Media insider John Ourand of Puck tells Nestor about his huge Orioles scoop on the Angelos sale to the Rubenstein group – and what he expects next in the transaction and the aftermath with MLB and media rights.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
orioles, baltimore, years, baseball, sports, rubenstein, money, dc, john, team, man, game, stadium, big, watch, people, pay, beer, peter, buck
SPEAKERS
Nestor J. Aparicio, John Ourand
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home, we are wn st Towson, Baltimore. Hey at 1570 We missed the point if we’re doing like videos, say click on me subscribe here, do all that set us on your dial at 815 70 Lots and lots of folks are up by the end of the month. We have a whole new set of modern research about what a great six month period it’s been for our writing for our audience, Luke Jones and all the work he’s doing. We’re getting ready for baseball season getting ready for football season. And I’m sort of back on track after a couple of Super Bowl. And what we did a crabcake row we did 78 charities to kind of shut it down a little bit February. I’m wrapping it back up and First things first today when we’re recording. This is the first recording on my father’s 100 And fifth birthday. So I’ve rereleased our book from 2006 on my family’s love of baseball and why we love baseball. I’ve rereleased Peter principles in recent weeks. We’re going to be getting back out on to the crabcake tour. early April Lucas and I are making a little Florida because I gotta go son myself. I mean, we got new ownership I got I got champagne on ice. The Maryland lottery will send me out during the crabcakes where we’re going to be a Costas. We’re going to be at Coco’s in early April but we’re going to be every Friday at fade these when there’s a home game loose gonna come down from 205 and for all of you used to call and say hey, you ain’t on live no more when you go to live. I’ll be on live from two to five. Live from two to five I arrived. It’s pretty good. I’ll be brought to you by the Maryland lottery also when donation 866 90 nation our friends if you do multi care and our newest sponsor Liberty pure solutions, keeping my water clean, have no dog a long time. Well, water, all that good stuff. This guy I’ve waited a long time to have on. He was the first text that I sent out on that evening when I was preparing for yoga and licking my purple wounds less than 48 hours after the Ravens were eliminated in a home AFC Championship game. And I always pronounce his name wrong, but he or Rand John or Rand is that to get it right. Not perfect. I’ve known you for 30 years and I just I want to make you French you know what I mean? Like I just want to give you the paradisiac around. But nonetheless, you are now with Puck your longtime Sports Business Journal and literally world renowned media insider who sits with commissioners. But you’re like, at heart one of us. You’re a Baltimore fan. You’re a Baltimore Orioles fan. You’re Washington sports fan your record or your home team sports guy from back in the day and you’ve gone on to like break stories and have news and sort of famously Mark Viviano through Bob Leffler got word of art modell moving the team here in 1995. I still give them two points for that. I told everybody Brian Billick was getting the job here. I broke that one. So you know you get stories and we just lost Chris Mortensen this week and famous for the Peyton Manning story to Denver. But in Baltimore, dude, I’m not wearing a hat but it would be Orthology. Klee correct. If I were I would tip my cap to you say congratulations on breaking, um, the story of the century in this century in Baltimore, on the sale of the Orioles. Congratulations, brother.
8
John Ourand 03:10
Thank you, man. Let me tell you about that. I grew up in DC. So like, I I’ve adopted Baltimore, but I’m a DC guy through and through. We never had a baseball team. So I grew up with the the Orioles of the 70s and early 80s. Oh,
Nestor J. Aparicio 03:24
man when you’re 70 ones you I have no Senator memories. Now I remember the 73 season. I remember Pete Rose Harrelson fields me on like, Rusty stop. And I mean, I remember that vividly. I was five and 73. But I have no recollection of anything other than the Texas Rangers and 1971 baseball cards with the black edges. It said senators with Hondo on Tebow. Yes. You know, I’m
John Ourand 03:47
told my parents told me I went to the final game at RFK. That was awesome. Dude. A nine nothing lost because the game was a forfeit because the fans stormed the field and they couldn’t complete the game at the end. So Phil
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:04
8Woods been so pissed for 50 years. I listen, I spent so much time in that press box as a kid at the Capitol center in the 80s. And I’m writing about that in a beautiful book. That croelick Did I gotta get him on the show about the Capitol center and its history. But I was always amongst you. You know what I mean? Folks like you that lost your baseball team sort of my age. Hey, man, you were amongst me. I lost my football team twice now if you consider that I’m gonna watch.
John Ourand 04:30
You guys never adopted the Redskins. Like we went to Baltimore immediately. I love the Orioles man. Well,
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:37
that was easy to do when Palmer’s on the hill and Eddie’s common. And here’s Cal and there’s Weaver and there’s playoff runs. And you could go beat Reggie Jackson up if you tried and free agency and all of that. But what made you an overdose fan?
