There are days in Baltimore when the sports story is a game, a trade, a press conference or some billionaire’s bozo in a blazer and hipster sneakers telling the citizenry to be patient through the next news cycle. And then there are days when the story is even more delicious than that – when not burying the lead is the story – the people telling it, the old scars still glowing under the Orioles jerseys, the old football and media grudges still double-parked illegally on the curb just in front of the marbles stoop and stained glass we were raised behind on the east side.
Today, I can honestly report, is happily one of those days! The first day of the next big thing in Baltimore sports media and journalism.
La Canfora. Aparicio. The best the Charm City has ever created.
Finally together. Like Sashi and Moon!
Because after years of both of us getting the side-eye, crossed signals, awkward silences, cold shoulders, warm microphones, limp handshakes from media relations directors with stiff directives and one entire Baltimore generation of “Wait…those two!?” energy, I’m exceedingly proud – and I use that word as carefully as a man reaching for the last deviled egg at a Highlandtown funeral luncheon – to announce that Jason La Canfora is joining WNST and Baltimore Positive as a spring addition to the brand.
Hell has not frozen over, but Baltimore has always preferred improbable partnerships. After all, this is a town that forgives almost anything except dishonesty and bad football. People who know me know I don’t traffic in soft landings. Plenty of folks will read this and spit out their morning coffee. Yes, that is going to be half the fun of it once we get going together.
And yes, I can already hear the roars on social media. Purple diehards will say the earth shifted. Rivals will mutter that spring really does bring strange pollen. I prefer to call it growth. La Canfora, of all people, understands the modern theatre of this town.
8
For years, Baltimore sports radio has run on ego, old scars and hot exhaust. Old fights make good radio when everybody still remembers the cuts. One thing I’ve learned is that grudges age like an old Cal Ripken milk poster in the heat of the July sunlight. Let the record show: I admire a man willing to walk into the furnace and come out the other side on fire like my Pop coming back from the rod mill at The Point. Somewhere in heaven, John Steadman and Charley Eckman are smirking and Frank DeFord is running a seam route for George Plimpton!
Don’t worry, we’ll get to the details. And they are juicy. (You had to know that.)
But La Canfora and I are truly of one heart and mind: “Democracy uber alles!!!”
Now, before the rest of the Baltimore sports media starts hyperventilating into an orange and purple radio station-logo cartoon polo shirt designed by Mike Ricigliano, let me say this plainly: this didn’t happen because we suddenly became best pals. No, Jason and I have not been sharing Elias checkbooks, DeCosta drink lists and heartfelt red, white and blue notes about USMNT or scoring World Cup credentials – we bonded over the healing, pounding power of local journalism that beats deep inside our East Baltimore hearts.
It’s the real thing – like a Captain Harvey’s cheesesteak in Logan Village.
I can assure you, we haven’t exactly been splitting mozzarella sticks at Jilly’s funded by Jerry Coleman and reminiscing about the simpler times back when he was scouting Ovechkin skating for the real Red Army in Russia before Leonsis paid him to rock the other red, either.
Last month La Canfora got whacked in the middle of a tawdry corporate management handoff, with the old boss leaving, the new lieutenant rising, and the market manager sending the goodbye memo.
8But I have been doing this long enough to know that Baltimore loves three things more than almost anything: a football argument, a redemption arc and a surprise that lands like a crab mallet on Formica on a Dundalk countertop.
And make no mistake: this is all three.
You can tell old Joe LaCroix over at The Fan that we watered this the old-fashioned way – through back channels, side doors, whispered possibilities and one very Baltimore realization: if everybody in town is going to keep talking about the Ravens, the Orioles and whether Lamar Jackson is ever going to win a Super Bowl (here, or elsewhere) then Aparicio and La Canfora discussing the cap, the draft, the rotation, the dysfunction of modern media, the pecking order of access and who said what to whom in which parking lot in Owings Mills is going to be the greatest pairing, well…maybe since Mark Viviano and The Bulldog! Or at least Scott Garceau and Jeremy Conn…
Why not put all of that glorious tension in one place and point a pen, microphone and camera at it? Hell, it worked for Ed Norris and Rob Long and we sure as hell have forgotten a lot more about Baltimore sports then either of them…
Why not build the sports media locker room that nobody can possibly ignore?
Cal and Eddie.
Ray and Ed.
8Jason and Nestor. With Luke in the locker rooms!
A freaking All Star team! Who needs a Hall of Fame when you’ve built one in local media for four decades?
If Reggie was the straw that stirred the drink then we will be the Elias elixir – or perhaps the orange vermouth in DeCosta’s purple reign.
