tears in my eyes on Opening Day telling him that I wanted a fresh start and face-to-face reality chat. I followed up for weeks.
And seven weeks later and 20 minutes into this speakerphone call where he kept performatively assuring me that Jennifer Grondahl is Hispanic and Kerry Watson is African American (I’ve never met either of them and had never heard of Mr. Watson) so therefore I should never mention that I’m of Hispanic heritage because there is no possible way that “discrimination” could be the reason that I’m being discriminated against for not having a media pass with the Baltimore Orioles.
After he scolded me a few times and told me that I needed to be more contrite in order to be considered a real media member, I conceded and played along that he now had totally convinced me that this has nothing to do with Luke Jones being Caucasian and me being Venezuelan or of Hispanic heritage.
And how dare I ever think that after what happened in the Arlington press box last October in front of my shaken employee.
To “discriminate” against someone means to treat that person differently, or less favorably, for some reason.
I don’t know the “reason” but it’s been going on for 18 years. I’ve never been given a reason.
8And, for the record, I’ve never called any employee of the Orioles a racist. I’m the guy without the press credential and when people ask me, “Why?” I tell them they should ask your people why Luke Jones is allowed access and Nestor Aparicio isn’t. (And I can assure you that I have certainly had plenty of friends of Latin and Hispanic heritage who have wondered how in the world y’all are getting away with banning me and why you’d want the optics of it.)
Then, of course, I asked him the most important question: “Well, then I fully accept that it’s not because I’m Venezuelan, so if that’s not the case then let’s get to the bottom of why don’t I have a media credential and haven’t had one for 18 years at Camden Yards?”
“What do you want me to tell my audience when they ask me why David Rubenstein, a billionaire who hosts a talk show in media – and whom I’ve never met – won’t allow a legitimate lifelong Baltimore sports media member access to professionally cover the Baltimore Orioles but allows his employee, Luke Jones?”
He thought it through and said: “TELL YOUR LISTENERS IT’S BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN ABUSIVE TO THE EMPLOYEES OF THE BALTIMORE ORIOLES!!!”
I assured him on that May afternoon that he really didn’t want me to communicate that to my audience on the radio or social media after what Peter Angelos has done to this community. And especially if it’s coming from his former employees in regard to a personal account of my integrity or work.
I encouraged him to rethink that as a completely unacceptable – and completely untrue – public retort to my audience and your fan base and mutual customers after what we’ve endured as a community with the losing, the awfulness and the lies of the last 30 years from the previous ownership.
But, again, Christopher Ullman doesn’t know the strike zone from the bullpen, a balk from a walk. He knows nothing about baseball, cared to know nothing about me – he told me to stop talking several times – and was simply fulfilling your highly compensated corporate role as “fixer” of long-haired Dundalk problem children in the media like me that might want to press you on your billions of dollars and intentions for Baltimore and hold you accountable for your words and deeds across a lot of outbound platforms.
8I thought this would be different. So did everyone who knows me, listens to my show, reads my work or loves me or my partners and people.
If you tell the truth, there is no access. If you want access, you can’t tell the truth. Quite the vicious circle.
If there is one thing that my wisdom has learned over a lifetime, it’s this: integrity only comes in two sizes:
Yes.
And no.
The latter always bums me out – but I do recognize when I see it.
There are hard truths and easy lies. Your predecessors always chose Plan B and because they made $50 million a year for 30 years just for having the lights on, they still think they hit a triple off the wall after being born on third base. I know this much: the Angelos boys are in the clubhouse counting your billion seven thinking they hit a walk-off grand slam, because they did.
8And now you’re gonna give us the bill for it because it wasn’t cheap and it’s a business.
David, I am a member of the Baltimore baseball community whether you want me to be or not. As a small local business borne of a legacy AM radio station in Towson, I only still exist because my integrity has never allowed me to lie to my customers or yours. And I never backed down from the old man, even when he tried to silence me, cancel me and my company and called me names to deny my credibility. And even when he directed his people to try to move a decimal point on a $30,000 transaction two decades ago.
First of all, I should be in the press box this week and every week.
And you should be transparent (and having your people treat good people like me better).
So, what’s the plan?
What do you want me to say on the radio and internet about your intentions, your money, your ego, your real strategy for what kind of owner you’re going to be for the Baltimore Orioles.
When are you going to answer some questions in Baltimore for folks who don’t work for you or are intimidated by you or controlled by the money and power and influence you control?
8You have to win me over, not the other way around. I’m a customer. A really traumatized and abused one who never left watching and reporting on baseball and wants to come back – spiritually, physically, verbally, socially – in every way from decades of an Angelos mantra and dogma that was gravely misaligned with my integrity and that of the community.
Catie Griggs will find out.
Like other Baltimore baseball fans, I have time now that the pace of play has been adjusted. I can afford a $20 ticket. I want to be at Camden Yards. I have the innate love of baseball; my last name is Aparicio.
I also have an audience that has long witnessed my professional abuse at the hands of the Angelos family.
Angelos called me a “very unimportant person with delusions of grandeur.”
I’ll own that.
He was right.
8We were all unimportant in the Orioles Kingdom – and we felt it.
But, I’m not here to coach integrity to the lost souls of the deeds and will of Peter G. Angelos. He’s gone. I’m still here. The team is still here. And the future needs to be documented, questioned, challenged, addressed and measured every October.
I’m good in any conversation where you’re not trying to intimidate me or my position based on access to promote your baseball team. And please don’t lie to me about any issue – including my own legitimacy as a journalist in Baltimore, Maryland in 2024 after doing this work for 40 years.
If you tell me that I’m not a real journalist when you know that I am, it kind of starts us off on footing that I’m not willing to accept as a first step.
It’s not honest.
