Tampa Bay-based sportswriter and author Joel Poiley returns home to Baltimore with more tales of “Last Man Standing,” his book on the life and legacy of Colts great Tom Matte. And what it meant to be a part of the community via professional sports in a bygone era.
Nestor Aparicio and Joel Poiley discuss the Baltimore Colts’ legacy and Poiley’s book “Last Man Standing” about Tom Matte. Poiley shares his personal connection to the Colts and his journey writing the book, highlighting Matte’s impact on Baltimore and his efforts to keep the city connected to football after the Colts left. They also touch on the current state of the Baltimore Orioles, criticizing the team’s lack of community engagement and marketing efforts, which they believe have led to poor attendance. Poiley emphasizes the importance of community involvement and effective marketing strategies to rebuild fan interest and support.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Baltimore crab cakes, Ravens playoffs, Tom Maddie, Colts legacy, sports writing, book signing, NFL history, Baltimore memories, sports community, fan engagement, Orioles attendance, media access, sports marketing, community involvement, sports nostalgia
SPEAKERS
Joel Poiley, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive and picking the Maryland crab cake tour out on the road. I have Raven scratch offs to give away. We are this week, going to be at Faith leaves on Wednesday, and setting up for the holiday on the 17th. Will be at a me cheese of Little Italy. Doesn’t matter. They don’t have a crab cake there. I’m going there anyway, because they have a Pawnee rotundo, uh, maybe get Nancy to come over making some crab cakes or whatnot, but lots of great guests. And then on Wednesday, we’ll be Acosta’s wrapping things up on the 18th before the Ravens get ready to play the stillers. And then they get ready to play the Texans. And we gotta figure out whether they’re going to have that kind of pathway to a Super Bowl and a championship that once led us to Raymond James Stadium, January 28 2001 in Tampa, Florida, where this guy lives. He is a Baltimore on much like us. He has made a life writing about sports down in the the other Bay Area, the Tampa Bay area. He has written a book called Last man standing about Tom Maddie, and reached me a couple years ago as a writer down in in the Tampa area. I’m going to let him tell his story, and ways you can buy the book and all that. But Joe, I I tell you, as I get older, and I haven’t admitted this to many people. I was going to admit it to Brandon Stokely, but I don’t want to make him feel good about himself that this whole colts thing that I grew up with has come back to me in a different way. Don McCafferty is the manager over at the Beaumont the grandson of the Super Bowl five winning coach here, and I have this Baltimore Colts belt buckle that I have an arms wrench, reach away and I’ll grab it. I think I showed it to you last time. And I’ve gotten into this thing, and you have the banner over your thing there that I was my 70s. I’ve gotten into this thing where I’ve looked at on eBay when I’m buying my belt buckles, and doing all the weird stuff that I do with Houston Oilers, stuff that I like started perving old Colt stuff, and the old football cards and the old players, and it’s signed stuff by art Donovan and Jim Parker and that era, um, and nothing. It just says colts, nothing. That’s just the helmet in the horseshoe. That’s that Baltimore or the old Colt logo on it, or something that touches Johnny Unitas in some way. But I’ve gotten really weirded out about its with Steadman and finding the Steadman book a couple of months ago. So it’s been a while since I’ve had you on, but welcome back, and I want you to sell your book and tell the stories, because these are stories that, if you’re not telling them, and I’m not telling them, that Joe United just came on a couple weeks ago, we’re not telling them. They’re these kids today. They don’t understand what we went through. Joel, you know,
Joel Poiley 02:47
yeah. Well, first off, thanks again for having me on this Happy Holidays to you. Sorry I’m not up there from the crab cake tour.