John Ourand 04:50
You know, I just got a couple. We went up to watch the games. And you know, my very My first memory of going into Memorial State Medium was a Sunday afternoon game. I think it was McGregor on the mound and might have been planning and is one of the left handers. And it was the year after Reggie Jackson left to go to the Yankees and the HP
8Nestor J. Aparicio 05:10
77. Net. And my
John Ourand 05:13
dad taught me how to boo Medina and with like 50,000 Other people like we just every time he came up, we just stood up, and we booed the hell out of him. And it was great.
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:23
I loved Reggie. And so he did that. And then you know, then I met Reggie and I really didn’t like Reggie. That’s chapter six of my book this week. John, you’re a puck now before we get to the Orioles, because I’m gonna take a deep dive with you, man. I’ve waited a month and a half to have you. I’ve watched you on all these other podcasts. And I’m like, Fine, we’ll be better when he comes here. There’ll be more information. I mean rootstocks walking around stadiums. Now he was in Sarasota, then he’s like, this is happening pitch me. It’s just like literally happening, right?
John Ourand 05:51
8Yeah, it’s not only is it happening, Major League Baseball can’t wait for it to happen. So they’ve at the home office up in New York, they’ve put this thing on the fast track. So there’s, there’s not going to be a you know, a lengthy sort of, let’s make sure that Rubenstein is okay to take it over. It’s like let’s get him in. And let’s shore up one of what the what baseball considers a crown jewel franchise for, for the league. You know, attendance hasn’t been great. The record has been terrible recently. But Camden Yards is among the best places venues to watch a game. And, and just the long history of Baltimore and the latest support that’s there. I mean, I haven’t seen a ton of it recently with a half empty stadiums, but the support they feel that the support is still there. So it’s a it’s a very important franchise for the for Major League Baseball, baseball to sort of getting, I don’t want to say get up and running again, but but sort of just to give it some TLC, so to to to nurture it a little bit better than it has been over the past 20 years.
Nestor J. Aparicio 07:01
Well, John, that’s right, really push back if you were the commissioner and I in our full of piss and vinegar, and I am because I’ve witnessed this, and I’ve been thrown out and I’ve had my name denigrated, and, like, I mean, buckshaw Walter’s wife said they came up to her on day one and told her I was a bad guy. Like, this isn’t, you know, like, it’s insane, right. So I mean, I have a personal thing and an Aparicio thing with all of it. But like, I hear all of that now, after you know, the patient’s been abused for 30 years to say we really cared a lot. And she was really pretty when she was younger. I’m like, wait, they didn’t do anything to they they didn’t do anything to try to like, I don’t know what what you could do you own a sport like your
John Ourand 07:44
church, you know how hard it is to move out an owner. I mean, look at it like in the NBA like Sterling in with the clippers. It took it took, you know, among the most racist rants in order to get him from owning the team. Oh,
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:00
you’re a DC dude, that that football guy that creep down there? i
8John Ourand 08:04
How long did he How long did it take the NFL but powerful NFL when when all the owners wanted them out. But all the other owners were were worried about precedent? Wow, we get that guy out what’s in my closet? That’s gonna get me out a couple years down the road. So So you know, the, with the Angelo’s family here, and especially when John took over the he just was at odds with Major League Baseball, he’s at odds with the commissioner’s office. And there’s no mechanism in place to say like, we don’t like you, you can’t own that team. There are they’re already in the club, owning that team. So they, you know, they, they had to do certain things. We when was the last time that Baltimore had the all star game night, it was 393. That was you know, 30 years ago, for goodness sakes, there’s there aren’t 30 teams and Major League Baseball. And so you know, Baltimore was supposed to have it. And it’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:59
always a chip to end the mass and dispute that lingered to literally to Peter’s grave, right. Like, to the end of the whole operation. The whole fight has been about that money. And Peter believing in his soul, and I wrote this in pewter principles. That was told to me by multiple people, you know, Joe Foss said to me over coffee about 10 years ago when I was writing this book, he said to me, they thought Peter was going to be fair, is never going to be fair. You know, Peter had no interest in being fair. Peter was it was over his dead body that they were ever going to put a team in DC and if they did, they were going to pay for the rest of his life for it and they kind of did right I mean, that money you know, like,
John Ourand 09:42
let me defend Peter for a quick second here. Sure. I go. Like next time you go to an Orioles game. I do this all the time. In the 90s it was all Virginia plates. DC plates. Whenever I go to a game now you never see a Virginia plate you my car is the only car with a DC
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:00
8For that one World Series, why don’t you come here? Why would anyone who was in buoy who was 14 years old 20 years ago? 34. Now, why in the world would you be an Orioles? Fan?
