Mark Viviano finally tells Nestor the whole back story on his massive scoop of Browns coming to Baltimore in 1995

As a real journalist and a guy who lived to break news, Nestor Aparicio has always wondered about the Mark Viviano 1995 leak on WBAL about Art Modell moving the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. Finally, on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Koco’s Pub, Viviano came clean about The Butler In The Bar in Ferndale.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

baltimore, crab cake, browns, oyster, team, years, kevin, story, cleveland browns, cleveland, nestor, move, hagerstown, world, people, game, remember, cocos, st louis, donut

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Marcella Knight, Mark Viviano

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, Jost, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We got logos all over the place. Our friends at Liberty, pure solutions are putting us out on the road. They take care of my water, my well water, keeping me safe, keep my showers nice. But the oysters are the ones who take care of the Chesapeake Bay. So we’re gonna honor the oysters all month by eating them. More of them in various ways. We’re gonna start today, Cocos. You can follow on the internet. The hashtag is MD, oyster tour onto a crab cake tours, which I’m in the middle of right here at Cocos. I have to go and rush seven stumblers from the Maryland lottery. I will have the Raven scratch offs once I give this handsome stack out and I have my little app. Viv, you caught me like checking people’s apps, right? Poor ladies thought they wanted and win.

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Mark Viviano  00:44

Delivered the bad news, but you did it gracefully. That was nice. You like my game show.

Nestor Aparicio  00:51

Mark Viviano was here. He used to be on the television. You look like the guy on the television. So I yeah, I want to do that. This is your life. Because I really do want to go back like your family and like all have all that fun, but your most famous in my media world, as I’ve been on the radio four years. At the time, nasty Nestor, I was on Wlg didn’t have a station. It was 1995 and this whole notion for any of these kids, and certainly for Chad Steele as well, the notion of what a miracle the Ravens were for this community and how unbelievable, like the notion that I could go out tonight and see the northern lights here in Baltimore feels impossible to me, right? Like it feels like that was just could never happen. It just felt like we weren’t getting a team. And Mark, I’m not some like guy from Dundalk on you know, I was at the newspaper every day, every night, doing the scoreboard page with almost 15 years old by the time the team left. And by the way, we’re doing a sports first reunion two weeks from now, because it’s the 40th anniversary of it failing, which is September 21 1984 my son was born the next day. So it’s a 40th anniversary. Lots of recigs gonna be here later to talk about it. But so, you know, I guess in all of this, the notion that we would get a team, I saw Vito stellino. I you know, all the reporters, John Steadman, these were all people. They would go to these owners meetings and get yanked off by Leonard toast and Rankin Smith and ursay had the voters say, had to vote for Baltimore to get back into the league. That was part of the deal. So every year, HERBIE Bell grab would take his crab cakes to this owner’s meeting that and he would come back and Vito would write something that’s a pretty good veto. Veto and write something really good about, you know, whoa, I don’t really think the chances are good. You know, that would be veto telling me that in 1989 when little Nestor is in his Oilers gear, sitting in Sandy McKees cube at the sun, thinking Charlie Ekman dairy, no way we’re getting the team back leader, and you stumble upon this, and it was such a hot thing that I think of Steadman, if any reporter had it to think, to go with it, that the Browns are moving to Baltimore. As insane as that sounds even say it 30 years later, the Browns are moving to Baltimore. Give me the story, Viv because I literally don’t know it. So

Mark Viviano  03:26

I covered the Cleveland Browns while in Dayton, Ohio. I covered the browns and the bangles. I was there for some bad Browns teams and some pretty good teams. You went up to Cleveland from Dayton that that that part of the state that’s Ohio, yes, right. Okay. Remember, the Bengals were relatively new. They they joined the league, and I think 6869 the Browns had been there since the 50s, 40s. So they were statewide the bank. The Bengals, although closer to Dayton, there were still a lot of holdouts, like the Nationals would be new to, right, similar, right? So I would drive. It was good three hour drive to Cleveland for their home games cover their teams. Kevin Byrne was the PR, absolutely.

