Dear Eric DeCosta: Do I deserve to be? Is that the question? And if so, who answers?

“Son, have I got a little story for you! Is there something wrong? Well, of course there is. Hey, I’m still alive…just out on the porch. Hear my name. Take a good look. This could be the day.”

Dear Eric:

It’s been two years and countin’ since your Baltimore Ravens “family” C­­had Steele diagnosed me as “not a real media member” – put me in my place – out on the purple porch, where the beer just isn’t as cold and the hot dogs aren’t as delectably tasty as they are inside the perimeter of the newly constructed (and citizen-funded) Blackwing airport lounge erected at the 50-yard line club level in what used to be the called the press box.

That is the area of the publicly-funded stadium where folks like me hold folks like you accountable.

Clearly you remember the air we tasted and breathed in that area back when I was a real media member for three decades?

Back before the downsized “Kevin Byrne Press Box” was paid for by the citizens and state of Maryland in the corner end zone, when we sat between the hashes less than 20 feet away from each other in the fourth quarter at virtually every Ravens game ever played. Since I bought my four Poor Suckers Licenses and pimped out for 5,000 other citizens in Sections 512-513-514 to give Baltimore the ball back in 1996.

Of course, what-always-should-have-been-called “The John Steadman Press Box” had a seated area with one of the best views in the modern NFL for the media back then – and even really important guys like you took questions from a legitimate local press corps and even stood in line amongst us great unwashed for the halftime nachos and chicken tenders because you were trying to build Art Modell’s football franchise the right way in my community.

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Today, I wanted to share a few memories, and pictures washed in black (and purple), to jog your memory…since the last time I approached you in Florida back in March, flanked by Steve Bisciotti, you seemed to not recognize my face.

Lifetimes are catching up with me.

Not to mention the dozens of visits you made on my airwaves dating back to last century as your budding career as a football scout and “rising star” would lead you to always want to remain in Baltimore with your wife and family for the long haul. I know how many jobs you turned down.

I know how important the Baltimore Ravens are to you. It’s all you’ve ever done.

And this is all I’ve ever done.

Memories like fingerprints.

We are far-from-strangers after meeting almost 28 years ago, even though over the last 15 years you’ve not really been allowed permission to be so “public” about acknowledging my existence. We were a secret thing, you and me; Baltimore lifer sports reporter and NFL lifer sports executive.

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“Great friends” you have called us many times.

It was better for you that way. It was fine for me that way.

How much difference did it make?

Clearly, I remember that uncomfortable-for-you late night phone call in the spring of 2009 – how could I forget after a dozen years of you asking me, “Hey, Nasty, when am I coming back on your show?” and the every April “What time are you showing up on Friday to do the draft pick envelopes?” – when you were told by “upstairs” that you could no longer come on my show. As I recall, you were pretty shook up, and knowing WBAL’s absolute disdain for me and John Harbaugh’s paranoia about most everything on earth and WJZ’s investment in FM sports radio and the birth of Michele Andres’ media department inside your Castle, it was a business decision.

A giant international football business looking to shut you down and off a small, local radio business that served Baltimore Ravens fans unique information to stoke their fandom and expertise.

Sure, I was disappointed, but why scream my lungs out till it fills the room?

Besides, how much difference would it make?

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I didn’t need you for me to live.

And I listen from both sides of a friend because we were neighbors. My god it’s been so long, our wives know each other from our days of being newlyweds in Federal Hill. I saw the birth of your children and mourned the loss of your father-in-law, who always loved me. We have spent hundreds of hours interacting literally all over the country. Breakfasts. Lunches. Dinners. Drinks. Late night drinks. We’ve even chosen to sit together on multiple occasions back when Southwest Airlines truly invited us freely to move about the country. I had A. You had B. I saved you a seat. We drove together with our wives to the final game in the history of Dallas Stadium. And we always talked about doing that Pearl Jam show together at Madison Square Garden.

But now here you are, and here I am.

Eric, I looked through my hundreds of text threads and you have called me a “friend” dozens of times – your word, unsolicited. Your assurance of our state of love and trust and our “relationship” over three decades and, basically, being the “Deep Throat” and conscience (and fact checker) for Purple Reign 2: Faith, Family and Football, which turned out to be a “happy ending” fairy tale book of semi-fiction about the character and integrity of your organization in winning Super Bowl XLVII.

We privately sat for a couple dozen hours in the spring of 2013 compiling the only book that will ever be written to chronicle Ray Lewis, Joe Flacco, Ed Reed, Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh and that incredible gathering of purple humanity in New Orleans. Sorry you missed the glorious civic parade down Poydras before the game that day, but 10,000 other people were there in the most glorious moments in a long lifetime of Baltimore sports fandom that might never be peaked.

But, as you know, hearts and thoughts fade away.