John Ourand 10:15
Literally, that would have been Peters argument. We’re a crown jewel franchise, you say, and then you’re gonna take, we have the Phillies to the north. And we’re defending
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:24
Peter, that’s defending truth. That’s not here that the truth is, if you put a team in DC, it was going to split the region, like Peter said that to me at the barn in 97, after the third eyeball, and like, it’ll never work. It’ll be like the Bay Area. I don’t. I mean, I have, I have his real thoughts when he was coaching and in charge two hours of it on every issue out loud, some of it was outrageous. But his whole thought was, you’ll kill it just like you kill the Bay Area, we can’t support to it. That was his premise. But in the end, the greatest thing, this is the part of the Peter principles, the greatest thing that ever happened to him, because he could have never fixed it here. He didn’t know how to fix it. He didn’t have to be nice to people, the best thing that ever happens, they paid him to do nothing. Like the last 18 years, they’ve just had money falling off a truck. Right? I mean, but like they didn’t have to do anything, and the dirtiest part of the mass and deal and I want to get to the future, because I really do want to hear how you fix it. Because we’re all in agreement. It could be a lot better. You know, I mean, not the team on the field, but everything else about it could be a lot better, including the city. But the poison pill in that deal. That was such an insult to Baltimore and to any Oriole fan was the less you spend on media for your own team, the less you’ll have to give the Nationals and at the crux, it’s a great deal. All of it was agreed deal to say how can we artificially suppress what Masson is giving to two teams because we have to give them the same thing. So if we give ourselves 60 million a year, we have to give them 60 million a year. So let’s call it 29 million. Like it was a shell game with money and it’s never been reported as such, John and that’s what it was. I sat here and watched it as they cried small market small payroll all of those things. It’s
John Ourand 12:13
tough to argue it is it is something that there’s there’s no easy way to unwind Masson right now, other than the fact that the if you step away from the DC Baltimore area, and you look at the media market as a whole regional sports networks right now investor are in crisis.
8Nestor J. Aparicio 12:35
Oh, there’s no doubt. I mean, they smelled all that, yes, money 20 years ago, and they cashed it for a while. And maybe the buck Ron and a little bit of money they spent in that period of time, you know, was the benefit but 20 years later, like it’s a different world and they can’t figure out how to get me to be able to watch the game on the way to Ocean City on my phone on a Friday night driving to the beach. Like it’s crazy. Yeah.
John Ourand 12:58
And so, down in DC. We have Ted leonsis, it owns of course, the wizards capitals and mystics. And he has he bought the regional sports network NBC Sports Washington from an from Comcast NBC renamed it monumental Sports Network. And so in terms of unwinding mass and you have a you have Ted leonsis that has winter programming design for summer programming dying for Washington DC programming you know, could he come in and sort of take over the the Nationals rights you know, that’s that’s something that’s a that’s sitting right there waiting for it. The problem with that is Ted Ted had wanted to buy the the Orioles Ted also has been you know kicking the tires on the Nationals the national the Orioles now have been sold to Rubenstein the nationals are off the market now. And so How interested is Ted and getting in with baseball if it doesn’t include some sort of ownership stake in one of the teams
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:00
well what’s gonna happen with the Nationals but what’s the big look we talk a lot of moving parts at first a puck I want to get my pocket like I saw John
John Ourand 14:09
8By the way we’re such a loyal fans really can’t wait to get into the Oriole
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:13
Park because I keep see a pocket I think hockey but it’s not hockey at all.
