background – never seen, never heard from but always felt with his obvious autonomy and poor interpersonal communication skills and tact – it feels like “business as usual.”
It feels like a lawsuit is always around the corner, because, well…it is.
Peter Angelos is the Orioles. The Orioles are Peter Angelos. That’s been the only “truth” that should be apparent to anyone who’s witnessed the past quarter of a century of Baltimore baseball.
I’ve dedicated my LIFE to following the Baltimore Orioles and local sports. It’s all I’ve ever done. There hasn’t been a day of my adulthood, going back to my internship at The Baltimore News American in January 1984 when I haven’t been engaged and involved in reporting on local sports.
I’ve watched the Orioles – and everything around the brand and the culture around the brand – deteriorate and disintegrate in virtually every way.
Adam Jones better be careful about offending the old white folks and the ones voting for Donald Trump in November. They’re the only ones who are still coming.
I’m just one guy from Dundalk who dedicated his life to the promotion of the Orioles and Angelos and his employees and the people whom he controls have spit in my face – over and over again.
8
They’ve told me to stop being a fan.
Greg Bader has personally told me and my employees that we should go away. Brady Anderson once told me (and my wife) to leave Baltimore if I didn’t like it. Dan Duquette was a jerk to me and my wife after she beat cancer and we were in Philly swabbing people to save more lives last summer.
Every year I go to the Orioles Advocates Hall of Fame luncheon as a guest of Aunt Pat Gates, just to see how they treat me. It’s not pleasant. My favorite part is when Buck Showalter sees me and runs away from me.
Yet, like you, I watch the Orioles every night. I opine freely on them because I don’t have to be censored by the likes of Greg Bader or John Angelos.
But the unalienable facts are clear:
Less people talk baseball. Less people watch baseball. Less kids play baseball.
And old white people still really love baseball.
8(Adam Jones pointed this fact out this week in USA Today. Somehow, white people were really appalled.)
But all of the games are on TV and it’s very, very easy – and far more affordable – to stay home and watch the Orioles in the comfort of your home or at your local tavern. For many reasons, the “going to the game” thing kinda bums out a large percentage of the fan base.
I traveled to 30 ballparks in 30 days last summer on my WNST 30-30 #GiveASpit tour for leukemia awareness and swabbing for the bone marrow registry – and the narrow audience of live baseball is true throughout the continent. People of color and young people are spending their energy elsewhere. They’re not collecting baseball cards. They’re not playing stickball on the stoops of Highlandtown. They’re not spending four hours a day, every day for six months engaged in the soap opera of baseball.
The. Game. Of. Baseball. Moves. Very. Very. Very. S-l-o-w-l-y for the modern human being attached to his or her mobile device with life moving very quickly in many ways.
And it’s clear many of the people who do love the Orioles are not all that interested in coming to the ballpark regularly to watch baseball games that they’re already paying for in their living room via their cable television bill that has made Angelos wealthier than he ever could’ve imagined when he bought the team in 1993.
I love the Orioles. I’ve loved the Orioles since 1972. I watch them every night. So does my 97-year old mother. (She’s old and white.)
I never give Angelos money and don’t feel that I have any reason to go to the games.
8I can go, give them money and get treated like shit by anyone and everyone who works there. Or, I can just stay home and watch the game on TV.
And I live two blocks from the front door. The soap opera plays out just fine in my condo. And I’m already paying Angelos for it.
When I married my wife 13 years ago, we purposely bought a condo downtown so we could go to Orioles games regularly and easily. Now, even when I get offered a ticket – and that’s kinda rare – it’s really not all that appealing.
These past few weeks have illustrated one thing: Baltimore sports fans aren’t spending their hard-earned money lining up to buy Orioles tickets.
Why?
Many have said “I dunno” or written various schmuckery or fanery about the bad weather and kids being in school and the local riots last summer and folks on the farm not wanting to visit downtown Baltimore because of the “unrest.”
I have reported freely, honestly and accurately on every awful aspect of the Angelos operation for a quarter of a century. It appears that the mismanagement of virtually every public aspect of the operation – despite making revenues that were truly unthinkable at the time of his purchase of the team at a public auction in the summer of 1993 – has finally caught up with him in the most apparent, visible way.
8He went “all in” on getting even with his partners after the birth of the Washington Nationals and it’s enriched him even more than chasing the dead bodies of asbestos and mesothelioma cases who were my Pop’s contemporaries at places like Bethlehem Steel.
He was rich when this started. Now he’s even richer – or wealthy. Good for him!
Now, about the baseball team…
I have been documenting all aspects of the MASN war. It cost this city an All Star Game this summer that would’ve been a nice marketing piece for the franchise for several years. It also could’ve really helped the city after last year’s violence that spilled into the shadows of Camden Yards.
But in this past offseason, Angelos forced the franchise to freeze for three months while he waited for the price of Chris Davis to go down in the free agent game and did something unprecedented in the history of North American sports – he also waited until six weeks before the start of the season to approve a substantial pricing hike and season ticket renewals. It’s been called “The Chris Davis Tax.”
It’s unprecedented because, well, it’s stupid!
And, like every other decision that involves making or spending money, it’s Angelos’ idea. He owns the team. He’s kinda a big deal around there.
8Of course, he’s making so much money from the television deal that selling tickets and beer and hot dogs is not nearly as profitable or as significant as keeping the MASN money away from the Washington Nationals and the 28 other teams who would be getting a piece of that revenue if the New York Supreme Court rules in favor of the other side at some point.
It feels complicated but it’s very simple: Baltimore just isn’t currently that into this incarnation of the Orioles.
I know why I don’t go. But I’m always asking our audience and my friends why THEY don’t go anymore.
Tomorrow, I’ll have some deeper thoughts and 10 solid reasons why other folks don’t go.