I see that you showed up last week in your official title of General Manager for what remains of the “approved” media for your NFL-mandated kickoff leadership scrum and once again showed that you’ve perfected the art of saying absolutely nothing of value to the fan base. Even though, unlike in the days of MarTay Jenkins, you know all the real answers and have all of the power in your building.

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Well, whatever Sashi Brown and John Harbaugh aren’t trying to usurp from you when the shades go down.

But, it’s your blood. Your show.

I know this much: you’ll get the blame before you get the credit but at least you’ll know you’re in charge. It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf, all alone at the top.

And I’ve been waiting, watchin’ the clock knowing it’s not going to stop and another exciting season of Baltimore Ravens football is here. As I do every day here, and have since I fought (and paid) for the franchise to be stolen by John Moag and our city and state taxpayers back in 1996, assessing the moves and plays and ways of your very important, significant and profitable National Football League team. And, as always, fairly, professionally and without discrimination or prejudice conducting myself here via video, audio, radio, podcasts and my best words of expert analysis from a lifetime of doing this work.

No human has covered or invested more money or human capital in covering the Baltimore Ravens better than me – or us, over my lifetime and the birth of WNST in May of 1998, when you came to The Barn as the apple of Phil Savage’s eye and the next son-to-be of Steve Bisciotti and little brother of Ozzie Newsome.

The pictures kept remind me.

And whilst I’m alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out, I am more prepared to do my job than I have ever been in holding you and all of the Baltimore Ravens’ power accountable for your bad faith words, deeds and actions in regard to my professional credentials and legitimacy as an accredited member of the Baltimore media corps.

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Even though I’m not really considered a “professional” journalist after 40 years because Chad Steele said so. He even told the NFL that.

As my dear friend and your esteemed one-time colleague Marvin Lewis said to me on the eve of one of his many firings in Cincinnati that never happened: “As coaches, we don’t get dumber. We really do get smarter.”

So do journalists, despite reputations being first stripped and then stabbed.

My audience has never been larger. My work has never been better. The reach of WNST-AM 1570, which was just 5,000 watts of local audio-only back in 1998, now goes all over the world here at Baltimore Positive.

You and Steve Bisciotti – and Chad Steele and John Harbaugh and Sashi Brown – can hide from me like this is a high school prank, and cackle and point at me as the village chump and harmless little f*** and pretend I’m dead. But I’m not.

I speak in class – and with class – every day.

I’m still alive…

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So is my audience.

So why go home now?

And there are more than 100,000 folks who follow our work (without a paywall) every day for trusted news and analysis about your five billion dollar football team and a myriad of other important issues and the people who make up the real place we live: Baltimore.

My legendary WNST Baltimore Positive reporter Luke Jones, the Pro Football Writers Association of America’s local chapter poohbah who presents the team’s MVP award each year, is still allowed on your campus daily to do his job in sourcing and reporting the best information – and most importantly, real expert insight into whatever the Baltimore Ravens are doing on and off the field.

This is how we feed our families. This is what we do for a living. This is all we’ve ever done.

And, like you, there’s pressure and focus and scrutiny on my work every day. Your owner pointed out the typos in my rushed-to-the-publisher book a dozen years. I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now. I fixed them here if you want to read the book we worked on together a dozen years ago when the important people in your organization had respect for the unimportant people from Dundalk like me who have supported (and worse, believe in the integrity) of your organization, mantra and mission in our community.

I didn’t even bother to edit all of the platitudes to Ray Rice, or my portrayal of Matt Birk as sane.

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Like you with Earl Thomas, we all make mistakes.

But we cover the games and the sports scene and the city better than anyone. Just click anywhere on this website.

Clearly, I remember how your “Hall of Fame” head coach ran the ball three times in losing the AFC Championship Game eight months ago. And how Lamar played. And what a long offseason it was here in Baltimore.

How could I forget?

But this long overdue letter isn’t about that ­– or your chances of earning your way back to see the Kansas City Chiefs again in January after losing to them to begin the season on Thursday night in another road game where WNST didn’t have a reporter in the locker room asking Marlon Humphrey how the ball went over his head or John Harbaugh about the offensive line penalties.

This isn’t about football.

Whether Nate Wiggins was a great draft pick and the current and future value of Kyle Hamilton and Rashod Bateman will reveal itself on the field and in every word we write and say this season.

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This isn’t about your ability to manipulate the salary cap or find a pass rusher or identify and sign a two-time MVP quarterback. I will be evaluating your football acumen – and your offensive line – on a daily basis around here because it’s what I do professionally.

I’ve professionally covered every game in the existence of the Baltimore Ravens.

That won’t change.