John Ourand 14:18
It’s not hockey. No Puck is a it’s an online newsletter that it’s described to me as the Vanity Fair of an online online news. It’s big in Hollywood so if you’re interested in in hollywood news and gossip, they have a lot of people that report on that. It’s big in Washington DC it’s big in politics so it has a lot of well known political writers that write about it it’s big in the fashion world they have a fashion vertical so So
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:50
you are the sports business vertical of that correct I
8John Ourand 14:53
know if you if you know me, you know that I’m not a fashionista master but like it’s amazing type store. worries that that are similar to sports business stories. And they hired me about five, six weeks ago to create a sports, vertical sports business vertical. And so, um, I’ve been writing about, you know, MLB pants gate we call it you know, the see through pants that, uh, that Nike has created Nikes created for this season. We’re writing about the RSN issues writing about the NFL getting mad at everybody. So it’s a, it’s been a lot of fun so far, but it’s, it’s online. That news if you want to, if you want to take a look at it,
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:33
if I were to champion your cause in that space in the media space there, I would say the largeness of sports at this point. And what I’ve seen over 32 years completely from the inside, right, like totally on the inside of baseball for 20 years. And so the billionaire threw me out completely on the inside of football, every owner is mean he’s always till I get thrown out there throwing us out there putting peacocks up they’re making you they’re charging you for playoff games now essentially to get on a service Amazon is now in on that. The bundling and cable, the the unhooking of all of that is all over with, and it’s sports hasn’t figured it out any more than you and me in our business of the media and newspapers and periodicals and paywalls and the banner up here, figuring it out, sports is the next thing to say how do we just wake up with 300 million coming off the public tee off of cable television, he sports been stealing money for a long time. And now it’s $17 beers. And I know that you catch that ravens press conference, what they’re doing with the $600 million that they’re doing a club level and there. They had some smarmy guy in a suit. And this is another press conference that I was not allowed to ask questions that he said, we all know the beers colder inside the perimeter and the hotdogs tastes just a little better inside the perimeter. And we’ve just given $1.2 billion of state money to these two facilities to grow things. And for Rubenstein. And for all of them. I keep asking what’s the big idea? What’s the Gateway Arch? What’s the the the London Eye, what’s the thing other than the game and the stadium which is now 30 years old here. That’s the problem here but the media problem for Sinclair and the RSS ends. And anybody that’s investing in this TED leonsis is to say, All right, it’s not going to be cable, you’re gonna make me pay my 695 a month for my Disney, my Hulu, whatever those streaming things are, sports hasn’t figured this out yet. And that’s why you’re really on the cutting edge of all of this, I think reporting on it. Because there’s a lot of speculation and a lot of opinions about how it’s going. But nobody knows how this is going to go. And whether people are really going to pay like baseball needs to figure out a model where they get my money once and get me to the stadium and get me a discount here and I get all the games. And I’m not bitching and complaining about I got Amazon on Friday night prime on Saturday night, Hulu on Sunday like that, that that model is not going to work for consumers. I don’t believe any more than the paywall model is working for newspapers and periodicals. No,
John Ourand 18:15
it’s there’s utter chaos in the marketplace right now. And that makes my beat and that makes what I write about a lot of fun. The the idea is you could not have come up with a better business plan for sports than the pay TV business plan. So So I use this example a lot but like in DC when I walk my dog, I’m walking down the street and you know I’m looking at, I can see the TVs in my neighbor’s homes. I’m the only one on my street watching the Oreos. But all of them are paying in to help feed my addiction to watch the Oreos because the Oreos get mass and gets paid purse per cable TV subscriber, not per watcher.
Nestor J. Aparicio 19:03
8Let’s go back to the turn of the century where this will be for the nationals. This was Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia. I will go down to North Carolina and they had home team sports on index head when I was young chasing girls southern Pennsylvania you know district I mean it was six seven states all just funneling money couple bucks a month right toward we have to have baseball and we have to have the Orioles on Right, right.
John Ourand 19:27
And so what’s happened is that if you think about the way that you personally watch entertainment shows, when was the last time you sat down and watched an entertainment show on a broadcast TV or cable channel and had to sit through commercials. The people that are not sports fans have cut the cord and they’ve already migrated to Netflix Apple TV plus Amazon Prime and and so as a result, Masson and ESPN and all these other cable channels are getting less money because The number of cable TV subscribers have dropped by 30 million in the last like seven or eight years, as
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:08
the attrition will only continue it’ll never grow again. It’s
John Ourand 20:11
everybody’s wondering where the bottom is going to be. So is the bottom going to be zero? Or is the bottom going to be like people like you and me like this is one way to spend some money and and and see what see everything that we kind of need to say? Yeah, I’m
8Nestor J. Aparicio 20:26
