& The News American) — there’s a lotta f***ing questions this city and its citizens SHOULD be asking the people who run the franchise.
Joe Flacco wins the biggest regular-season game in franchise history in Pittsburgh on a Sunday night and he STILL gets criticized all day on Monday and somehow Peter Angelos has summarily destroyed this city’s baseball team, traditions and joy and no one says a freaking word.
This issue – and the surrounding shame that a city full of Red Sox and Yankees fans bring every spring and summer when they take over our stadium and city — disgraces me, personally, for anyone who truly has a shred of Baltimore civic pride or dignity.
And as an American, you should start asking questions of your leaders when the media is being banned, barred and attacked for simply holding the richest and most influential people in the culture accountable for their leadership.
I’ve got a little tent city erected six blocks from the front doors of my heavily taxed property in the center of Baltimore City. Our local government is headed the same direction as Peter Angelos’ grip on the testicles of everyone in the city in regard to his intentions with the franchise.
There is no doubt or denying that the Orioles’ demise has destroyed downtown businesses in the summer in Baltimore.
Yet no one ever gets to ask Peter Angelos a legitimate question.
And no one ever questions how one set of reporters gets to ask the questions and others are banned from press conferences.
Every January, we in the Baltimore sports media line up 10-deep and pepper Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti with legitimate questions. And sometimes he leaves that press conference very angry with me. I ask him tough questions. I talk about real issues with him when I do get the rare chance to communicate with him.
He SHOULD be accountable and he is. And sometimes it REALLY pisses him off. And honestly, I think he should give WNST.net & our community the same “sit down” he routinely grants Jamison Hensley who makes the trip to the NFL Owners Meetings each year and is granted an “exclusive” set of questions on behalf of The Baltimore Sun while I watch from the balcony.
But, in general, Bisciotti opens the floor, takes on all-comers and no one is summarily ignored like Luke Jones was on Tuesday afternoon waving his hands like Arnold Horshack and the sweathogs from Mr. Kotter’s class.
It’s a disgrace that after 14 years of losing and five years of last place and another sweeping change in management, Peter Angelos wasn’t there to answer questions. And it’s a disgrace that Monica Barlow oversaw this sham