Eric, you’re a helluva football evaluator. You came 60 minutes away from another Super Bowl last year. The Baltimore Ravens are a legitimate Super Bowl contender on the field, so much so that none of these games over the next four months will matter if you don’t go back to the AFC Championship Game and win it. Half the city has held hotel rooms in New Orleans.

This long overdue missive is about your billion-dollar football franchise and how it conducts itself behind closed doors with people like me – a good local human, business owner, faithful lifelong PSL holder, traveling fan, an honest ambassador for your brand who believes in holding it accountable far beyond the level of a sycophant fan who doesn’t remember Bob Irsay or the Baltimore Colts in Mayflower vans stealing our franchise in the middle of the night – or what your league has done to Colin Kaepernick or allowed Daniel Snyder to get away with for years in Washington. Or maybe how our old pal Terry got treated in the desert?

This is about humans, businesses, community and how good people doing a professional job should be treated by your arrogant “brand manager.”

And what is right and wrong.

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As I wrote to you privately three years ago this week, when I flew to Las Vegas as one of three Baltimore media members traveling with the team post-COVID and your head coach took the podium for a post-game press conference for a crowd of one – instead of three – the way your franchise behaves regarding the humans who spend their lives diligently chronicling the news and puffing up you and everything about your franchise, sport and league is disgraceful.

In four decades, it has devolved from friendly and professional-yet-sometimes-necessarily acrimonious to unnecessarily abusive and into a very one-way, one-sided and ego driven game of immature, unprofessional behavior.

The pettiness should embarrass all of you.

And it has nothing to do with any strained feelings about tangibly leaked true information or, worse, inaccurate “fake news” being reported by credible sources about athletes or strategies. Certainly not by me or my media organization.

In New Orleans, after two decades as the head coach of the Saints, Sean Payton took the entire media contingent out for a dinner and a Bourbon Street bender to show professional respect for those who held him accountable. And he was involved in some goon trash in Louisiana and got thrown out of the NFL for a long minute. He showed emotional intelligence and gratitude for the work of good, expert, hard-working humans doing honest – and often difficult and underappreciated by the audience and fans – work. The NOLA media appreciated the spirit of Payton’s connection to make a memory because I know a few of them.

In Owings Mills, in the aftermath of the Ray Rice fiasco and the cover up, there’s this insane internal disposition – led by the obstinance of Bisciotti, arrogance of Steele and paranoia of Harbaugh – that, like Earl Weaver once famously said of umpires, we’re only there to completely f*** you.

I find that baseline ideology especially amusing given my age and wisdom and the SpongeBob-soft and quickly evaporating local Baltimore media that I chronicled two years ago.

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Besides, as you know and have candidly written to me, that’s never the business we’ve ever been about at WNST.

I could share our hundreds of very lengthy text threads over a lifetime. I’ve been reading them for three years and shaking my head at the twisted words and what all of you have become after knowing you for almost three decades.

Facts matter. Truth matters. Integrity matters.

Bro, no one I’ve ever known reads more books than you.

You are far too smart to act this dumb. And I’m far too intelligent and Dundalk street-smart to accept your obvious bullshit.

Today, I’m giving you the long overdue letter of truth that you richly deserve. This is a message that I attempted to deliver – privately and personally, face to face – back in Florida in March, but you and Steve Bisciotti thought it was better to pretend you’ve never met me in your life.

I waited up in the dark for you to speak to me. In the low light.

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You guys, literally, ran from me!

The waiting drove me mad. But, of course, I thought you were a better man.

Your last texts (among literally thousands over the years) said:

“I don’t pretend to understand this conflict between you and the Ravens and I’m too old to pick sides.”

This was after four months earlier, in a nearly three-hour, extensive coffee chat in Owings Mills – and 90% of it was about my concerns about Steele personally targeting me and all of the evidence I would present you, not who you were targeting in the April 2021 draft – your last words to me (after a few humorous and cautionary words that Sashi Brown wouldn’t be picking any football players for the Baltimore Ravens):

“No one is going to take your press pass, man. That is not going to happen.”

For two years now, my Caucasian employee has been granted access to do his job – our job at WNST Baltimore Positive, and the primary role we’ve filled in covering the Ravens for the fan base for three decades. I am the only Hispanic sports journalist in the history of the city to do this work. (Please make sure your PR crew emails over this year’s press release next month when the NFL screws up Hispanic Heritage Month selling football in Mexico with an eñe on the logo. And make sure I get all of the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” press releases that I’m inequitably excluded from since Chad Steele had me blackballed through the entire league.)

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I have been targeted and banned by one of your senior executives at the pleasure of his billionaire owner.

Openly and unabated after a lifetime of legitimate work.

And you were in on every piece of the information from the very beginning – because you were intentionally made aware of every fact by me repeatedly for years because you always liked knowing and deeply respected what I thought of your football team – and you know the way I’ve been treated is wrong.