not Netflix and Spotify ish Apple, this, you know, Google that. I mean, like a couple of nipping me for a couple bucks a month to have an email account. But like, I’m, my wife pays the cable bill, and we got it and the Orioles would be on and I know if you Comcast, this has been an argument in LA that you’ve been covering for 15 years where I can’t watch the Dodgers. This has been an argument in New York for a long time about what do I have to buy to get the Yankees if I care enough about the Yankees to watch 5060 games a year? Or if I’m a shut in, which feels like baseball really specializes in as I’m learning like, No, I mean, you laugh. But I went out to those games in September when there were 20,000 people there and they had a 15 game lead. And they were just cruising they were when 9498. And I saw the people that were out there and there were lonely people keeping score, who the oils are their life. And I really gained a new respect for that through a friend of mine who’s had some health issues that the oils are everything to her. And she’s getting older. And I respect what sports has always done. I’m wondering what it’s going to do in the future. Because John, this is where we get to the good work, by the way, John? Orange, I want to get it right from puck. He is He is a Baltimore on sort of, kind of by adoption. He’s an Oreo guy. He’s the one who broke the story about David Rubenstein. So please follow him if you want good stuff all along the way you want to learn? You want to get smarter. We talked about intelligent conversation here. This has been my premise in the beginning, and I’m talking to a lot of people this week and this month about it. And just sort of like alright, let’s say David Rubenstein takes a shine to me and says I liked that. Aparicio kid he fought with the old man here he fought for justice. I’m gonna call him I’m gonna talk to him. I’m we’re gonna do it off the record, we’ll go get a crabcakes someplace quiet. He say to me, How can I fix this? And I’d say, we think about that, you know, that’s a future column for me, for you for everyone. And I keep and I was asking John this, which is like, you know, asking a rock or I’m still waiting to see the books get opened last year. What’s the big idea? You know what I mean? Like when in baseball games is good, right? And gambling, gambling, gambling. I mean, you know, I mean, it’s it’s Gambling Awareness Month, Year, and I’ll continue to say one or two under gambler to everybody. But that’s where they think the profit centers going. I can’t think they think it’s in $17 beers after $12 beers, or that people will one day pay $50 to sit in the bleachers, and they’ll pay $300 to sit behind home plate. The revenue is one thing, but the interest level to get you in the car an hour away and bring your kids your grandkids up here. What are they going to find when they get there, that’s going to be worth what it costs. And I’m finding this with concerts that are three four or $500 Now where I got some jackwagon throwing up on me screaming during ballads at toto concerts. I mean, just I just think the entertainment experience of what old guys like us expected at a ballgame on 33rd Street and peanuts and a beer and what they think this is going to be and where the audience is and where the price point is. I seem to a $12 tickets. We used to say you can go to ballgame for the price of a movie back in the day or your for the price of Roller Skating to cheat night out to go to 33rd Street. It’s why my family could afford it because we could go a lot and it wasn’t a lot of money. Hockey has never been that way. Right. You know what I mean? A certain sport football has always been a little bit more. But baseball was always there. What’s the big idea for you? If If David sits with you and says how can I fix this? Cable Television stuff that sort of out of the pay grade of all of this? How can you make the experience something that’s the centerpiece of the city the way St. Louis Fenway Park that the places that do it well, Wrigley, the places that do it well, where it’s just 30,000 people every day all the time, a way of life and people feel aligned with it again, after 30 years it maybe not so much if you’re thinking about it much.
John Ourand 24:21
Mark Cuban sold his stake in the in the Mavericks in the NBA and somebody on Twitter asked him like why did you do that? And his answer was Was he knows about media. I’ve been covering mark for a quarter century he started broadcast.com He launched HD, HD net, the TV service. He knows about meeting this by the way, which I love. And he says it’s changed. It’s changing. It’s now about real estate, and entertainment. And it’s not about meteorites anymore. And so the big growth areas are in those areas. And if you look at in Atlanta in particular, you know, they’ve moved the team out of the city. And they created a big sort of entertainment complex with hotels and restaurants. It sounds a lot like a city doesn’t investor, but they
Nestor J. Aparicio 25:16
it’s almost like a spring training town. Like, you know what I mean, but But you know, they’ve taken baseball city from 40 years ago, and they planted it in in for our purposes, Owings Mills. It you know, like, literally, I said, if Owings Mills Mall when they got rid of it out there, if they would move the Orioles there and built hotels and movie theaters around it. That is exactly what Atlanta did. And
John Ourand 25:38
8so you look here in my hometown and DC Ted leonsis wants to take the wizards and caps in the mystics out of DC out of Chinatown and move them across the river and into Virginia, where he can own more of that land and create his own sort of like restaurant and have more of a relationship with those areas and the restaurants, the hotels, now restaurants pop up and Ted can’t tax those restaurants for his fans going to those going those restaurants. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 26:10
always thought that the thing that Angelo’s hates the most about oral baseball is driving up and seeing the crowd of pickles. I bet it backs that’s everything. That Jack in centerfield was to steal the people from pickles, like literally Headley
John Ourand 26:24
on tests would say the same thing. So I’m not sure. So I’m not answering your question by saying what do I think he should do? I guess I’m answering your question to how Rubenstein is viewing this, which is he wants to create an environment at Camden Yards. That takes that takes that pickles crowd and brings it over to you know, the parking lots are to the you know, the toilet in Baltimore,
Nestor J. Aparicio 26:50