Nestor Aparicio 02:54
Well, dude, you can order your crab cakes from any of our sponsors. You know, if you you want Costas, you get them. You won’t talk. Get them all. Get faith Lee’s order from everybody, for crying out
03:03
loud, I tell you what, as we get older, I think we get more reflective about things we grew up with. And in my journey with all these book signings, I’ve gotten that a lot of people, even people, if they don’t buy the book, you know, they come up to me. They tell me, I knew Tom. I went to his church, you know, I worked with him, and he left an indelible impression on a lot of the people like you and I, as all those old guys did, and he and those guys,
Nestor Aparicio 03:37
and when I see Stan white, they make me want to go get that ticket stub from 1973 that I don’t have anymore, even though I have the program for my dad’s first game when he separated Joe NAMAs shoulder and just yeah, I, you know, I was so thrilled to be associated with anytime Burt Jones would walk in a room, I freak out like A little puppy, you know what I mean? Because I, my dad took that. Those are my guys, Roger Carr, Joe urm in the sack pack. You know that, like, that 70s team was my first team, and and then it just all went away forever, right? Like, in a weird way. And I think that that made it that much more, um, impactful that Tom Maddie and Johnny Unitas and Lenny Moore got involved with the Ravens when they came here, right? They that they got sort of rescued in that way.
04:33
Yeah, you’re talking about the second generation, you know, with Burt and the sack pack. And it was for me too, really. I mean, I know I’m about 10 years older than you, but, like, I think I told you last time I didn’t get to my first game until unites. Last game, you know, 70? Yeah, I was 1572. Against OJ. It was the Buffalo game. Okay, right? He throws that wobbly past the Hinton, somehow, Eddie comes down with. It goes 60 some yards. The plane flies overhead. Unite us. We stand
Nestor Aparicio 05:04
52 years ago, and you remember, like it was, that was, well, it was my first game, brother, yeah, like a Lynn, hard fog game for me. But it’s funny,
05:12
because knowing I was coming on with you, yeah, knowing I was coming on with you, I started thinking I was also at that last playoff game, the Christmas Day double overtime loss to Oakland, that we should have won, but it’s Christmas Eve,
Nestor Aparicio 05:26
and my mom had a ham in the oven that was overcooked. My dad was in a bad mood. The busses stopped running. My uncle had to come up and pick us up at the corner Island Avenue because the 23 bus stopped running because it was five, six o’clock, it was dark, it was seven o’clock, like on Christmas Eve, we couldn’t get home, and they lost in double overtime. Goes
05:48
Rest in peace, but March abroad just sat on that lead, and he kept getting in a fuel position battle with Ray Guy, kick punting and pushing him farther back. And then eventually diddle. Diddle, David, right, and it goes into double overtime, then goes to the post. I mean, yeah, you remember all that stuff, but when you’re running
Nestor Aparicio 06:06
the Bruce Laird, you don’t bring that up with him, you know. So don’t, don’t, no no,
06:10
because he’ll go off for about 10. But that was the last good team they had Ness. I mean, Bert got hurt in 78 and then what the, you know, the through 83 they were pretty much terrible. I think, Ernie, of course, these last year’s GM, you put together a decent team. They were seven and nine. Had a couple of near misses, and then they leave town. And, you know, your heart’s broken, but, yeah, I mean, I tried to bring that out in the book. And what
Nestor Aparicio 06:39
is your book about with Tom and what? What inspired by the way, Joe poorly is our guest. The book is last man standing. He give everybody you’re like, your Baltimore background led you to the book and what the book is about, because Tom, I mean, everybody met Tom Maddie. Everybody knew Tom Maddie, yeah.