So does your wife, because I told her in front of you in Palm Beach.

Your text to me on July 27, 2022, after Steele informed me that I’m not a real Baltimore sports media member after 38 years:

“I haven’t been silent. I told them that there needs to be some other solution.”

Except, well, there hasn’t been one…

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Has there?

After that, I saw things clearer. You could’ve tuned in, but you tuned out. Oh, power!

But let’s go back to Las Vegas and the rearviewmirror three years ago, when the world was dusting off after a plague rendered the planet all-but-shut down for 18 months – back when folks were trying to extend kindness toward fellow citizens as the world opened up:

Sept. 14, 2021: “Well, I’d like to think if I can find three decent running backs in five hours last Thursday, I can help with some of these issues.”

Dec. 22, 2021: “Your text about Chad is obviously concerning. Regarding tickets, we’ve had our best year ever selling tickets, suites, sponsorship etc.   made more money than any other year by millions.”

On Feb. 23, 2022, we convened over coffee together for nearly three hours in Owings Mills with your assurance that your franchise had far more internal integrity than to think of “whacking” the credentials, access and professional reputation of a local media member and member of the business community in Baltimore who supported the Ravens since before they were a rumor or an embryo.

On March 30, 2022: After my organization was banned by Steele from being a part of the media questioning for Bisciotti in West Palm Beach. “I hope we can make it better.”

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You might say I “trusted the process” of your leadership, and certainly that of Harbaugh (who really runs the place), to quietly sit down and be honest about what was going on. I stood, arms outstretched, looking to rectify the situation privately because covering the Ravens has always been a primary, foundational part of my career and business.

On May 10, 2022, you agreed via text to come on my show “in July” for the first time in well over a decade. Steele, as part of all of the Trumpian gaslighting and lying he did at my lunch the month before, had comically accused me of not being interested in covering the Ravens. “I’ll tell Chad. It’ll probably cause problems with WBAL and I’ll have to do a segment with them as well which seems to be the policy. But that’s fine.”

As I told you over our coffee chat, Kevin Byrne’s soft policy in the Bisciotti era was to change the policy anytime he felt like it – and then tell you about it after you broke the new unwritten rule you didn’t know about. Like when you evaporated in 2009 after doing my show regularly. Just like Harbaugh hated the players’ shows on my radio station and they ended – until the team owned them and placed them elsewhere. Just like Bisciotti “changed his mind” the night he decided to fire Brian Billick, which began our little fairy tale book story a dozen years ago.

Kevin Byrne hired and sanctioned every facet of Chad Steele’s rise to King of The Castle.

Byrne knew all about the plot to exterminate me.

He’s the reason I knew about it and brought it to you, Harbaugh and Cass. I told you that at breakfast.

On July 26, 2022, I was informed by Chad Steele that it was time to emancipate me from being a real professional media member. It was one of the first phone conversations of my life with him. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. The Senior Vice President of Communications for the Baltimore Ravens communicates like Pratt Street: one way.

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You texted me: “Chad called me. The decision was made without my involvement.  Chad doesn’t work for me—he reports to Sashi. I am not involved in any decisions that PR makes other than those that involve my staff and me. He notified me and said you’d probably reach out to me.”

The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got for me. Every text in my phone shows that. And it doesn’t even show the hours I spent privately with executives all making millions of dollars annually who feigned power, support, information and, most importantly, an unwavering willingness to do the right thing.

Privately. The way it should be.

Instead…

Petty retaliation. Gaslighting. Cowardice. Lies.

And “picking sides”…like high school.

That’s how the real Baltimore Ravens do business with lifelong local journalists they don’t like when they don’t like the questions.

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It’s disturbing that you are in the circle of trust in running the place ­– in the position of the highest leadership on the organization chart in the building as senior leadership – and are trying to convince me you can’t act on what you (and virtually everyone with a brain or any professionalism in this industry or this city) knows is dead wrong.

And the last time you looked into my eyes, I was waiting for Stevie.

Despite us living six miles apart in Baltimore County, I had traveled many miles to see you six months ago. I was out on the porch of the Orlando NFL Owners Meetings back in March and it was heading toward midnight. As you know, I have been attending this event professionally every spring (Arizona and Florida) for two decades, long before you started making the trip. I’m there performing my job covering NFL news and doing my radio show where the news makers are making it happen in a town where football matters. I’ve made a living doing this since you were wearing that Number 43 sweater as an undersized Colby Mules linebacker working as a carpenter in the summers in Taunton.

In those few hours, while my employee Luke Jones was officially NFL credentialed and I was just a citizen buying drinks at the always-swanky hotel bar (and three months after the league denied me and my FCC-licensed radio station our traditional Super Bowl Radio Row press access for the first time in three decades at the behest of Chad Steele, despite the league credentialing bloggers, amateur hour podcasters and gambling touts in Las Vegas to create content), I saw more familiar faces than I can recall.