you can do that. But you can’t charge $15 for a beer and think that that’s going to happen. This Baltimore Dude, come on now. I mean, you’ve been at DC a lot. You smell the difference from here to there, right? I mean, like, no offense. I’m, you know, I’m a Dundalk redneck. You know, I mean, like, come on now. I mean,
8John Ourand 27:06
there’s a ticket stubs from the bleachers at Memorial stay, there’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 27:09
a price. There really is there’s a price point issue here in a town where it appeals to blue collar, if there’s anything such as that left, and working man, if there’s anything such as that left that I know about. But the people I know, and I’ve done this my whole life. And I you know, I am the art. I mean, the reason Angeles hated me so much is because I was the complaint department. i We, you know, I open the phone lines every day and say Did Did you see a rat at the game? Is it hot dogs cold or warm? Was the beer Good? Was he like, they that’s they never answered any of that. And my thing for Rubenstein is alright, it’s depressed as it is. But the team’s really good. But I saw the team was really good last year, and I saw were the ceiling for that is 28,000 out there to celebrate the first you know, champagne bath that in a long, long time. And there is much more growth possible. But what price price point? And what entry point? And how frequent Do you want to go down there and the orange club and the silver club and we’re, you know, come to the ballpark and walk around every night for free. If you won’t get plenty of room. Just buy the $12 beers. And I don’t know where that might again, I It’s a broken model. I don’t know what it is. It is in concert to. I mean, John, there’s a lot of concerts don’t tell anybody this. But if you wait to the last minute tickets are five bucks, because they just the place is empty, and they just need you there to drink the beer and make the toilets flush. And I’m seeing a little bit of that with baseball on Tuesday nights where it’s like, Hey, come on out and walk around, buy the $99 a month pass if you live in the neighborhood walk I mean which great for me when I live downtown, I would have loved to have done that. But they’re changing their model in a lot of ways like that trying. I went to a Christmas in July two years ago, John, you know what I mean, the caravans there’s stuff that they’ve been doing I don’t know that any of its really worked though here yet.
John Ourand 28:59
No, ultimately, what works it’s getting a good team. And and despite. I mean, the way the way attendance typically works is this will be the season like I bet you won’t see the 25,000 Mah there have been we’ve been terrible for forever. So once you see this start to go then I use the Wii there and as I always say like I don’t do we were the it’s the Oreos.
Nestor J. Aparicio 29:27
8I don’t call the Oreos weed because I haven’t been treated like a human in so long that I don’t I don’t remember the last time I went down there had anybody who was nice to me, anybody, any anybody? And I mean I’m talking about since before my marriage, I mean I’m talking about last century. So I am really looking forward to whatever. I am open hearted about all of this, and we and I’ve got a closet. My last name is Aparicio do not come with this pretty honest. But I am wondering what their ideas and I’ve also asked this and just sort of in a not a rhetorical way but just in a broader way. When do you know what’s changed? You’re gonna mean like, there’ll be a press conference and all that. But what will be the signs other than Kevin Brown not being intimidated about calling balls and strikes? And, you know, maybe the broadcast become a little less servant, you know, master to the king and fealty, and like all of that. But I’m wondering, when Will somebody like me come back and feel like, Oh, my God, it’s changed. And I want to be a part of this because I, John, you know, I want to be we are, you know, but they have to make me away. They really do. Yeah,
John Ourand 30:34
I think with every team, in every league, in every market, what makes people come back is if you win, and and they have a good young core, that’s going to be around for a while. And do you want to be a part of that? Like, do you want to be a part of that, that you know, that what what I feel like is going to be like a dynastic Houston Astros type situation, like, I want, I want to be an on the ground floor of that. So it’s a I ultimately, regardless of how much you charge, or what kind of entertainment you put around the stadium, that that team better be good and and better be players that I want to say,
Nestor J. Aparicio 31:14
well, but it can’t be good forever. And that was my point. When I went on the radio 30 years ago, when it went from bad to good to really bad to awful to when will it ever be good again, and even when it got go with buck to your point, all the Virginia plates in the DC they stopped coming. So it became even more important because I was
John Ourand 31:30
like a buck was great. But Buck was a flash in the pan. And so when the Orioles got me was that that was like Eddie Murray and Flanagan and McGregor and Palmer and they were great. My son was born in 1999. He grew up an Oreo fan, he didn’t see a an above 500. Team until he was like 12. I mean, so. So you need to be good for it. It’s a sustained time to get people to live through those those those tough times? Well, these are the
8Nestor J. Aparicio 32:02
good times. I mean, John, there’s no doubt about them being really good this year, and what they can do, and we can talk outfield and you know, what are they going to do with cows? And what are they going to do with holiday and how they’re going to get him here. And like all of that, I for me, the the bigger picture is how this will change as a business, how the perception of it, how they’ll sell things, how it’ll feel to go down to the ballpark, because the uniforms are gonna be the same. And the players, the first thing I would say they’re gonna do is put some money into Henderson or put some money into rutschman or, or try to do both to sort of deliver that promise you talk of which is we’re good for the next five years. Like we’re gonna we’re gonna throw 250 million
John Ourand 32:42
down right now another one of those to just get them long term. Totally. Yeah.