Nestor Aparicio  04:08

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Dino was there then. Did you know? Did you know there was a whole staff of people, tons

Mark Viviano  04:12

of Yeah, I was there. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Bill Belichick on the field. This is his first head coaching job in the NFL. He’s head coach of the Cleveland Browns at the community college there, where they had training camp back then. And I’m doing stand ups on an empty field. Bill Belichick comes running out. He comes running out. He goes, Hey, what’s up? He just wanted to meet people. And we ended up talking about everything other than football, and he was really a good guy. He was a nice guy. What you see otherwise, you’ll hear a lot of stories about how Belichick, when you get him away from the media and football, he’s perfectly good human being. It’s when he’s immersed in the world of competition that he becomes this, this, this very. Difficult guy to deal with. Anyway, I covered the browns, so I’m now. Now I’m in Baltimore, and I’m aware of the Colts and the scab that’s still in Baltimore over the loss of the Colts. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  05:12

you’re St Louis guy, right?

Mark Viviano  05:15

St Louis are gone the Cardinals. They’ve lost, they’ve left. Lost two teams in my lifetime, they lost the Cardinals, and then they lost the Rams who came and left. Well, you weren’t there for that, but you my family was,

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Nestor Aparicio  05:27

yeah, you had Jim. You saw Jim Hart stuff in sports bars, you know, literally, right? I mean, absolutely, very Metcalf And so anyway,

Mark Viviano  05:35

how the story comes about. So I’ve only been in town. I’ve only been in Baltimore for a year and a few months, I’m doing a fill in for Ken Rosenthal on W Bal radio. Rosenthal would do a show

Nestor Aparicio  05:50

Jackman used to do him sometimes too. I’m

Mark Viviano  05:53

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just filling in. I’m filling in and the guy, the producer of the show during a break, goes, Hey, Mark, there’s a guy that wants to talk to you. He doesn’t want to be on the air. He just wants to talk to you off the air. I’m like, okay, Patch me through so we’re on. He goes, Hey, I know you’re pretty new to town. I’ve been watching you. You’re good. We needed we need good we need good talent like you in this town. I’ve got some information. I’m in on the deal that is on the financial end of the deal to bring the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. I’d like to show you some of the documentation that I have about this. Are you game? I’m like, am I game? Yeah, I’m game. So I meet him the next day, and this is, like, you’re in Baltimore, I’m in Baltimore. Okay, all right. So he tells me his name is Chris, and he tells me to meet him down by the airport at this one bar. He still knows the name of the bar. This guy, by the way, is a good friend of mine. Now, I pull up into the in the parking lot of this restaurant bar, and the parking lot’s empty, except for one black SUV, and he pulls his over next to me. He goes, Hey, I’m Chris. This place is closed. I got another place at this point. I’m like, Okay, what? This guy’s gonna kill me? He’s going to murder me. I don’t know him. I’m there to follow him. And he and he leads me down kind of this back road to this other bar. It was kind of like it was really

Nestor Aparicio  07:20

sketchy Sopranos episode.

Mark Viviano  07:24

So we go in, and it’s, like, it is. It’s like, Hollywood. There’s a guy with the apron on,

Nestor Aparicio  07:29

Bernie, dude, it’s Ferndale.

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Mark Viviano  07:31

He’s got an apron on. He’s behind the bar, and there’s nobody in there. And this is, like, it’s, it’s like, two o’clock, three o’clock in the afternoon, we sit at this corner table, he pulls out all these papers, and he’s showing me the paperwork of I’m glad I asked this question. I don’t know how this deal is going down, all right. And I’m looking at this going, this is this is unbelievable. I said I covered the Cleveland Browns. I know who they are. I know art mode I know who art modell is, and

Nestor Aparicio  08:01

I know his place is a dump, and I know the baseball I mean, you knew the circumstances, but there hadn’t been a whisper of this, none. Not a whisper, not

Mark Viviano  08:09

a whisper. So anyway, he goes, there you go. And I’m like, okay, so I go straight back to Bal, to my news director, Dave Roberts, and explain to him what I got. And he says, What? Yeah, pretty much says, What. What are you talking about here? So anyway, remember I told you so the Cleveland Indians are in the World Series. Or, Yes, this is 9094 I’m sorry, 95 this is 95 the year after baseball. I’m