06:56
I mean, I said this the last time we were on. But you know, it’s been a few months. I mean, I grew up there, you know, I was there until like, November of 86 at the time I left, I was working in Carroll County. But, you know, I went to Milford Mill High School. I went to UMBC, so I left, and I was left in the Colts. Had just left, well, two years prior, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it was fresh, it was, yeah, well, it was weird because I got the job in Carroll County in, I think I started working there in August of 84 and they had left in March, so I that would have been my chance to maybe cover them a little bit. Now, they had long since moved away from Western Maryland College, but Goucher, yeah, yeah. But I was covering, you know, Western Maryland. When I go up there for football games, my mind would just go back to when I was a little kid sitting up there on the hill waiting for practice and everybody’s walking off the field. I
Nestor Aparicio 07:53
never went to colts practice. My dad didn’t drive, you know what I mean? So, like, it wasn’t on the bus line, it wasn’t, it wasn’t something I even thought of doing or knew any kid in my neighborhood that had ever done I had never met anybody that ever went to cold. Now, Colt’s game way different, dude like my dad. Every ticket stub means something from 73, 456789, and then my dad got pissed in 8081 when the baseball strike happened. 82 the football like during that period of time, I went, I went to a Saint Louis Cardinals game to see Jim Hart play, and my dad refused to go. And I he I went on my own on the bus at 14 years old because I was going out to games all the time. So that’s where I saw Chris Collinsworth play in the first ever Bengals where they didn’t have bangles on the side, they were the sort of the Zubaz kind of jungle looked at their phone now when they change their helmets, 8081 82 Schley Pagel, like all of that? Yo, yeah. Hum, David, hum, right, so I mean the Chargers game when they got beaten by Dan Fauci, the Steelers game, the last eight, the Earl Campbell game at the end, anything like I remember all of that, but Tom Maddie little before me like I was 73 bad, bad Marty DOM res my dad was so pissed at the Colts for getting rid of Johnny United that he bought me a chargers pin a pennant on my wall, and I bought an Oilers pennant that day. And I’ve told Dan pastorini this, and Billy white shoes Johnson right down the line. I became an Oilers aficionado because I love the colors. But the Colts, I had colts night robes and pajamas and hats and like I have all sorts of childhood pictures of me with cold stuff because my dad took me to colts games. Not they only played um, they they played seven regular and three preseason and then two right? My went to preseason games against the bears, against the Falcons, against the Vikings. I saw my ticket stuff from I. Saw, I saw Foreman Chuck Foreman run the ball. I saw grant harkington. So all of that as a kid, and it was just gone. And I, I’m just getting to the point where I can understand what it was like to be Tom Maddie, to bridge that generation, to be a part of the oh one team that I talked about with Tampa, because, like, those are complex men, right? I mean, all of those people who hung out Bruce, I talked about Bruce Laird, I would say Howard Stevens here, just not to mention being Johnny, you were being art, being a Hall of Famer as well, you know, yeah.
10:36
And, you know, it was so different back then too. I’ve had this, this discussion with a lot of people that you know. They they lived in the communities next to you. They work now, imagine, in the off season, you go to work at Beth Steele punch in at 8am and who’s working next to you on the assembly line, unites. And then you clock out at five and you go have a Schlitz down at the local tavern. I mean, those guys became your friends. You know, they weren’t just people you looked up to. And my affiliation with Tom, and I tried to bring this out in the introduction in the book. And a lot of people have told me they they like that, because it’s the back story of how I got to know him. And you know, I was, I was eight and 65 and the book starts with that famous Green Bay playoff game. But there was just something about him, his demeanor. Yeah, I got his autograph a couple times at Western Maryland, but it was the way he carried himself. He was always on, and I told you this, he was always on corral in the Colts. He always had a laugh and a smile. He would talk to anybody. But beyond that, he was a heck of a player. And I think a lot of people tend to forget that. Well, in Baltimore, they don’t. But what I’ve gotten with people that have read the book that didn’t know the Baltimore seen that well, that said, Damn. I mean, this guy was like a marginal Hall of Famer for all the things he did. His numbers, as we know, will never get him in Canton, but he was a heck of a player. But what I also loved about him was how he adopted he and Judy Maddie adopted Baltimore as their hometown, and when the Colts left, he did everything he could to bridge that gap for those 12 years when there was no football, you know, whether it was a USFL team. Then he had part ownership with the Canadian team. He was good friends with modell, and you know, he wasn’t one of the high level movers and shakers in the government, but he talked to art and said, Look, we have a stadium deal in place because that was in place when they didn’t get a team during the expansion process, when I went to Jackson, Charlotte, and, you know, he became Baltimore, and then for the first 10 years, as you know, he was the radio analyst. So he was a special person. He really was, and it was an honor to get to know Him. And as I’ve gotten into this, like when I was in Baltimore in August doing the signings, Judy Maddie came to a couple when I now call her like my surrogate mother. I mean, we had these conversations. We talk a couple times a month. She’s a beautiful lady. She really is. And, you know, I’ve gotten to know the family a little bit, and it’s just been a great process. It really has. I mean, as far as the book, real quick. According to my editor, they’re happy. You know, it’s done pretty well for a first time. Book. One other thing, one other thing, I just remember my best signing down here. I had four in Baltimore, but I have one more here this Sunday in Tampa. You’re in Tampa, right, right, but I’ve had eight down here all over the state. I have one in Sunday in over in West Palm. But the best one I had down here was at a watch party in Clearwater the night before the Ravens played the Bucks Monday night. And it was a combination of all the the Ravens flocks that are here and all these people from Baltimore that came down for the game. I sold more books that night than any other signing that I’ve had down here, and it was just great people coming up to you talking, you know, remember in the old times me, you would really enjoy it.