Nestor J. Aparicio 32:48
Well, that would be the real commitment. John Oren is here he is from Puck, formerly Sports Business Journal, just to wrap things up your hopes for them. And what you hope to see when you get up here, and what do we need to know about Rubenstein as well? I mean, you you’ve clearly researched this and you stuck your neck out on line saying this was going to happen, and it’s happening.
John Ourand 33:06
8I happened, by the way. That was great. I got that out. Plenty early. It took I took I took the sun in the banner, several hours to match that, that reporting. So I I was feeling pretty good about that. That was I
Nestor J. Aparicio 33:20
confirmed you in about 20 minutes. It happened to me at about six o’clock at night. Three people hit me. I said, Well, if you’re reporting it, I mean, you’re Mr. Oriole, you’re connected. You’re in DC. He’s a DC guy. I was not going to dispute and I retweeted you and then about 20 minutes later, I made three calls the three Mr. Biggs inside, they’re all like, this is really happening. And I’m like, how did we go from like, December 14, where this wasn’t like, it felt like it was going to be the World War Two, you know, after, after Peter, it just felt like the kid was going to dig in and mom was going to dig in and, and we could go through all the lawsuit lay just how awful the end has been for all of it. But I really do want to focus on what this guy is going to do. I mean, do you have any inkling of what he if you talk to him at all, or do you just break the story not even talk to him?
John Ourand 34:08
They were surprised when they found out about the storage, but when you did Nestor Oh, okay. All right. Thanks, ships Nestor. So the here’s the thing about him is he has a he’s a local guy. I think he lives he lives in suburban DC now but but he’s very proud of his Baltimore roots. He’s older. And I mentioned that only because I This isn’t this is not like a a young person that’s coming in to try to get make an investment and make and make money. This is a guy that will want to win and and he will want to do what he will want his legacy to be having brought brought a World Series title to the city are contributing to that so so My My expectation is that he is going to be an owner that is going to put his money where his mouth is. And he’s going to do what he can to, to lock down a couple of the high price free agents that are coming up for several years. But but if you’re if you’re an Orioles fan over the last quarter century, you’re already getting a little bit nervous about that. And you asked, like, what am I looking for? You’re not, it’s not even attendance levels. It’s just a general excitement in the crowd. Like, like, I mean, the excitement of the mid 90s. Not even the Adam Jones and Buck show Walter sort of creek created that. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 35:42
don’t think he went opening day the night Pedro pitched on Sunday Night Baseball. Oh, 102031 of those years where there were 50,000 people yelling who’s your daddy and Pedro Martinez as he walked off. The Orioles beat has asked that and I chased them out of the game early in a cold opening day night. It was a football crowd. You know what I mean? Like literally, I remember being in the stadiums. 20 more 20 years ago now. Right? It was Pedro. But it was an opening night, Sunday Night Baseball game. The Orioles were still relevant enough in the Red Sox were coming. And I remember that thing. I don’t mean young. You know, everybody has that moment of that. But I remember a football atmosphere. And that’s something that if I were to write a book about it here, the football baseball things a little fractured here. You know what I mean? Like, it’s not the same fans. It’s not, you know, there’s definitely an overlap for sure. I mean, it’s not silly to say that, but I grew up cold scenarios equal. Oh, you know, Bert and Brooks. There was room for both of them for me and Eddie and all of that. He was even room for arch at least or for a minute or two. But, but I think that that, that is something. Look, man, the worst thing Angelo’s did here, aside from everything was chasing the football team out of here when they won the Super Bowl. You know, making Joe Flacco and the team go out to Denver get their ass kicked to open the season. Instead of having that celebration and hanging the banner and the rings and all that stuff in the stadium. You know, there’s a fracturing of the two front. I would love to see the football crowd come to baseball games and make it raucous make it really uncomfortable for other teams to come in. It’s not an uncomfortable place for a visiting player. Yeah, I mean, when that happens, then you got something to your point when it’s when it’s can’t wait to get down to the ballpark and we’re gonna rain hell on the Royals tonight. Like, I don’t know that baseball lends itself to that. It doesn’t Yankee Stadium though, on a good night, you know? Oh,
8John Ourand 37:40
there were there areas. Camden Yards is such a great park. Visiting fans. They circle it and they want to come down come down to it. And that that’s been its reputation patient for a long time. But I do remember some of those crowds in the early to mid 90s. You know, that was even with us a Chardonnay drinking Washingtonians up there. On the Yankees
