Angelos or the team. There’s nothing he or the organization can do that will be make you stop being an Orioles fan.
And he’s getting your money and the money of everyone across six states no matter what he puts on the field at Camden Yards.
They’ve done everything they can do to end my career, denigrate me and deny me legitimate media access.
And you know what? I still watch the games every night.
Brady Anderson once told me and my wife that we should leave Baltimore if we didn’t like the way team was being run. Their executives have told me to stop coming to their games and writing and talking about the Orioles.
Look, there’s a thin line between being an optimist and a fool. And some people – probably many people – completely agree with all aspects of my assessment but support the team because it says “Baltimore” on the front and they’ve loved the Orioles since Brooks Robinson or Eddie Murray or Brady Anderson.
I get it. I live it. I understand it.
But it doesn’t make it right.
And it doesn’t mean that I should ignore it because the other folks in the media do.
But, as a journalist and deep thinking spirit, I can’t suspend the realities of what my eyes have seen, my ears have heard and the treatment that I’ve witnessed over the past quarter of a century regarding the Orioles. I don’t need to sugarcoat the obvious about Peter G. Angelos if you’ve had your eyes open.
So, putting together a baseball tour and attempting to go to every ballpark, I realized I’d get absolutely no help from my hometown team. I actually expected them to put more poison in the water around MLB wherever possible to obstruct my ability to gain access, swab people, save lives and have some fun along the way while I saw every stadium.
The Orioles have continually called other teams in MLB and implored them to have my credentials revoked as a visiting journalist. They’ve done it in Toronto. They’ve done it in Boston. They’ve done it in New York. They’ve done it in Tampa Bay. And they’ve attempted to sully my name in Major League Baseball over the years but to the credit of Bud Selig’s office, I have never, ever been denied a credential by the league office for a postseason game or an All Star Game.
I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot going on here: my family name, my love of baseball, the ugliness that I’ve witnessed from this ownership group, my desire to see every ballpark, my wife’s illness and recovery, and our mission to try to turn something awful like leukemia into something that saves the lives of others.
Not to mention that I’m a journalist who documents my journey on the planet.
But I’ve always loved baseball and I wasn’t going to allow the toxic way the Orioles treat folks like me to get in the way of me doing this #GiveASpit tour, having fun, saving lives, spreading awareness of our cause or calling other MLB teams and asking them for assistance as I came to their ballparks.
It was always my desire to live a life around the game of baseball. Over the past decade – and because of my honesty to my craft, my audience and my own conscience – that’s been savagely taken away from me by Peter Angelos. Anyone around me knows that I believe this is a deeply disturbing tactic from an evil man.
Writers I’ve known for a quarter of a century ask me about what it’s like to talk to Adam Jones or Buck Showalter. I don’t know them other than to witness Showalter and Dan Duquette and Andy MacPhail before them literally run away from me like I’m a fan seeking an autograph. Or what they call “a fly.”
I’m a nuisance to them because I seek the truth and transparency. I’m a threat to them because I won’t lie and after 25 years it looks like I’m not going away.
All three of them – the Orioles “leaders” – have truly been cowards in my presence. They’ve all given me the “I just work here” rhetoric while spewing the company line and treating me unprofessionally while talking aloud about how professional the Angelos family is and how well everyone is treated.
In general, they run from me or are afraid to speak to me – like I’m kryptonite or something? Adam Jones is the one guy who always chats with me and, while he’s not particularly warm and fuzzy, I can tell you that he treats me better than any of the rest of them.
What a shame.
What a shame it’s come to that but that stands out as the obvious – as I was planning to go to every stadium and ask every Major League Baseball team for a swabbing table and some assistance and kindness on a mission to save lives – that the Orioles would be involved in some way.
Or maybe not?
I never believed that the Orioles would allow me to swab or be nice to me or my wife or make any attempt to be civil, kind or decent during her illness. And they