Nestor Aparicio  08:40

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going to give you my story now, because I want to hear the rest of this, because this happened within 48 hours. Okay, so Kevin Eck was my best friend in the world. You know, Kevin, right? Kevin worked at the sun at the time and at the News America before that. And Kevin and I grew up met 1979 standing in line to get Billy Smith’s autograph at games at East Point Mall. Wow, in the summer, August of 79 three weeks later, we met in seventh grade, and he’s like, Oh, you’re the loud guy that was at the mall getting autographs. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s me. So I’m 10 at the time, right? So flash forward, 1617, years later, 1995, you know what a baseball hat I am, Ryan me and Aparicio, right? So when a team came to Baltimore, I realized the players had access to World Series tickets, and like I could get them and go. So in 1992 when the SID Breen thing happened, I was sitting on strips in Pittsburgh to go to actually go to the World Series, and I had to give the tickets back to David sege, and he got my $80 back, or whatever. So the next year, 93 I went to the World Series. I went to Philadelphia, Curt Schilling. He married my best friend, growing up from across the street, like all that. I went to Toronto. I was there when Carter hit the home run. All that. 94 there’s no World Series. 95 there’s gonna be a World Series, right? And you know it’s gonna be and I’m on the radio four years now. I’m, you know, doing things. I’m nasty. I got spa. Answers, Bubba St Louis, my sponsor. So I got tickets for the World Series. And I got two tickets up on the roof, probably from the Orioles, probably from Evelyn Hellers or something, you know, at that time, or whatever, right? And or maybe from a player I don’t even remember, Chris hoyles Or somebody, or Ben McDonald somebody told me to strip it tickets, Brady somebody, and I said to Kevin, you want to go out to go out to Cleveland for some games. They got a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now, and we’ll go out. We’ll chase some girls. We’re both 26 that was the week that Gary Miller had the incident the basement. You can Google that. That was that week. So that World Series games three, four and five were in Cleveland. It was cold as hell. I broadcast from the field. I got pictures of me with Chris Berman and like, all this stuff going on. And Kevin just was like a regular guy. Kevin landed to go to two of the games he flew, and he was working the paper, and was just $29 on Southwest Airlines at the time. Remember that $19 so he flew out to Cleveland, came up, and Kevin didn’t travel a whole lot, or whatever. He got in cabs, and which were always expensive for Dundalk guy, right? And he got in the cab to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Trust me, there’s a point to the story. He goes over to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s closed because they had a gala there, because the World Series game five was going on, sure. So they shut it down. He couldn’t get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and now he’s in cleaving. I know where he is. There’s no Google, man. He gets in a cab, and the cab ride he got in. I wrote about this in Purple Rain one as well. Probably wrote about it better than I’ll tell you the story, because he told me about this later in an adult establishment that we were in later in the evening down in Brook Park. I didn’t go to the game with him. I was on the field broadcast, and it was cold as hell. He showed up. We sat together up in the stands, even though I had a press box seat, but I had a ticket. We’re up in the right field stands, and we’re up there, and we’re freezing and watching the game. And he says to me, I did this and went there, and I had to get in a cab, and I had to take a cab over here. It was a cluster. I barely got here in time for the national anthem, whatever it was, right? And he said, I had a crazy cab ride, dude. I’m like, what he said? Cabbie asked me where I was from, and I said, Baltimore. And he said he looked into the rear view mirror in the back seat, and he said, you’re getting to Cleveland Browns. The Browns are coming to Baltimore, and Kevin’s a reporter, and the son in the backseat, and he’s like, Who is this Kook? You know, I mean, and the cab, he said to Kevin, I’m neighbors with one of the banker guys for art modell. And he turns around and Kevin in a cab, and he says, You’re gonna remember me, pal, because the Cleveland Browns are coming to Baltimore. Kevin, that tells me this at game five of the World Series, up at the Jake we went out that night, and we were literally in a bar. Some people might have been dancing there, and we’re having some drinks, and we watched the post game with Chris Berman, ESPN, you know all that we’re in there watching the highlights, and we flew out the next morning. That was the day the deal was signed. Was that the morning we went to the airport, because we were staying right outside the airport, the deal got signed. And you broke that story within four days, five it was within that week. It was the World Series, right? Because, oh yeah, because I called, I call october 25, 678, somewhere in there, right at that point,