Nestor Aparicio 14:09
Well, Joe poorly, is our guest here. We did speak exclusively almost about the book and about his background in in Baltimore, Milford Mill, and going down to Tampa and being a grizzled sports writer. Everything I ever wanted to do in light, Joel was like, leave the sun and have, you know, the Tampa Bay Times or the, you know, yeah, all I wanted to do was be a sports writer. You know that my documentary came out last year, and it speaks to John Stephan and really, a lot of this cult history that sort of comes your way that, you know, I don’t want to get too misty eyed, I did a 25th anniversary for the Ravens roost the other night in Kearney here. And remember the times telling old goose stories, and now that we’ve lost goose I mean, there’s a whole other thing. Thing that’s happened here is I hold up Raven scratch offs here in Baltimore, and we’re 30 years into that. And not just to mention the journalism background, I did a I did an hour last week with Mark Hyman from that at the University of Maryland. It was my colleague at the news American and then at the sun. I did good two hours about 1984 journalism here with sports first and Hearst and the sun and just all of that, but the cult story and the football story of Baltimore, and, you know, Dan Rodricks did the show this week. He’s doing his show I saw, which is an unbelievable you get the chance to stream it. Even watch it. It’s it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen. Like, and I tell Dan that, Dan’s like, you’re just sucking up to me. And I’m like, Dan, like, I brought my whole family last year to the BMA to see it. But he’s next show he’s writing is about 1966 in Baltimore and race and politics and the Orioles and how sports and the city and culture are inextricable, right, like they are and you have left it you you’re 40 years gone from here. Oh, and they’re still over your shoulder. That’s not wallpaper. I’m assuming that’s your real office. You don’t just put stage up your Orioles Memorial
16:19
stage and stuff. And I told you, those chairs are from Memorial. Yeah, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 16:24
for me, it’s rock and roll belt buckles and it’s con old concert tickets, and it’s Orioles and and blast and skip jacks and clippers and Houston Oilers, all the stuff I love when I was 10 years old, like and maybe I need to be on a shrinks chair. But it, I don’t know, there’s something about seeing that Baltimore Colts pennant over your shoulder that for about 30 years, it hurt me. It bothered me. It angered me. My wife thought I needed a shrink. Every time she would land at Indianapolis to me and say, Boy, this really bothers you, dude. And I’m like, and I dropped that sword, you know, 15 years ago, Super Bowl there for my own mental health. And now I’m at a point where it’s even reversed, where, like anything, if somebody put a Tom Maddie 1971 football card in front of me and said, Here, it’s a gift for you. It’s worth $1.50 Right? Like if they gave it to me, I’d want to put it in my little, my little man cave and put it on the wall. It would need to be autographed. It wouldn’t need to be mint condition. And but, you know, like there’s something very, um, treasured about all of that. I had the capital center guy on. I know I’m ringing your bell now, there’s a big book on the capital Center, one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life, 50 bucks. And like, I can’t stop fingering through it, looking at the Led Zeppelin ticket stubs and reading the stories, because it impacted me in a way that the Colts impacted you to want to write the story of a man you knew who you thought his story needs to be told and be eternal, you know, yeah,
17:57
and just so everyone knows me, Nestor contacted me about coming on. I think it was like the day or the day after that Lenny Moore celebrated his 91st birthday. And I think that got us all thinking, you know, you think back to that era, and you want to know how all those guys are doing. But, yeah, I mean, it’s really been an interesting experience the past couple months with all these signings and the people that come up to you and just getting to know the Maddy family, I mean, great people, they really are, and those memories don’t leave you, but like I said, as you get older, they become more treasured, and They’re a part of your youth and that team and this, these are the last three chapters of the book, but that, that team had a special influence on the town. I mean, we know that it put Baltimore on the map, but then our heart was torn out. You know, when Ursa leaves town and whereas a pulls the team out of town, but we never forgot those guys, because a lot of them still lived in the community, like you said, and
