So today is one of those days where I’m going to speak my mind regarding the Baltimore Orioles and if you’re not interested in the truth, please read no further. And all of you fellow delirious Baltimore Ravens fans might want to stand at attention and learn a little something about the way sports DOES work and the way it DOESN’T in regard to the spirit of the city and enthusiasm and public interest and affection for a sports franchise.
The Baltimore Ravens are enjoying the neon purple afterglow of the greatest regular-season victory in the history of what has become a storied franchise just 16 years into its existence.
Meanwhile, across the street where no real journalism is being done and shameless profiteering and professional ineptitude is standard operating procedure, the Baltimore Orioles held another slapstick “press conference” on Tuesday afternoon for invited guests and partners to announce their next “savior” – a guy who hasn’t had a job in Major League Baseball in a decade and who is now touted as the “best available” candidate after virtually every major junior executive and senior executive who already had MLB jobs turned down this “incredible opportunity afforded by Mr. Angelos.”
Accountability and integrity were not invited to The Warehouse on Tuesday afternoon for the proceedings, which at times rivaled any good Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live skit for its clichés, tired excuses and backslapping for a bunch of other corporate “yes” men and attorneys for the Baltimore Orioles.
The troops of Peter G. Angelos propped up their latest puppet in the announcement of Dan Duquette as their new Vice President of something or another. As you can imagine, I have nice little list of questions for the new poobah and “face” of the Orioles over the next foreseeable future but somehow, for the fifth consecutive year after having an Orioles media credential for 21 years, I didn’t make the cut to ask questions.
Neither did our WNST.net Orioles beat man Luke Jones, who is as big of an Orioles fan and historian as I’ve ever met, who spent 30 minutes at The Warehouse with his arm in the air at a press conference to never be called on to ask a question.
(And don’t get me started on how a women who sued me, my employees and my company for $800,000 and then quietly dropped her bogus case has a media pass and is somehow asking questions of accountability to Dan Duquette and anyone in the Baltimore sports media universe could think I’m perceived as the one who is lacking integrity or is lying?)
I’ve been invited to every media event in Baltimore for 27 years – except for the Orioles, of course. I have media privileges that gotten me inside the White House, the Super Bowl, Final Fours and virtually any other sporting event on the planet.
And when I’ve seen the way this intimidation, manipulation and “ownership” of the media works — with REAL stories over the past decade like steroids all over their clubhouse, mysterious deaths like Steve Bechler, and suicide of a storied franchise member and a murder case in the Dominican involving a player — and I’m standing at the civic casket of Mike Flanagan and watching the greatness of Brooks Robinson get dogged and ignored by everyone in the Orioles organization except for Bill Stetka (who I actually remember as one of the first “journalists” I ever met as a kid at SportsF1rst