Mark Viviano  13:25

like, what happens oftentimes in local television news, if you’ve got a story and there’s another end to it, which would be Cleveland, you kind of try to pull resources and say, Hey, what are you hearing? So I yeah, what are you hearing? So I call Jim Donovan. Is a legislator, right? He’s the voice of the browns, so he picks up the phone. I said, Jim Mark Viviano, I’m at the NBC affiliate in Baltimore. Listen, I’ve gotten some real credible tips about some movement of a deal to move the Browns to Baltimore, and I don’t blame Jim for this. I just this was a common reaction even among Baltimore media. Jim Donovan, Hey, man, we’ve heard that song and dance quite a bit around here. The Indians are in the world series right now. Good luck with the story. Ah,

Nestor Aparicio  14:19

you remember it exactly that way, exactly that

Mark Viviano  14:21

way. So there were, there were some, a few Cleveland radio stations would have me on, and one of them called me up. I said, Yeah, I’ll go on. I’ll tell you what I know, unbeknownst to me, it was kind of a setup. Mayor Michael White was in studio with them, Cleveland, Mayor Michael White, and they’re saying, okay, Mark Viviano joins us from Cleveland. He’s the one who’s been reporting that the Browns are actually in conversations with state officials in Maryland about moving, you know, the team, this and that. And I said, Well, this is, this is what I’ve learned at this point. We’ve at this point, Sandusky and me and our news director had built. Uh, you know, some corroborating evidence to the the information that I had. And then, well, Mark, uh, Mayor Michael White is here with us, here in studio, and this guy just, he just, he denounced everything. Well,

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Nestor Aparicio  15:13

they were trying to get it on the ballot right, to get the stadium renovations that that that was the plan in 95 was the renovate the the mistake on

Mark Viviano  15:21

the and it was all too late for art. Art went. Art needed a lifeline, just to save himself, because he was going bankrupt for paying guys like Andre risen, and he needed the money that Baltimore was holding. They had it so,

Nestor Aparicio  15:33

and John knew that. Yeah, so the John Moog, the final,

Mark Viviano  15:38

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the final confirmation that we got came from Mayor Schmoke. Mayor Schmoke said, you guys got it. You’re on it. There’s a press conference in the parking lot scheduled for, I think it was November, 4 or fifth, whatever it was. I

Nestor Aparicio  15:50

met Peter King that day. So what I did parking lot D, let’s

Mark Viviano  15:54

so we rewind 30 years. This is, this is what I did. I go get some W, b, a, l, letterhead, sit down at a typewriter, type the story. W Bal TV Baltimore is reporting. The Cleveland Browns have a deal in place and will announce on november 5 that they are relocating to Baltimore. Faxed it to ESPN Bob Lee read it on the air. Now you’ll know this as a media guy. If you have that story in 2024 that story, you tweet one bit about it. It’s over. It’s over. You’ll never own it. It’s not yours. At that time, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter. Well, you

Nestor Aparicio  16:38

know my W NST breaking news thing. That was a thing 15 years ago. Now, it’s just, it’s just information. It just goes and it doesn’t get credited to the Los Angeles Times or to the reporters name you don’t certainly, yeah, it’s just

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Mark Viviano  16:51

nobody had it, nobody if anybody had it, nobody put it out there. Nobody went with it. Nobody. So it was, it was our story. It was, it was entirely our story. Now that was a huge thing to be at that press conference, because even the local TV stations, and Scott, Scott Garza is a dear friend of mine, John burin, who I eventually replaced, but they were like those stations were running ads denouncing my reports. Don’t believe the hype. Whistling past the grave. I remember whistling past the grave, yeah, it’s like, well, it happened. It actually happened. And it was, it was nuts. I mean, it was, it was a huge story, and it was saying

Nestor Aparicio  17:35

there were going to be northern lights here tonight. And it actually happened, like, they, like, I can’t, as a person that was here, it’s it’s still, for younger people, they’ll never appreciate what John did, what William Donald, what the community did. I mean, even the PSL talk about trying to sell a PSL right now for the football you know what? I mean, like if they had to do that again, if they had to get a legislature to hold money for a decade, if they had to get William Donald Schaefer to get in the way of Jack Kent Cooke moving the Redskins to Laurel, all of the things that could happen that and art had to be going broke. They had to find the right candidate. Because I don’t know that bud Adams would ever move the teammate. You know, like it didn’t feel like it always just felt like we were going to get used. Like, I don’t know, Portland, Birmingham, Memphis, name these places that are never gonna get a team. San Antonio, you know, they have a dome down there. 40 years they’re not getting a team, right? It just felt like we were we they weren’t gonna let us play. I mean, maybe you didn’t feel that we could do to town exactly. You saw it as well. The Oilers can. Everybody else can move

Mark Viviano  18:40

Jacksonville and Carolina. Got the team that you guys thought you were going to get here before I got here.