Nestor Aparicio 19:10
especially like story runs
19:12
all the way through about 2018 until he just was off playing
Nestor Aparicio 19:16
58 and 59 but he watched it in college in Ohio, he winds up playing next to and with the great Johnny Unitas for a lifetime. I mean, those disappointments in the mid 60s, when they were 13 and one and couldn’t win. And, you know, goal posts, field goals, I saw the tiny ticket stub. I had to google that to make sure it was the right game in Green Bay, 65 whatever. So like then the Super Bowl disappointment, the merger, when it finally winning and being kind of done and washed up and immoral and United is all of them sort of the end of the end of the end. And then to see the franchise ripped away before you’re 40 years old, right? And then the live in the community say, I’m not going to live here. My church is here. My people are. Here. My star is here. My history, my legacy, is here and then. And to your point, it is a, I mean, I, if nothing else, I hope I’ve told that story as best I could on the back end of Charlie Ekman and, you know, on the radio here to try to bridge the gap. And I don’t think it means anything to these kids that are drunk on the bar stool thing and being jerks and not in the gambling thing. And you know, this was about not just civic spirit, civic pride, but civic enrichment and lifting the city, not sucking from the city financially and using fans as an ATM as I hold my wallet up on the air, you know, like this was something that these men, primarily, and their wives and families gave back. And I That goes for Brooks, that goes for Boog, that goes for Frank, that goes for my last name’s Aparicio, and I tried to convince Mr. Rubenstein that I’m like, it is important the Orioles are. How important to the Orioles to me, there’s no me. If there’s no Orioles, I know, right? If there’s no Louis Aparicio, there’s no me. So I and I’ve come to grips with that at 56 and every Tom Maddie and Johnny Unitas legacy and the people that tell these stories and hold it together to your point. Every time you sign a book, people come together and they want to the way I did with ravens roost the other night. They want to relive that period in their life, whether it’s a Led Zeppelin concert ticket wherever you were, those things matter as we get older, because we don’t necessarily experience them again, and we appreciate them when they are authentic, the way Tom Maddie was,
21:43
well, Rick Volk had a good quote in the book. You know, we were talking about how the Ravens have treated some of the old guys and pretty well. And Judy’s told me, you know, that the Ravens have been very positive. And you know, when Tom died, they were there for, I mean, I know you’ve had your issues with the ravens, but they’ve been good to her and But dude,
Nestor Aparicio 22:05
everything was fine with the Ravens of me until it wasn’t. So, you know, I
22:10
know we don’t have that much time, but I did. I did want to get into something with you. And what’s going on up there? Right? Down. Sure, right. Well, what Volk told me was, you know, these kids coming out of high school and college now, they don’t know anything about the legacy, and as a lot of these older guys pass on, you know, you’re kind of concerned that what’s going to happen, but I think there’s still enough of us still around, even if we don’t live there anymore, that can relate that, I think if
Nestor Aparicio 22:42
I sat with Lamar Jackson and asked him, I don’t know what he knows and what he doesn’t know, or what you know, and what John Harbaugh even really knows or doesn’t know, or what he needs to still learn. Well, for all of them, what Sashi Brown would know about a 56 year old guy who spent 30 years with the ravens, but had his team taken away, and really saw Bert Jones play and really saw Lydell Mitchell run the ball. You know what I mean, like so and I’m only 56 I mean, I don’t feel like I’m that old. I feel like everybody between me and Tom Mattie’s age, Judy Matty’s age has a it’s like what the Orioles are doing right now. And I told Rubenstein, like we’ve all really lived through this. If you didn’t live through it, you just come in with money, and you’re a part of it. We lived it here. And it does matter. It matters to to you know how and why you walk by Johnny unitases and Ray Lewis’s statue. When you walk into the stadium and say, Who are these people, there’s a rich, rich legacy, good and bad here.
