So this media situation is exactly what I tried to warn everyone about back in February. I spent a week with my “State of Baltimore Sports Media” blogs attempting to take 27 years of my knowledge as a kid from Dundalk who loved sports and journalism and has spent a lifetime trying to build a better platform for integrity and honesty in an effort to enlighten folks about why we think WNST.net is a great way to communicate in 2010.
The Orioles are 2-14.
It’s almost unthinkable — unimaginable given the “enthusiasm” that was sold by the corporate suits over at CBS Radio and the MASN “partners” of a 13-year running sham known as Peter G. Angelos’ Orioles. Don’t worry, the rest of the local media that takes checks from King Peter and the crew aren’t off the hook here, either, for hiding the truth and burying the story about last week’s Ripken blowup.
The Orioles are 2-14 and there’s not a negative word – not anywhere. There’s no call for the manager’s head. The owner – completely unaccountable and in hiding longer than the guy in the cave in the Middle East – never answers questions. The Ripken story has gone away until his camp leaks the next story to Rosenthal, who quite honestly, probably doesn’t need to be called a liar again with his next “scoop” given his 25-year track record of integrity in reporting about Baltimore baseball’s real inner workings.
And the general manager, Andy MacPhail, known throughout Major League Baseball as the heir to the throne of Commissioner Allan “Bud” Selig, he of blue-blood baseball royalty, is scratching his head and working day and night with his “media partners” to make sure this Ripken P.R. move doesn’t come back into play again this week while he figures out how to fire Dave Trembley and not have his neck enter the guillotine next here in Baltimore.
Oh, and the team is 2-14 and headed for 12 in a row against the Red Sox and Yankees.
But, really, MacPhail’s true play here is to practice to become the next commissioner of Major League Baseball. His job here ISN’T to win. It’s to MAKE MONEY. And doing that, amidst ridiculous circumstances and an absolutely insufferable owner in a situation where virtually every thinking person in the community has turned its collective back on the franchise that Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Eddie Murray, Frank Robinson and Cal Ripken built here for our fathers and grandfathers, will show him to be “Commish worthy” when Selig steps aside from his Baseball Digest, typewriter and carrier pigeon and leaves the throne of his $18 million per anum “leadership role” with Major League Baseball.
Rest assured, Andy MacPhail is doing a great job as far as Peter Angelos is concerned.
MacPhail is printing money, keeping the “media” off Peter’s back and he doesn’t even have to leave the Baltimore home office when the team goes to the West Coast and the manager is under fire and the team is 1-11 and losing in front of no one in the middle of the night.
Get this: while Trembley was out West trying to hold the sinking ship together, MacPhail was back here trying to figure out how to sell Brad Komminsk to the Baltimore fans as the next savior/manager/scapegoat put in an impossible situation where you “can’t compete.”
Hey those aren’t my words, they’re MacPhail’s words as you can read here in Glenn Clark’s blog from Opening Day via USA Today (another Selig mouthpiece, whose “journalists” should be here in Baltimore writing about how Angelos has killed baseball in Baltimore).
And while the team continues to flounder in every measurable fashion except their corporate bank account, which is filled with riches every month when the Comcast check hits their desks over at MASN, the community suffers and wonders if it’ll ever change.
Again, they’re 2-14 and have 12 in a row coming up against Boston and New York. They haven’t played a meaningful game since 1997. There were less than 5,000 people in the ballpark two weeks ago. Last week, there was tumbleweed blowing down Pratt Street. Next week, the city will be overrun with 35,000 Red Sox and Yankees fans for the 10th summer in a row.
This is an Agent Orange, Code Red earthquake, tsunami and volcano simultaneously and NO ONE in the media says ANYTHING.
NEVER!
Companies that are in last place perennially – and again this has been THIRTEEN YEARS of lousiness, never even hovering near mediocrity in any measurable category – should not be siphoning money from people’s pockets via cable television so they can make record profits in the middle of an economic depression while leaving the citizens with a product that shames them when they put on the same cap that Brooks and Frank wore.
With their unfriendly fan habits of jacking up ticket prices on game nights and their consistent lying, hiding and losing, downtown Baltimore will be a ghost town this summer on game nights as this team will clearly never get out of last place.
And yet no one says a word.
Businesses and the downtown business community sit dormant on spring and summer nights as this awfulness continues.
And there’s no columnist at The Sun who will even touch the Ripken-Angelos story with any credible information or investigation. There are no radio pundits or six o’clock news sports anchors who will step up and say the obvious: 2-14 is a disgrace and people should be as pissed as Nestor and the folks at WNST are!
Of course, if they did “speak up” they’d either be fired by their bosses (see: CBS Radio, TV & MASN sleep in) or they’d have their press pass revoked, like yours truly.