Nestor Aparicio  18:45

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It was every reason Angelos believes he had the Buccaneers. He died with believing that they screwed him. I

Mark Viviano  18:50

remember going down to to RFK for for then Redskins game, and Angelos was on the field interviewing Peter Angelo’s because they were playing the Buccaneers. He was down there because he was, he was, you called her house. Was dying. He was out there. He was out there for this. You guys went through a Mike Brown’s in town, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Bengals might move here. Georgia frontier.

Nestor Aparicio  19:13

Al Davis, oh, oh, my God, that 98 rock guy, the maybes, Bob rivers had a song, Mr. Bidwell, bring us your team, and that we were trying to steal your

Mark Viviano  19:26

team. That’s right, St Louis and they moved to Arizona in 97 I think, ended up No,

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Nestor Aparicio  19:31

no. 8787 I was at the sun. Then they were selling Baltimore Cardinals shirts. Stan Rappaport wore one at the Baltimore Sun in 1987 there was Balti Google, Baltimore Cardinals gear.

Mark Viviano  19:43

There’s also Baltimore Brown’s gear,

Nestor Aparicio  19:45

yeah, but that really happened. Mark vivianos here, so that you had a deep throat named Chris, not his real name, not his

Mark Viviano  19:54

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real name, yeah. In fact, you might know him. I might know the real person. You might know the right I may have already made because. You’re well, I know this. Steve Hennessy knew him. Oh, wow, yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  20:05

did Martin mole bring the browns? That’s good.

Mark Viviano  20:12

I can tell you his name. He was in my wedding. He’s a dear

Nestor Aparicio  20:15

friend of this. Go ahead. Go ahead. I don’t know, shocked me. Go ahead.

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Mark Viviano  20:18

Kevin Butler, Kevin, okay.

Nestor Aparicio  20:22

Bay Area mortgage Sure. Long time. Listener, mom, yeah, he owns the hammer jacks. He

Mark Viviano  20:27

does. He owns, he owns the the guy, is it my wedding? I just saw Christ. He doesn’t brag more about this. He’s cool. We’re just dear friends. Have been ever since. Now

Nestor Aparicio  20:41

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I know why it was such a seedy bar in Glen Burnie. We’re one of the best bars in Baltimore, maybe in the world. We’re Coco’s pub. We’re Laravel. Have you been here before? No, and you insisted on coming here.

Mark Viviano  20:54

I saw, I saw that. I saw them making these aren’t baseball size 11 ounces They’re like mini football.

Nestor Aparicio  21:02

Marcellus, right behind. She’s in the shot, right this? Marcella, her mother, Marcella, come tell him about this 11 ounce crab cake. Oh, my goodness. So her mother’s hands. This is only way she knew how to make the crab cake. So her mother made it like this, and they didn’t even know how big it was, because that’s, that’s phenomenal. They don’t, you know, I mean, they weigh them now, but like, they’re, they’re huge rant here. He wanted to know, like, why this weather? So why they’re not Viviano, um, retired and retired?

Mark Viviano  21:35

No, I want you to know I saw your guy making those and putting them in the cooler over here. I’ve never seen a crab cake that big. I’ve seen watermelons that, yeah, that’s

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Nestor Aparicio  21:47

unbelievable. Tell them why they’re that big.

Marcella Knight  21:49

They’re that big because of my mom’s hands. That was the size of my mom’s hands when she used to make the crab cakes. She never weighed them. She just molded them. And that’s the size of the crab cake. And

Nestor Aparicio  21:59

then once people would hear start, there used to be pool tables, right? We are right now. I mean, this was like a real corner, like little place, yeah, and I’ve known her since the Emerald tavern. Tell them about me wearing my oiler helmet on game days at the Emerald tavern, everybody there’s betting, you know? And by the way, it’s Gambling Awareness Month. I did a whole piece on that with John Martin this morning. Not that that pay phone out in front of the Emerald tavern. Was something back in the day, but her and her mom on Sundays, I guess this place was closed, maybe, yeah, and they would come and watch football. This is it was the Browns backers bar in 1993 9495