Mike Macdonald bought me and Luke a beverage. I gave him a pizza joint to hit in Seattle.

Duke Tobin spent 30 minutes talking Cincinnati football with me and told me to call him anytime. John “Bones” Fassel loved my hair and I told him how I felt about his father, who was always so good to me.

Your lifer pal Joe Hortiz hugged me warmly, and implored me to not hold him responsible for Chad Steele. He invited me to Los Angeles anytime to watch practice or for a game. I pointed out that the Chargers could probably use a few more fans and that I look good in powder blue.

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My old pal Jim Harbaugh and I chatted for several minutes and told old purple stories amongst the Spanos group. I was offered the Uozo; I declined. Captain Comeback told his wife that I had been “the No. 1 radio guy in Baltimore ever since back when he played.” I told him that he’d have to relay that message to his big brother.

I chatted with Joe Buck about the goofy kickoff rule change. And far more media members than I can recall, doing my job without access for two days but continuing and hoping to make more of those relationships I have built around the National Football League through a lifetime of sweat, time, money, airplane rides, hotels, car rentals and the integrity that builds what we’ve built at Baltimore Positive against all odds as a little AM radio station since 1998 that has outkicked its coverage.

It’s what’s made me the best to ever do it.

And here are the receipts…send this over to Chad Steele as my resume. (Greg Bader, too!)

Everyone was extremely convivial on that March night in Orlando.

(Well, some folks like Mark Dalton didn’t have the will to even look me in the eyes out of utter shame and Brian McCarthy, who once referred to me by name in a press conference and has seen me at virtually every league event this century, spoke to me like he’d never met me. Must’ve been my hair. Or his fancy title.)

Everyone asked me the same question: “Why did “they” take your press credential?” And how could I possibly be banned from covering the Baltimore Ravens after three decades?

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When people ask me what happened with Chad Steele, I email them this link.

Mike Tomlin, out of the kind of concern he has for me over two decades of our unlikely relationship, grabbed me and asked me if banning me was affecting how I provide for my family.

I assured him that when I walk around the city and every person I know asks me about my “role” or “perceived guilt” in being professionally canceled by the Baltimore Ravens, it certainly serves to plant a seed of doubt about my credibility that was at the core – and the target of this – from the beginning.

To de-legitimize me. And to make sure none of you get my questions. Or are held accountable to answer legitimate questions.

And to make sure that I would never have another relationship inside the National Football League to do the job I’ve done since before the league came – against its will and that of the Museum Commissioner Paul Tagliabue – to my hometown in 1996. And we only stole Art Modell’s franchise because we had been fleeced by Robert Irsay in the middle of the night when I was a 15-year old intern at The News American in 1984.

As a lifer journalist, my eyes are always open. I changed by not changing at all. That’s why I was on the veranda in Florida in March in the low light.

But as Luke Jones and I waited for an Uber to depart the free-flowing, alcohol-soaked proceedings in Orlando just before midnight, chronicled in the brilliantly written and epically hilarious book “Big Game” by Mark Leibovich (a must read if you care to really learn about NFL “executives” and “leadership”) – somehow like a mirage in the darkness – there you and Steve Bisciotti appeared on the veranda all alone about 40 feet from me.

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And I thought, “Here you are…and here I am.”

You seemed to recognize my face. Perhaps it was haunting, familiar. Maybe it was my excellent hair that Bisciotti loved so much the last time he feigned a false smile my way, right before he sanctioned my extermination.

I didn’t want to scream, “Hello!!!” but I had no qualms in approaching you, holding you accountable.

Just like I’ve done all of my adult life as a journalist, as a human.

But, to be respectful (and let’s be honest, pal, y’all haven’t been particularly respectful of me as a human) and not to be perceived as eves dropping, I meandered over within four feet of you both and made sure you looked into my eyes. As I sashayed and turned to give you both enough space enough to turn around…

…it was a like a scene in a James Bond movie.

“Hey, look at him now!”

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Off he goes…around the bend!

Evacuation.

Both of you.

Who says escape is not the safest path?

What to say, what to say?

Just us. Just three guys who have known each other since last century. Two men whom I’ve welcomed into my home. Two men who called to pray for my wife when she was staring at death – both times. Two men of God, power and wealth who absolutely know I am a legitimate Baltimore sports media member.

And two men who know that the Senior Vice President of Communications for their billion-dollar company openly targeted me – with a threat that came from Kevin Byrne via Don Mohler that I made you, Harbaugh and Dick Cass, (ie: upper management whom I’d known a professional lifetime) fully aware of from the beginning – and sought to eliminate and destroy the professional credibility of me and my company by denying me access, and intentionally limiting the access of my three-decades-old, local media company competing against all of the national FM corporate beasts from boardrooms elsewhere and flailing newspaper shells with paywalls, to do our job on behalf of your fans.