Nestor J. Aparicio 38:05
in the midnight when when when we had Davey and the Yankees were Jeffrey marrying us. I mean, come on, right. I mean, that was. That was a long time ago though. John Moran is at PUC you can follow him. He covers all things business and sports and RSA ends and all the questions about what happens next Dude, you’re in the hot seat. I look forward to your next breaking news and peace. So when do you expect this to happen? Can this really happen by opening? Because I mean, you’re saying that people are saying that, you know, Evan Evans, relics writing that like what? Whatever. Yeah,
John Ourand 38:37
I’ve seen those reports. I’d be really surprised by opening day but but in the weeks after this is on the fast track. I mean, I know, he’s like, you feel like it. Like somebody that’s been in prison for forever. It’s actually it is happening it, it might say
Nestor J. Aparicio 38:53
8that, because I went to drug city the day after you broke the story. And I was in there on a cold night in January. And I’m like, I I’m not a big champagne drinker, but you’d be celebrate with champagne. Even though your name is not all wrong, we celebrate here with champagne in America, right? So I don’t really want that I’m like, I’m gonna get a really nice bottle of red wine that I can’t afford, because I like red wine, but I don’t spend $60 on bottles of red wine. So I’m like, I’m gonna do that. I have a bottle of the prisoner. And the night that it happens, you know, and thinking I might actually get my press credential back, which will mean a lot to me and my family and my, I think would mean a lot to my audience, quite frankly. Then I’m going to open that prisoner. Let them release the prisoner on that night. So you say I feel like I’ve been in prison? I do. I really do. And I appreciate you saying that. And I’m really looking forward to having you with families and doing live radio and doing like I used to do at Hooters and haven’t Brooks Robinson stopped but like I miss all of that I bought in on downtown. I live downtown for 20 years for all of that I really I see you see the sunshine coming up over my shoulder here, John. Come on, man. Come on. It’s a new day oral magic brother fatally
John Ourand 40:03
one of my one of my two perfect crabcakes scores is perfect.
Nestor J. Aparicio 40:07
What’s your perfect you gave? Oh, Coco’s that’s fine too. Their post sponsor see a couple of Super Bowl passes in his way
John Ourand 40:16
up there. It was way up there.
8Nestor J. Aparicio 40:17
I’m having lunch today at cost us with the gray rate bot rate Bachmann my longtime producer, so I will, I’ll make your jelly What do you get when you’re a cost? You just get a crab kit. Do
John Ourand 40:27
the crab cake and you know, even though I was there when Thursday night football came through and I took an out of Towner to get crabs even though they were from I think they were from the Gulf.
Nestor J. Aparicio 40:36
Okay, well, it happens in the winter. We can’t Yeah, of course.
John Ourand 40:39
8Yeah. So they were still great. You know, you throw it you throw the seasoning on there. I don’t think they use all day. What do they use their J Okay.
Nestor J. Aparicio 40:45
So here’s what I want you to do a little homework for your media guy, you get YouTube where you live, go to Costas and put vice network device network that’s sort of falling apart that I love so much. They came in and did a piece on cost. It’s a 10 minute, like on the story of Costas. And it’s beautiful. Mr. Costas came here with $5 in his pocket from Greece, in the 1960s and built this business and owns racehorses, and my father served my father beer and crabs and shrimp in the 70s when he got off of work at the point, so go check that out. Every fade, Lee’s and every Coco’s and every cost this, there’s just a beautiful story. And that’s what the crabcake talks about. So I’m hoping to get you out. I’ll get your proper crappy. Listen, if you’re coming to fade Lee’s you’ve gone to sleep on a shrimp salad. You’re going to sleep on a mac and cheese because they’re world class. So we’ll get you to the new Lexington market sometime in April. Hey man, congrats again. Great work old school journalism. breaking stories pissing me off because I didn’t get it first making me work at six o’clock at night on a Tuesday when I’m going to yoga making me verify your work when I like if you reported its truth, just like me if I reported its truth, right, so I really appreciate your hard work on this and pissing off Rubenstein before he even gets in. And I appreciate you
John Ourand 41:59
and Esther. Thanks for having me on, man. Get my press
Nestor J. Aparicio 42:00
pass back. What do you think? 5050?
8John Ourand 42:05
I think it should. I’ll give it a 5050 I’m not ready to predict that. I’m not ready to predict.
Nestor J. Aparicio 42:10
All right. Well, he looks like such a nice man. He looks like Steve Martin. He looks congenial. I am Nestor we are wn St. Am 5070 Towson Baltimore praying for a new day of Oriole baseball. It’s right around the corner. Stay with us.