Mark Viviano  22:36

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until if I had a known that this would have been the place to come to get the reaction if I went to close. Do you remember

Nestor Aparicio  22:42

on the opening day when they had a sign that circled that said, Jump art, David land on it, or whatever? Was that from? That was the Browns packers paid for that. They paid the 300 bucks or whatever to have the plane fly around. So I’ve known her that long, and her mom and she would always say, we own Coco pub. Come by and get a crab cake. And I know I come in here a couple times 20 years ago, and all of these years she’s this place is one of the gems in Baltimore. It’s just one of the great so he wanted to come here because he hadn’t been here yet, and he’s heard about crab cakes. So he’s

Marcella Knight  23:13

taken one of the his wife, my husband is so upset that he can’t be here today to be a real sports celebrity. He said everything that you did, and he used to watch you all the time.

Mark Viviano  23:27

I will arrange that I come back just to have dinner with him.

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Marcella Knight  23:30

Let’s do that. Oh, that would be wonderful. I

Mark Viviano  23:32

mean, you’re having me here, and I’m sorry I’m missing him, but I would love to come back. Yeah, he’s

Marcella Knight  23:35

out in Hagerstown visiting with his dad today. Gotcha so he couldn’t make it, but he was like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe so

Nestor Aparicio  23:42

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is he coming back tonight from Hagerstown? Yes. If he leaves after seven o’clock, tell him to bring you donuts from krumpies. They don’t open those seven at night. It’s in an alley.

Mark Viviano  23:52

Go get donuts in an alley. It’s all good,

Nestor Aparicio  23:55

dude. You stole the browns in a bar in Ferndale with a guy named Chris. Yeah. It’s not really Chris, yeah, krumpies Donuts. It’s a I had the former mayor of Hager, standout. She’s now the the drugs are for the for the state, the opioid special response for Westmore. She’s the former mayor of hey, reminds me you, quite frankly, she’s, she’s spunky and awesome. So she there’s a donut place two blocks where she lives. It’s the most famous donut place in Hagerstown. And when I did the crab cake tour a couple years ago, I looked it up and it opened. It said, 7pm What a weird and I’m like, no no. Google did this wrong. I mean, donut place in an alley in Hagerstown Open 7pm I’m like, and they’re like, no, no, no. It’s kind of open to seven tonight. That’s really the way they do donuts here. And if you go at 710 Don’t be a line of 10 cars in the alley with brake lights. And it’s in a neighbor. It’s called donut alley. We’ll have to so it is literally like a cocoa, quirky little St Louis guy. And I mentioned the hill, and he’s little, Venerable family. Oh, yeah, business, that’s what this is. Her and her mother made this thing happen. 30 years

Marcella Knight  25:13

old. I was a baby when they opened it. We had 39 year anniversary. August 17. We just passed. We’re getting ready to plan a 40th nice.

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Nestor Aparicio  25:24

I didn’t want to pull you crab cakes table. Can you give him some lottery tickets for me, because I pulled your way. We’re six gonna come on like I want you to come back in about an hour. We’re doing the oyster thing. VIBs gonna be gone that sample

Marcella Knight  25:35

the oyster appetizer for tonight. I think you’re gonna love it. It’s delicious. Well, what

Nestor Aparicio  25:39

I’m trying to do is educate people about the bay on behalf of the oyster recovery partnership, Marilyn lottery, sending me out of friends at Liberty, pure solutions. They’re a water company, and they they do my well water. They’ve been doing it for years. And this oyster thing, they do this, this trick where they put an oyster in an aquarium and we have a cocktail party four hours later, the water’s clear. They put it in the river, because oysters clean the bay, and that’s how you get these crab cakes stay so delicious because we don’t have crabs if we don’t have oysters. So I’m going to be educating people every day, having an oyster day every month. Don’t be bringing me 15 oysters, because John shields is going to do that tomorrow, and then Friday, I’m going to the pepper mill. And you’re

Marcella Knight  26:17

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roasted. They’re not, they’re not like, you know, all right, well,

Nestor Aparicio  26:20

we’re going to do that in four o’clock hour. And I want to talk about your thing with one with the old Jay Z folks, and 100.7 you won the competition last year the crab cake. And it’s coming up again. You’re doing it again, right? Yes, I want to make sure I knew that. So hey, also doing

Marcella Knight  26:34

the Susquehanna Wine Festival, I

Nestor Aparicio  26:36

saw that. Yes, that’s, that’s

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Marcella Knight  26:38

in September.