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Chad Steele never wanted peace.  

He didn’t need to throw me out.

He wanted to throw me out.

All along.

You know this.

All of you do.

Doing damage to my career would feed his fragile ego, give him a big pelt on the wall to start his tenure with his fancy new title. It would also make him look strong and intimidate every other reporter in the marketplace.

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Chad Steele wants to pick the winners and the losers in the local media. A caste system.

Steele told me he was “cleaning the place up.”

Chad Steele – thoughts too big for his size, so clean cut – didn’t want to work from a place of honor or integrity. He began his only “sit down” with me in the cafeteria in March 2022, with a prayer and the words: “So, you think I’m a bully…”

And then I never walked in your building again.

He sought to exterminate me so your corporate media integrity could get in line at the bottom of the ethical pit with the pathetic baseball franchise that spanked its own lead broadcaster for a month last summer over trivial nonsense in a season when they won 101 games. A national embarrassment in the world of MLB.

If it’s good enough for John Angelos and Greg Bader, it’s good enough for Steve Bisciotti and Sashi Brown!

It would be “OK” to exterminate me because the Orioles set the precedent.

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Steele could feign “it needs to be done” to the arrogant checked-out billionaire, who once approached me and my wife in Dana Point, California at a late-night table with the entire Harbaugh family gathered at the NFL Owner’s Meetings in 2009 and brazenly warned us – in front of all of them – to “stay away from them.” He thought we were “bothering” the Harbaughs when he had no idea we’d been invited by my friend Jim Harbaugh, who was then coaching Stanford, because I had known him and stayed in touch for a dozen years.

(And much respect and a “Nooo Body” to Jack Harbaugh for not listening to him! Who had it better than us?)

Three years ago this week, after the Zay Jones loss in Las Vegas with the empty post-game press conference three times zones away, when my seats with my wife in Section 513 were being threatened and I told you that Kevin Byrne had already told Don Mohler in August 2021 that Chad Steele was targeting my press credentials because of something he perceived I said about Sage Steele 20 years ago (and will still remain one of life’s great mysteries because it stands as eternally bizarre and randomly petty), you and I texted at length.

You repeatedly promised to help. You said that you would speak to then-team president Dick Cass. I had already spoken with Dick privately at length in July.

He could’ve tuned in; but he tuned out.

Cass clearly already had one foot out of the door at The Castle and flatly refused to help me better communicate with Steele. I told him I was being targeted without realizing he was in on targeting me. His arrogance and disregard for the incredibly sensitive information I shared with him that day was a tell that I should’ve read better. Of course, I thought he had more integrity than he wound up having with my career, business and professional reputation on the line.

As a good person, PSL holder, lifelong small business owner and authentic community member on the streets of Baltimore every day (I always thought Cass was a D.C. guy because he was), I gave him some unfiltered information and some uncomfortable truths about my bizarre (and below the bar) experiences with your football players in your locker room and at my by-then-exterminated “player shows” over the years.

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Stories I shared with you for years, literally – when they unfolded. Back when you would admit that they’re not all choir boys in the National Football League. (Nor do you care…)

Players showing up to my radio show too hammered to air it. Players accompanied by female “agents” and dubious hangers-on trying to shake me down for cash at a radio show (while my wife was in a hospital bed fighting for her life, no less). Behavior in the locker room that bordered on outrageous at times, unprofessional but also unsavory and the language that was being used in the presence of media and women.

Stuff that shouldn’t have been happening but was and did and I thought he’d wanna know about it because, ya know, he was the President of the Baltimore Ravens. I didn’t take these to the internet. Or my radio show.

I took them to upper management. Privately. Professionally.

These were my honest experiences and what I saw and heard and thought. The kind of shit I could never say on the radio over the years because it had little to do with football but a lot to do respect and people and the media and the fans. It was embarrassing, juvenile “locker room talk” but mostly just that. For his ears only. All of it you knew about in real time because I would tell you.

Instead, it was weaponized against me because Cass knew what a great reporter I was all along – and feared me because he knew he wasn’t going to be able to control me.

He was reminded every April when the NFL schedule would hit the WNST Text Service long before it would hit the WBAL studios, back when we kicked everyone ass every year for a decade with the release (as well as the legendary purple roadtrips that went with them).

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Eric, clearly you remember when Cass shut down the email system 15 years ago trying to figure out if it was someone like you leaking it to me? There are several former Ravens employees scattered across the globe who bring it up every time they see me. They found it comical that the lawyer in Cass – and the neophyte as team president – was chasing his own employees out of paranoia looking for the mole that wasn’t even in his building.

