At some point, the Orioles will “get even” with me by winning. Maybe that’s in 2011? Maybe that’ll never happen, but that’s not even the point. The point is that they really believe “Nestor and WNST are out to get us.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
No, I’m simply here to be honest and to continue to tell the truth about the way the ballclub is run, the way it functions and the way it continues to be a poor community partner for the city and the fans who literally BUILT the franchise between 1954 and 1994. The gobs of empty seats and a daily series of empty phone lines anytime we attempt to discuss the Orioles, their strategies or their rationales paints the true picture of how far the franchise has fallen. The opposite of “love” isn’t hate. It’s indifference. This year the Orioles will almost certainly continue a 12-year spiral downward as a franchise. They’ve all but admitted that there will be less people in the ballpark then there have ever been.
I could write for hours or days about all of the lies and cover-ups and shenanigans that the team has pulled over the last decade while going roughly 70-92 every year since 1998 and making a fortune off of the fact that the Washington Nationals exist allowing them to own MASN and its money-printing machine.
You don’t care to read it and I know I don’t care to write about it anymore. At this point, if you’re not smart enough to believe the truths that I put forth and verify with facts and evidence then the joke is really on you.
Honesty is not a pride issue with the Orioles. It’s simply a mere inconvenience. Take the team’s stance on something as fundamentally American as “free speech.”
It’s not news at this point (although it would be if it were Scott Garceau or Peter Schmuck or Roch Kubatko getting banned from doing what they do to feed their families) but the Orioles have once again denied me my absolute right to free speech in America by wrongfully denying me a press credential to cover the team’s home games this year while credentialing even the interns who work for me at WNST.net. It’s their little way of “getting even,” which is apparently an obsession in their small, petty world.
But people who speak out about injustice have been persecuted since the beginning of time all over our planet. Denying me a press credential to Camden Yards when I’m granted one by every sports entity on the face of the planet (including working press visa credentials by the Chinese AND Cuban governments!) is undoubtedly a restraint of trade issue. It’s most certainly a discrimination case. And it’s illegal – every expert I’ve spoken with says I have a slam-dunk legal case, but one that will cost me roughly $100,000 to pursue – but let them have their “fun” in banning me from coming to their press box while I report on their team all summer from behind a microphone and here in my blog at WNST.net.
They can artificially restrict my access at home games – and again, I was in Los Angeles last weekend on the field at Dodger Stadium with a MLB-granted press credential talking to Brian Roberts and Jeremy Guthrie – but the joke isn’t on me. It’s on them!
Every chance they get to show their “class” or their “ass” it’s always a safe bet that we’ll see them take the lowest road possible. Nothing they do surprises me or casts shame upon them any further than their own record on the field and all of the remnant space inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards over the last decade.
I’m a journalist. I’ve been a journalist since I was 15 years, since 1984 when I walked into The News American with John Steadman. I report facts. I research sports and the business of sports and how it works with great gusto and passion. I’m accountable and I’m professional. And I report to you what I know and what I think about what I know. Like the great John Eisenberg, I give facts and opinions and clearly separate between the two.
Fact: The Orioles have been amongst the worst teams in professional sports since 1998. (Fill in record here…)
Opinion: They’re going to stink in 2009 because they have no pitching but the organization finally has some kids who make the team competitive in a few years and this kid Matt Wieters is the No. 1 prospect in MLB this year.
Fact: Nestor Aparicio led the biggest protest and walkout in baseball history when nearly 2,500 people left an O’s game in the third inning of a game on Sept. 21, 2006. (Yes, it’s been 2 ½ years already!)
Opinion: The Orioles will lie or go to any length to try to get even with Aparicio for the rest of his life because of “Free The Birds,” which quite frankly might’ve helped them get better and that was the whole goal of the movement.
(By the way, two weeks from now when the team sports those sexy “BALTIMORE” jerseys, make sure WNST and Drew Forrester get the requisite credit. We fought for that for a decade!)
Two years ago, when I was told by “spokesman” Greg Bader at the front gate of the stadium that I wouldn’t be getting a press credential he then told Rick Maese of The Baltimore Sun that I wasn’t being credentialed because the team only credentials “working media members who are on the air, not radio station owners.”
Well, I’ve been back on the air every day for three months now and this week they called my staff (they never even speak to me or return emails or communicate in any way) to give them the newest excuse, which we all saw coming. They just move onto the next lie.
“Nestor gave up his right to a press pass with the walkout because it showed that he’s not objective,” the Orioles P.R. girl told my Vice President.
I suppose that Jim Hunter and Fred Manfra and Roch Kubatko are “objective” in their analysis of Orioles baseball in 2009 while Peter Angelos writes their paychecks?
Why don’t they stop lying and “reaching” and just tell the truth?
“The Orioles hate Nestor Aparicio and will go to great lengths to ‘get even’ for that stunt he pulled in 2006 even if it means looking like arrogant fools and banning him from our home stadium without any justification or legal reason.”
The only promise I make to the WNST audience and to anyone who loves Baltimore sports is to keep telling the truth and to keep reporting on the progress – good and bad – of the Baltimore Orioles. And we will continue to chronicle their on-the-field activities all summer here at WNST.net.
We’re even running a series of bus trips again in May and June to see the Birds play in New York, Washington and Philadelphia.
Every pitch, every hit, every game WNST.net will cover the team with the only truly “objective” voice in the marketplace. That’s our strategic advantage. You know we speak the truth and act with integrity.
When they play well and do good things, we’ll commend them as we’ve done for 17 years. The truth? They haven’t done much right or well since 1997 — on or off the field. The Angelos family has essentially slaughtered two generations of baseball civic pride in less than a decade and chased away more than 2 million people per year from downtown and from the ballpark.
But the city badly needs the team to win. The city needs Andy McPhail and Matt Wieters and Jake Arrieta and all of these young players to be “the real deal.” (My real opinion is that the team needs to be sold to a new owner to ever fully blossom but the last time I said that they took away my press pass.)
But, if they lose and their pitching stinks and they jog out ground balls and do stupid things in the organization (like not showing their Florida spring training games on a TV network they they own and we pay big money for every month via our cable bill) we’ll also chronicle and comment on that.
We hope you participate and hold up your end by actually watching the team play this spring and summer and call into AM 1570 and speak what’s on your mind freely in a free society regarding the baseball club.
I speak for everyone at WNST when I say that we want them to win. We NEED them to win. We need someone, ANYONE to actually care about the team again.
The city needs them to get better. The businesses downtown need them to get better. But in the meantime, it’s 2009 and they look every bit as bad this season as they have for years, especially when no one in the city can name three of their starting pitchers. Oh, they’ll hit the ball for sure. But the games might be a six-month series of four-hour marathons if they’re going to win 75 games.
But that won’t stop me from being at Hooters on Monday at 2 p.m. with Bud Light giveaways and eternal hope that there will once again be quality Major League Baseball in Baltimore.
As Jim Valvano once said: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”
I’ve got plenty of “fight” left in me, even if it’s from the stands and my living room and not in their locker room or front office.
I don’t want to fight with them. I’ve never wanted to fight with them.
I just want them to win and bring the “old Magic” back.
Oh, yeah — and be honest, which they never seem to be able to muster.