Nestor Aparicio  26:39

There’s an oyster related thing to that, I think, too, there’s an oyster recovery piece to that. I think, I think because I saw your logo up on the website, yeah, all right, well, we’re Cocos. Viv is here. I’m gonna get resig in. Can I bring her SIG in? Because he’s from New York via buffalo. His wife is here. It’s the by Cleveland. It’s a 40th anniversary of sports first demise. We’re sick and I met 40 years ago this summer, working together. We were colleagues. I was 15 years old, and yeah, so we’re gonna we’re doing a reunion in two weeks on on the show. We’re doing a zoom reunion. Bernie miklas, Jeff Gordon, the the sports editor, longtime sports editor, longtime sports editor, the St Louis Post Dispatch. Bob Paston was my boss. Was the late great Bob Paston, my first ever boss, first person ever give me a chance in life to do this for a living. So we’re gonna do that and six, let’s sit down, and you’re gonna come back and bring me some oysters. Right? Absolutely. And we’re gonna bring other staff members here. We got soccer players. Crab cake maker, are you gonna

Marcella Knight  27:40

stay for a while? Mark,

Mark Viviano  27:41

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I have baseball practice my son’s team that we have practice retired so he didn’t have to wear a headset down in savory Park. But I would love I and if I could bring my wife a crab cake,

Marcella Knight  27:52

she’ll be I’ll send some home with you today. They

Mark Viviano  27:56

don’t have to be multiples. Just do

Nestor Aparicio  27:58

you eat trip? Of course. All right, Coke. One order, coconuts for the next, for the next, and we didn’t bring her SIG in. Terry’s here as well. She’s gonna laugh at my jokes. Thanks, Terry. Appreciate that. And little known fact, and you, do you know why I’m nasty? Nestor? Do you know the the genesis of how

8

Marcella Knight  28:16

I always thought it was because he was nasty? I would have thought right

Nestor Aparicio  28:20

when I was a boy, I was meatball Doughboy, Nestor, the long ear Christmas donkey. Took a lot of jokes for the finger missing and all that. So I didn’t really love my name, right? And I was at the paper and my name was there, right? It’s my dad’s name is Nestor. And all during the, you know, 90s, I started doing this radio thing about a year and a half, two years before I did radio, I made a bet with Mike resignliano at the Baltimore Sun after going to see Eddie Murray at two home runs against the dot against the Phillies as a Dodger, summer 89 came in, and I offered to babysit with six kids if he could name all The relief pitchers first names for the Phillies, wow. And the name that won the bet was fro worth, who later became an Oriole and a friend the late Blake, great friend of mine, Todd. He said, Todd free played a lot of rotisserie baseball. We’re sick dead. So he won the bet, and I had to go to his house two blocks from here, and babysit his children in the summer of 1989 How old were your kids in 89 Terry, when you were they born, six and seven, five and six, six. These kids were beautiful, beautiful adults, but they were so I sent them to bed early because I didn’t come to Cocos and get your I made chicken on the grill and it all burned, and I blamed it on them, and I sent him the bed, wink, wink. They had to go to bed. I had a date that night, so I sent him the bed, and they got mad at me. And instead of calling me uncle Nestor, they started calling me nasty Nestor. That’s perfect. So were six kids named me nasty. Six and seven year old kids ain’t. Know what they’re doing, and they’re 40 something now. They got little twins that are making grandpa and grandma. We’re seeing all happy out here in laraville Eating Coco’s crackers. We’re gonna get some cocoa shrimp. Rasig is my co host with a K because he lives in the neighborhood, so I have all the old retired people out now, yeah, yeah, I’m retired and old. He’s wearing his Orio cap. We’re gonna come back and doing some more. Marilyn lottery, liberty, pure solutions, Jiffy Lube. Our friends at curiowell is putting us out on this 26th anniversary tour, 27 oysters, because I’m starting a day early with the Gruyere in Parmesan, garlic roasted oysters, and they’re broiled just like New Orleans back for more Cocos with VIV and rasig right after this.