“You got the schedule first every year, man! You have no idea how much that pissed them off!”

I guess I did. When Cass had a chance to retaliate and be a part of exiting me while exiting himself, he did. And then telling me to take it up with the mysterious Sashi Brown, who refused to speak to me because I’m not the kind of human he speaks with in Baltimore.

I was rat poison in your building as a media member.

And I was a PSL holder and lifer fan extraordinaire in the first row of Section 513 on Sundays.

And sometimes, I was a nuisance in your locker room after a tough loss because I had real questions. Sometimes, I was a nuisance in your locker room when you won because I had good, thoughtful questions. After 40 years, I was worn out by the Charlie Brown answers so I never sought them or cared to hear them. Still don’t.

Eric, here’s the thing about you and Dick Cass: I thought you were both men of integrity. Turns out, I was 0-for-2. And my thoughts about your head coach John Harbaugh, who also feigned every intention to make an obviously wrong situation correct for well over a year, were documented a year ago.

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And my thoughts and words exchanged with your owner, whom I once again attempted to speak with privately and face-to-face (along with you in March) was made clear by you that avoiding me and “canceling” me is the best and most integrity-based way to deal with me after 30 years of being your customer, PSL holder, media member, business owner and oft-times local advocate. Many have called me an “ambassador” of Ravens football in Baltimore.

Your first Super Bowl-winning coach called me a partner. Dozens of your former players, alums and even Hall of Famers call me a friend. They also call my show. And dine with me when they’re in town.

They walk up to me every day of my life and ask me about all of you.

And they ask me what I did to deserve this treatment…

And any of them who have been around for any amount of time know that you and I were close. And they all somehow perceived John Harbaugh and I to be even closer because he didn’t have to hide that he knew me.

He’s enjoyed hiding from me lately, especially when I’m not there to ask him about Lamar Jackson running the football 15 times again in another loss to the Kansas City Chiefs to start another season when I’m locked out by his franchise.

Eric, they all want to know why a guy like you who has known me personally, professionally and on the public stage for three decades would be in the position of general manager and oversee and participate in press conferences where the only Hispanic journalist in the history of the city and an FCC owner and daily host and author and historian, who has seen more Ravens football in person that anyone outside of Ozzie Newsome and Baker Koppelman, would be banned without justification or merit?

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Your legitimate media “friend” who has been deemed a sworn enemy of your franchise. And all of your C-level executives sending me private texts that all turned out to be untruthful and, in the end, lacking good faith or any integrity.

And a billionaire owner, whom I always treated with far more respect than he ever granted me, wrote me a note telling me that I’m no longer a real media member because his PR bouncer said so.

I tell anyone it’s like the scene in Rosemary’s Baby when Mia Farrow realizes who she’s been in the room with all along. The real family. The real faces. The real intentions.

So, as a professional, I’m asked every day why I’m banned and why the Baltimore Ravens allow Luke Jones access on behalf of WNST Baltimore Positive.

There is only one truth.

You know I was threatened and backed up with lies. You know all of the facts. You know what your franchise has done is wrong.

“I told them that there needs to be some other solution.”

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And, blessed to be in the position of “leadership” you have moved up and on to, now all of a sudden you have no power or influence to change important things about relationships that you were in a position to strengthen.

And it’s your “blood” being splattered?

Eric, you failed me. You failed truth. You failed my audience, my family and anyone associated with me who asks how after three decades the Baltimore Ravens organization would try to “cancel” me and call my work less than professional, less than deeming the same fair journalistic access to your team and covering the team and competing in the marketplace that everyone else gets around town.

They should be asking you what happened, not me.

I trusted you because after almost 30 years of relationship, I believed you were worthy of trust. I believed that about Dick Cass, and to a lesser degree John Harbaugh (because I’ve attended the press conferences and seen his dishonesty), but we’re talking decades of candid, trusted, deep conversations about politics, humanity, the world, our families and real life.

This is my real life.

I resent being treated like a second-class human by your executives. As I wrote, you should be embarrassed by this after 30 years of relationship with me. Especially when I went to great lengths privately and quietly to fix it.

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And the fact that you and Harbaugh want me (and the 100,000 people who follow my work) to believe that you were “powerless” in this transaction and somehow that Chad Steele has more power in the building to do something wrong than you do to make it right, well…

If I were standing in front of you – and I tried that, quietly, privately, etc. – I would read you this letter.

Instead, you grabbed Bisciotti and ran back inside the “safe zone” from even interacting with me, looking me in the eye.

All that money and y’all can’t afford to buy a shred of decency or accountability for the worst actions of your worst people.

Ray Rice was honored as the “Legend of The Game” last season at a game while I was banned from the press box from asking any questions.

That is my legacy with Baltimore Ravens football after three decades of giving your wealthy franchise my time, money, heart and professionalism.