Where are the economic impact studies from those geniuses over at The Daily Record and The Baltimore Business Journal? And what about Baltimore Magazine (oh, that’s right, poor Steve Geppi is tied into this mess and it must break his heart as well because no one loves the team more than him)?
Four years after nearly a decade of losing created the Free The Birds movement the first time around — and nothing has changed except the names and the lower payroll and higher profits for the Angelos group.
The Ripken story is actually kind of incredible. In my nearly 27 years of local journalism this is the most baffling situation I’ve encountered and one that really bears watching closely because it will affect a generation of baseball and where the sport is headed in Baltimore.
Ripken lives here. He knows how screwed up it is. He’s not stupid and he’s not weak and he’s not one to “back down.” He wants to fix the Orioles. He wants to own the Orioles. He wants to run the Orioles.
Some think he can – successfully – and many of his detractors think he can’t but EVERYONE agrees his image would be a welcomed addition circa 2010 and it can’t make things worse.
And if he DOES get inside The Warehouse (which would only happen over Andy MacPhail’s dead body, mind you) could he actually survive it?
But at what cost? And with whose rules? And how would it go down if the team STILL continued to lose and treat people poorly even after Ripken got inside the building?
By the way: there’s NO WAY Andy MacPhail will EVER allow Cal Ripken to be a part of the Orioles organization while he’s “in charge.” MacPhail wants nothing to do with any former player of the collusion era of baseball being in any position to see the books of this cash cow.
Ripken was a “good boy” as an Angelos employee from most accounts but was a quiet firestorm of stubbornness in the clubhouse and really “ran the place” and managers in orange always gave him a special set of rules.
One thing you can definitely say about Angelos. In King Peter’s world, HE makes the rules.
His little “love in” with a few reporters notwithstanding last weekend, Angelos doesn’t consider Cal Ripken to be anything special. No more special than Brooks Robinson or Frank Robinson or Jon Miller or any other baseball player or personality who is “just another guy.”
Peter Angelos is making upward of $40 million in profit off the team this year and he clearly isn’t all that concerned about his reputation or pride 13 years into this mess. His words fended off Cal Ripken last week and the rest of the media will just let it go away until someone in the national media drops the next bomb.
In my opinion, Ripken isn’t “going away.”
And neither am I.
I’ll be opining frequently about this topic and I have plenty of information coming to me from various sources and I have a very good feel for what’s happening. And anyone who thinks last week’s leak from Rosenthal was an “accident” or a “lie” is just naïve. (And there’s no argument I’ll make here to make the Kool Aid drinkers believe it, but all of the scuttlebutt between Ripken and Angelos is very, very real.)
So tonight as you watch the NFL Draft (and hopefully drop by to have a chat with our hosts here in the LIVE CHAT anytime after 7:30 and throughout the weekend – Friday we have NFL Draft, Caps & Orioles all at the SAME TIME!) think about my ridiculously long missive back in February.
Here are the five links to my piece. If you’re bored during the draft, I’d be honored if you go back and read them:
- Part 1 of 5: The State of Baltimore Sports Media: Where do you get your info & whom do you trust?
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Part 2 of 5: Alexa? Who is she? How does WNST measure up to other Baltimore media?
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Part 3 of 5: Content and Distribution: Where are you getting your Baltimore sports news & information? Sharing is caring…
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Part 4 of 5: “Bought off” Media & the Power of Partnership: Flogging the flag
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Finale: Part 5 – What is the future of sports media in Baltimore?
And if you haven’t taken our survey, please do so here. (It really helps us make WNST.net better when you tell us what you like and what you hate!)
This weekend as you turn your dial and turn the pages of whatever you’re reading in the paper or on the internet, think about who you are listening to and what they’re saying and who they work for and what side of their bread their boss is buttered on when the team is 2-14.
It’s abundantly clear who is saying what because everyone should be saying SOMETHING when the team is 2-14.
And if they REALLY cared about Baltimore — or they were “friends you can turn to” — would they really keep filling your collective ears with the manure that’s been going on here for 13 years?
Once again, we’re standing up for Baltimore when the corporate media whores tell you lies and obstruct the truth about the Orioles and how devastating and unnecessary this whole mess has been since 1998.
We’re not a part of the problem — we’re a part of the solution, which does not include more years of denial and lies by people like Greg Bader and Andy MacPhail.
We give you the truth. We work hard to bring you the breaking news. We work incredibly hard to source information and make sure the information we dispense is credible and fair. And then we interact and talk with you about Baltimore sports and why we spend so much of our lives immersed in it.
That’s what we’ll be doing all weekend around the NFL Draft.
Have a great draft weekend. I’ll see you in the chat room or on Facebook or Twitter this weekend.