The two greatest modern Baltimore sports journalists in the history of the city; both sponsored, discovered and approved by legendary Executive Sports Editor of The Baltimore Sun, Jack Gibbons, at very young ages. Some would even say we’ve aged like fine whines!
You might think that La Canfora and I don’t agree on much; but his reportorial sainthood granted by George Solomon and my longtime private reverence for him was enough to make this journalistic match feel inevitable and so perfectly right, even though both of us are squarely on the left.
It’s not every day you can bring in someone from Canton that went behind the puck in Hockeytown, lifted the Red Curtain like Tikhonov barking orders from a Soviet bunker whilst living the second life of Jaromir in the pre-Ovie, Leonsis la-la land of owner-fan fist fights in The District, replete in Caps screaming eagle blue and gold regalia! If only Susan O’Malley and Wes Unseld were here to give us Honest Abe’s blessing!
And here you thought he was only a football gossip miner – or just the guy who called Elias a jackass?
8Sports will be the first hour; but our mutual disdain of Donald Trump, Brendan Carr and every lie they stand for quickly became the real impetus for our partnership once we convened over a cold Natty Boh and my special homemade Memorial Stadium pan-fried crab cakes with proper French’s mustard (from the little packets) on saltines.
Honestly, my first thought was: “Now we might even be able to get Rachel Maddow on the show!“
But, even though we have no intention of just “sticking to sports,” our mutual admirers and vast combined audience will hear and feel the instant Eastern Avenue friction instead of the deodorized, Audacy sponsor-safe, pre-chewed version of sports talk that so much of local media (including those bozos at The Fan, who jettisoned him solely because he spit straight facts into a microphone) have become far too accustomed and safe preaching to and from the other fan boys in the marketplace who actually believe the words of Eric DeCosta and Mike Elias and somehow regurgitate them as Baltimore sports gospel.
Trust me, we’ll never cover baseball by never throwing softballs or football by ducking the rush.
Because that, my friends, is the actual product now. Not just the scores. Not just the quarterback ratings. Not just who ran the forty in Indianapolis.
The actual product is now credibility.
Together, you know, we own that category exclusively!
8Memory. Edge. The willingness to say the right things out loud that everybody else is trying to carefully rephrase for the team website, the corporate partner or the tall, fragile Chad in the steely corner office or the Jenny on the block who hydes thinking Jim Palmer is an old hack and somehow Greg Bader might be good.
And love him, hate him or roll your eyes so hard that you strain your groin, Jason La Canfora has always understood one thing: if you’re going to walk into a Baltimore sports conversation, you’d better bring a helmet and a glove.
So, here’s the plan as it’s been discussed:
La Canfora will join the Baltimore Positive family in a multi-platform spring role that includes radio appearances, video segments, digital columns, draft-night coverage later this month, occasional Maryland Crab Cake Tour stops and what I will assure will be “spirited, uncompromising football dialogue and unbeatable baseball banter,” which is corporate language for two grown men from the old neighborhood lighting a civic victory cigar with a blowtorch and arguing about Cover 2 integrity, front office leaks and why every pro sports owner in America wants applause for writing checks from money they didn’t earn in the parking lot.
As you know, I demand the best.
Jason brings the full modern journalistic package: football sourcing, Orioles exasperation, Ravens grievance archaeology and enough MSNBC-adjacent democratic alarm to make our break music feel like a constitutional crisis. We’re adding a man whose football takes arrive with equal parts cap analysis, punk-rock residue and anti-authoritarian cable-news energy.
He’ll bring sourcing. I’ll bring memory.
8He’s press; I’m pull.
He’ll bring the national lens. I’ll bring Baltimore’s longest, lawn-mower-sawed-off trigger finger ready to wag at him and anyone who stands in our collective way of speaking truth whilst we eagerly await – if not demand – the return of a real American democracy.
He’ll bring that familiar La Canfora certainty and howl that makes half the audience curse while pretending to nod, and the other half reach for their pills or a smoke.
And now you won’t have to flip on WNST when he pisses you off because you’ll already be there!
And I’ll bring what I’ve always brought: wisdom, receipts, questions and enough local scar tissue to predict the weather. There’s not much I’d tell you to bet on but betting on La Canfora and Aparicio will be the best risk you’ve taken since not believing DeCosta was ever serious about trading a pair of No. 1s for Maxx Crosby.
Can you imagine how great this is going to be?
Well, of course you can…
8Wednesday afternoons with Jason and Nestor – we’re calling it “The Big Bad Baltimore Afternoon Show” as a working title – talking Ravens roster construction like two men arguing over inheritance law at front bar at Costas! Draft coverage this month with enough edge to make NFL podcasters and even the internet basement experts nervous. Some Caps banter, soccer squawk, ownership schlock, media mentions and the language of trust with our audience.