Eric, if you don’t have the core integrity as a senior executive of a billion dollar sports franchise to admit that I’m a legitimate Baltimore sports media member – and provide me the proper accreditation based on my lifetime of credentials and current work – what else are you willing to completely lie about to the world?

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(Just think about that…)

My last kiss of an NFL media credential happened in Pittsburgh in December 2022 when Mike Tomlin made sure I had access in his stadium – before someone came and told him to stop associating with me. Two years ago, you sat 15 feet away from me in the Steelers press box (like you had for 25 years) and pretended you didn’t know me, like every other Baltimore Ravens employee.

Like I was a ghost. My final missive to Harbaugh, who smiled at me from the podium in front of my colleague who knew he’d banned me and facetiously told me it was “good to see me” at an all-too-rare victory press conference under Heinz Field:

So instead, I’m just going to write everything once – so everyone knows the truth.

Because I’m totally worn out as a human being constantly being asked about it everywhere I go – and not being able to appropriately answer it for my community, who still rightfully believes in my integrity after 40 years of public work because I’ve never given them any reason to doubt my words, deeds, efforts and good intentions for truth as a lifer journalist, community member and citizen who builds relationships – not destroys them.

It hasn’t been good for my mental health.

It hasn’t been good for my family, the kind of growth I want for my business.

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It has permanently altered my soul and continued my life lessons in dealing with morally bankrupt humans of arrogance, influence and squishy integrity.

Trust is a sacred sacrament.

It’s moved me on to meeting better humans than ones I’ve encountered in Owings Mills or at Camden Yards.

My joy for many years didn’t just come from the games, or winning and losing. It was the people I collected along the journey. Dick Schaap taught me that.

Eric, I thought that meant people like you.

But after having spent a lifetime on planes, buses, rentals and hotels – and planning my life around the NFL schedule and my business doing the best work in the marketplace and analyzing the Baltimore Ravens – and turning 56 years old next month, I no longer need to wonder who all of you are in real terms.

All of that Tony LaRussa bullshit about “your best players being your best people” you used to give me when we exchanged motivational and educational readings. And all of those leadership books you read about being a better human, a better scout.

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You can read it all and talk it all. But, you didn’t walk your walk.

None of you.

I was always an Eric DeCosta guy. And thought I always would be because of the depth of our relationship. I’m not sure that anybody I’ve ever known in sports has sent me the word “friend” in a text more than you. And I know a lot of people.

I know how hard you work. I know how smart you are. I know how badly you want to win football games and how it burns at you. Remember dude (and maybe you don’t really realize this) but I’ve watched almost every Ravens game you’ve ever watched within 30 feet of you and often seated directly below you to hear every grunt, groan and the look of passion and concern on your face. And arms raised in a V after every win as you and Ozzie head to the same media elevator that trapped me and Jamison Hensley on the roof in Las Vegas three years ago just long enough that your head coach could avoid us after a tough loss.

You’re a helluva general manager, Eric. Your football team might win the Super Bowl in February. Of course, I won’t be there for it this time and I’m sure as hell not going to be writing Purple Reign 3 if you do win, but I’ll be here every day measuring it all – talking, writing, tweeting, podcasting, doing my Baltimore Positive thing that I’ve always done.

Oh, and if the Baltimore Orioles win in October, I’ll make sure that everyone knows that you were the first one to ever give me the pronunciation of “Sig Mejdal” and the first one to say: “There’s a guy named Mike Elias down in Houston doing some incredible stuff with baseball analytics.”

Not long thereafter, your lengthy lunch with John Angelos back in 2017 planted the seed that would become the defending AL East champions and whatever the modern, David Rubenstein Orioles will become based on your thirst to learn more about baseball analytics and how that could be used in football. Maybe they’ll ask you what you learned from the Yankees, too?

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You will always get that Angelos credit and the professional “on the field” respect you’re due from me, even if that’s not been reciprocated professionally from your PR bouncer and your cowardly owner, who ran from me with your cover back in March.

You’ll probably never get the credit for the Orioles hiring Mike Elias – unless he openly gives it to you – but I always will because I know the truth.

Because I had relationships no one has ever had in Baltimore sports. I always knew more because I cared more.

And that’s exactly why Greg Bader and Chad Steele have always dreamed of attempting to Tonya Harding me – professionally – and thinking no one will notice.

One day, I’ll actually be dead.

The Baltimore sports media dissident of insignificance.

No one will care about Nestor.

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And those who do care will blame him, anyway...

Because he’s a “Bad Guy”…

That’s what the Orioles do.

Eric, I never thought you’d be one of those people.

But, here you are.

And here I am…

Dedications, naive and true
With no power, nothing to do
I still remember, why don’t you?

Don’t you?