23:48
Tom was the godfather for all of United’s kids. You know, that’s how close we were. But getting back to I saw the show with Rodricks, and he was talking about 66 and that jogged the memory too. There’s a video out there on YouTube called spirit of 66 with John Kennelly and Chuck Thompson recapping the 66 season. You got to pull it up and
Nestor Aparicio 24:17
Disneyland peace, no,
24:19
it was basically just a recap of the season, and then it was before the end of the regular season, and then Ken only does a recap of the four game sweep
Nestor Aparicio 24:27
to do this. Go ahead. Keep going.
24:30
You know, it’s like, why I look this stuff up? I don’t know. I mean, I kind of get into these old videos
Nestor Aparicio 24:35
in a bad mood. I just put the Earl Weaver thing up and I laugh. It always makes me
24:39
laugh. And a lot of it too is, you know, when you’re researching the book, you’re just going from video to video, but it’s just the attachment that those guys had to the people there. But I’m going to go off the rails a little bit here. I know you’ve been trying to get to know Rubenstein and Katie Griggs and all I’m. To say this, and it may not be very popular, but you love those teams. You grew up with those teams. They they’re a part of your heart. It’s not just that they took your media pass away. You should be like in their media relations department, because you know ways to promote that team that they don’t, plus the fact that you have a huge following. I mean, yeah, it bothered me when I saw 10,000 empty seats for game two. You know, in the playoff series, I my theory is a little simpler. I think the fans up there quit on the team after they lost game one. I really do. Because I think they just stopped hitting in total, and it’s like, we’re not going to beat any team two games in a row. If they had won that first game, I think more people would have showed up. Oh, then
Nestor Aparicio 25:47
we don’t have very good fans. If tickets are 12 bucks and you don’t want to go out there and they’re playing for their season, you haven’t done anything to earn the fans. That’s That’s what I would say, which, if you have bad fans, I would say the fans have shown you where they are. Yeah, you know, period as to whether it’s a four o’clock game and kids can get off school, or I didn’t have enough time, or I had another plan. Hey, something else was more important, and that’s your job, to make it more make make it as important as it is to me and I have, I have nowhere to run or hide from radio or you or anywhere I I’m not running at them with any aggressive anything other than saying, you know, you’re not from around here. And when I pull Katie Griggs up on LinkedIn and see we have three mutual friends, and I have 20,000 people here in the community that I’m professionally linked to, let alone Facebook and all these other weird and people listen who don’t even think about social media or on their phones all day. I I wonder when those seats get filled, where those 10,000 people were. They were listening to the game, watching it, in frustration, in warmth, in their man cave, whatever. What’s going to move them next year to fill those seats at a buck and a quarters? And the thing that happened, Joel, it was amazing during the baseball thing. And by the way, Joel poilie is my guest. His book is on. Tom Maddie, please go buy it. Your background, long time Tampa sports writer, I would say about you give me give the elevator speech for how you got the writing a book.