Honest talk.
The kind that doesn’t need a credential or preferred parking to matter.
The kind that reminds Baltimore that truly independent journalistic voices still have tremendous value, even when the velvet ropes get tighter and the approved questions get ever-so softer.
Now, some of you are asking the obvious question: why would Jason do this?
(I wondered the same thing…)
Because maybe he misses the smell of the old newspaper barn of non-neutered, professional sports coverage. He was good enough for Jack Gibbons and the great George Solomon; La Canfora needs no runway of authenticity or resume on my desk. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve always greatly admired JLC! No one was prouder of seeing my dude every Sunday afternoon on CBS than me. (Well, maybe Pete Prisco…)
8Jason La Canfora has forgotten more about Baltimore sports than anyone. (Well, except for maybe yours truly).
Perhaps “the algorithm” can’t truly satisfy what live radio once did. Because maybe there’s still something holy and sacred about a city conversation that crackles with real history instead of synthetic, corporate outrage. Because maybe the older I get, the more I believe that old enemies, former competitors and once-wary combatants sometimes make the best radio partners – if only because each one knows exactly where the other man is full of it.
I promise you: there’s no bullshit about Jason La Canfora. And, well, my record kinda speaks for itself.
And some of you are asking the second obvious question: why would I do this?
Because I’m not interested in easy; easy is boring. Because the entire modern sports media ecosystem has become too polite, too curated, too frightened of its own shadow, too dependent on access, clicks, credential lines and mutual back-scratching to tell the truth with any conviction. If I wanted safe, I’d have sold the stale, vanilla scented candles they’re burning over at The Fan and called it “content.”
More bad phone calls from lesser educated sports experts who deserve laughter and sympathy more than any more of your valuable time in the car, no doubt stuck in more Key Bridge-related traffic every day.
No, we both know this city deserves far better than that.
8So, while the fan blows the kind of hot air that makes you shiver, the La Canfora – Aparicio marriage at WNST Baltimore Positive will be more like a warm orange inferno that keeps adding logs, or like Sashi Brown bellowing a slow news cycle under a bright new purple Moon.
Baltimore deserves a conversation with heat, memory and consequence. Baltimore deserves a little danger in the room. Baltimore deserves the kind of spring surprise that makes everybody stop, laugh, wince and then quietly lean forward toward the speaker.
No one will listen; everyone will hear!
Sponsors have already noticed. Thompson Creek. PNC Bank. Hell, it was Carl Saiontz who put the whole thing together right before he and I snuck off together to the Bruce Springsteen opener the other night!
Besides, if George Plimpton could sell America a barefoot, robe-wearing, French-horn-playing phenom named Sidd Finch, surely I can ask Baltimore to imagine Jason La Canfora walking through the WNST door with a headset, a coffee and a fresh stack of brandished, if certainly not Brandys, Ravens opinions.
And if you believed me all the way to here – if you called your buddy, texted your cousin, fired off a note to somebody in the press box or immediately started wondering who lost a bet badly enough to make this happen – well, then Trump bless you. That means your old newsroom instincts are still alive. It means you really wanted the circus to come to town.
It means some part of you thought it might sound absurd but hoped it was true anyway.
8Which, in its own twisted Baltimore way, is the whole point.
It is, like the “real truth” from the frontlines of the Baltimore Ravens and Baltimore Orioles P.R. staffs, too good to be true.
No, Jason La Canfora is not joining WNST and Baltimore Positive today.
But don’t you wish it were true?
I kinda do…
But, alas, no contract was signed. No crab cake summit was held. No joint statement is coming. No sponsored reconciliation tour is stopping at your favorite corner tavern next week (although I’m always delighted to bring the Maryland Crab Cake Tour to any barstool that will have me and JLC can always have a seat at my bar).
I haven’t spoken to my old pal Jason in at least five years, and there’s a decent chance this paragraph is the closest we’ll come to sharing a stage before one of us is fitted for a purple blazer and an orange halo. (Although I did see him in a MASN polo shirt once, so I know he owns one!)
8But on April Fools’ Day, my #ColumnNes still can bring a good Sidd Finch fastball. Not quite 168 miles per hour but it buzzed your chin with the possibilities that we’d be clearing the benches.
And in Baltimore – where memory is long, egos are longer and football never really leaves the room – this one had a little movement on it.
Happy April Fools’ Day.
I’m still breathing. I’m still writing. And Jason still isn’t coming through that door.
Well, not unless he really wants to…
At least not today.