It’s bad faith, gaslighting.
And that has far too much in common with your predecessor for my tastes and wallet.
8I’m still here telling the truth and supporting everything that supports Baltimore.
I serve, like the old commissioner of Major League Baseball, “in the best interest of the fans.”
You can tell The Whistler that I’m looking forward to his next National Anthem performance next summer at Camden Yards, where I can witness its greatness and patriotism from the press box and give it another “A+ Dan Connolly grade” on the internet and social media.
And, whilst I don’t really think you discriminate against Venezuelans – I mean, c’mon you’re going to need my hermano Albert Suarez this month if you’re going to win the World Series – please tell Ullman that he should truly respect that I’m his best ally; not an enemy.
As I told him – and would’ve gladly expounded upon if he would’ve taken the free, tasty coffee meeting if not to just wisely bleed me for intelligent intelligence and what Brian Billick always called “unfiltered” information – I was the one who didn’t play kayfabe and go along with the garbage of Angelos for 30 years.
Because I was a citizen. Because I was a journalist. Because I was a lifelong fan who watched Bob Irsay march the Colts out of Baltimore in 1984 in my first months as a cub reporter and intern on the sports desk at the newspaper surrounded by professionals, smart people.
I spent my teenage years surrounded by human bullshit detectors – copy editors and reporters who held everyone accountable to facts. It was almost like being a cop or a lawyer and having Joe Friday on my shoulder. Investigate everything. Believe nothing. Verify truth. Ask more questions.
8David, lots of people were mistreated, humiliated, felt ripped off, and felt no way to “punch back” on King Peter. Many baseball fans went away and stayed away or went elsewhere with their time and money, someplace that wasn’t so brazenly hopeless and utterly joyless – not to mention pricey.
Don’t bury your head in the sand about what Catie Griggs is going to find in our community in trying to build the financial portfolio, brand and footprint of the Baltimore Orioles.
Everyone was mistreated here and it went far beyond the dogshit product that was on the field. The arrogance off the field was a feature, not a bug in the hearts and mind of the previous administration. The old, “You’ll be begging me for tickets when we make the playoffs” mentality for a franchise that everyone watched be torched to the ground.
The fans felt humiliated. Mike Flanagan committed suicide. The franchise was a disgrace in every measurable way. Brooks Robinson was even chased away for many years. And the Baltimore Ravens won two Super Bowls and took all of the sports dollars across the parking lot 25 years ago.
There’s a reason Cal Ripken wasn’t behind home plate twice a week the past two decades. You two are pals, now, so I’m sure he’s got some unfiltered information of his own to provide but he wisely removed himself for long stretches to go live his life and be happy. The wise ones, did…
David, you need all of us…
Especially the people in the empty seats.
8Even the “very unimportant people” whom Peter Angelos hated and abused for sport because it made him feel powerful and important and masculine.
Please be better and different than Peter Angelos.
Ullman kept pressing me to be contrite. I’m pressing you to be a good human and accountable to the fans of whom you’re asking a lot of their hearts, wallets and time whilst you limo in and out and sit somewhere to be seen and give a papal wave and throw out free swag.
You can’t guarantee them a World Series or that you’ll sign every free agent but you can splash them with true accountability, which is free of charge. Throw them truth and integrity, not just free hats when those MASN cameras and Orioles dot commers you own and control are rolling on you.
And tell Greg Bader, if he wants to have “inclusivity” nights to please include some real media with real questions. I loudly and publicly applaud him for his work on all of the Orioles Pride and inclusion. I’m on his team every June – every day, really, for equality. So, now, include me. As I told Chris Ullman, I have a lot of pride, too!
And, David, find some people who will challenge you to improve the Orioles – not genuflect at your wealth, power, influence and grace who’ll tell you how green and beautiful all of those empty seats are on school nights.
The stadium is too empty most of the time when you’re not giving out a bobblehead. Let’s change that!
8And certainly, in a human fashion with relationships, I have received my last phone call from anyone representing the Baltimore Orioles who is going to offer me an “off the record” conversation where I will be privately intimidated in order to have public access.
I’ll be 56 years old next week. I have no energy to fight with you or anyone who hates me because I told the truth about Peter Angelos.
My Orioles banishment for being a “Bad Guy” is on the record – and I get asked about it every day of my life by people who know I’m not a bad guy at all.
Your franchise doesn’t truly offer me press credentials.
My “credentials” were built in the streets of this community over 40 years of reporting straight truth to my listeners and readers. I hope you offer me the professional accreditation you offer my fantastic reporter and baseball historian Luke Jones and every other legitimate sports media member in this city – except me.
If the truth is your friend, then I am your soulmate.
I am not your agitator or your aggressor. I am simply one of the few local real baseball people left who will hold you accountable for your words, deeds and actions.
8I ask questions, professionally.
I will be your conscience in this space either way because I’m watching.
We all are…
I’ll be watching from over here unless I’m invited to be over there in good faith with an open heart.
But I’m not going anywhere.
My name is Nestor Aparicio. My Venezuelan cousin played a little baseball here in Baltimore. I am what’s left behind. I hope to see you at the ballpark sometime soon with the access and respect that a lifetime of professional credentials deserve and warrant.
I hope to cover the Orioles professionally, just like all of my colleagues in the local media.
8But I won’t be begging you or kissing your ass or lying for you to obtain it or maintain it.
I’m still “under review” and denied credentials.
You’re still “under review” by every fan of the Baltimore Orioles and every citizen who chipped in $600 million toward your $1.725 billion asset.
Be a better person and a better baseball owner than Peter Angelos.
The past does not equal the future.
Step up to the plate, David.
Be the noise for truth and decency. Make “The Next Chapter” a truly inclusive one.