27:24
Well, the book was just, you know, following Tom, but I’ve had several near misses. I mean, I had a contract for a book with Joe Maddon when he was down here. It’s always been a lifelong goal. The elevator speech with Tom was I saw that message he sent out to Kendall Hinton during COVID In 2020 when Kendall had to play quarterback, when the first three QBs in front of him at Denver came down with COVID, right and Tom, with help from somebody, sent out a very heartfelt letter, which is actually the Epilog the end of the book, because it was just a perfect, beautiful ending for the book. And I’m seeing that, and I’m saying, Surely, somebody’s written a book about Tom. I mean, he’s always in the media up there. Everybody knows him, but I did my research. He had written that book with the late, great Jeff Seidel about the Ravens. But it wasn’t really about Tom and his life. But other than that, and I got a hold of Tom, you know, about four or five months before he passed, but, you know, he was still very with it, and he said, No. I mean, people talk to me all the time, and I’m still quoted, you know, about the 65 game, but nobody’s ever written a book about me. I’d be honored to do it. So that’s how it came about. And I never forgot Tom all those years I was going, I mean, you can tell, I think people up there can tell, I still follow what’s going on up there.
Nestor Aparicio 28:50
Now, you covered baseball in Tampa. What did you cover down there? Everything.
28:53
I mean, the box. I mean, I was never to beat writer, but sidebars, I was an editor, so I edited a lot of the copy on game day when the rays first got here, I was like the first reporter to interview the late great Chuck Lamar when he was the GM putting the team together. So I go way back, covered tons of spring training. I mean, that was always what we look forward to down here as reporters, until we got a team. But, yeah, I covered everything. I
Nestor Aparicio 29:23
You were there 1520, 1510, years for the the rays got there almost, right,
29:27
yeah. I mean, yeah, because I got here in 86 I mean, I’m even surprised now that Lacrosse has become a big thing.
Nestor Aparicio 29:33
And for the lightning, I tell people the lightning own Tampa, that the bolts, oh, but,
29:38
but see what’s critical about that is Nestor great ownership. I mean, with the vine Venet group and his guys have done they treat the fans with respect. They’re all over the community. They don’t miss a marketing opportunity. I mean, I know Bucha. He’s done a lot in the community up there, and we’re kind of waiting to see what Rubenstein does. But. Yeah, who would have thought Tampa Florida? I mean, we’ve sold out every game, I think, since 2015 and Emily, well, now it’s Emily arena. But yeah, this is a hockey town, for sure. Yeah, I’ve covered a little bit
Nestor Aparicio 30:11
of Yeah. I mean, I would tell any, I tell anybody, like, if you go to Tampa, hockey kind of owns Tampa, and they’re like, what? And now, I mean, what a situation down there. I mean, you guys are playing baseball in a minor league facility right next to the I mean, like the whole circumstance of the roof blowing off down there. And you know, my, my mother in law, lives down in Sarasota, and I talked to Rick Vaughn on the frequent and I have friends that live in St Pete Beach and the devastation the mass and, you know, baseball’s in peril there, I would say, Right? Or am I wrong at saying that? I
30:49
think so. I mean, first off, I’m I’m glad that they’re going to be playing in Tampa this year, because I’ll go to more games. I don’t have to go across the Howard Franklin Bridge because it’s like, another hour away. But I printed this out because this happened last week. The Saint Petersburg council voted last Thursday in favor of purchasing bonds that would fund a portion of the new stadium, but and the council voted four to three to move forward with a more than 300 million bond purchase to pay for the stadium, but the Pinellas County Commission must also approve the bonds to pay for their portion of the deal. In other words, the rays are still holding out here. I mean, this was a natural disaster that all this extra money has to be spent, you know, to fix up the trop for two years and then they want to be in a new stadium by what 28 and that’s that is in peril now. I mean, Vaughn and those guys can tell you, this scenario loves baseball. I’ve always just thought it was in the stadium. Was in the wrong place. I mean, it should have been on the Tampa side. You would have drawn better. You could have gotten more businesses. You could have Orlando as well. Yeah, Orlando, Lakeland, you’d still bring people up from Bradenton, Sarasota. You know all that. It’ll be interesting this year. I mean, as most people know, they’re playing in Legends field, which it’s the best possible scenario of a worse situation. But to think that there’s Montreal
Nestor Aparicio 32:18
and San Juan must have been unavailable.
32:23
The thing is, I mean, it’s the Yankees facility, you know, hated division rival. But the Yankees, I think, are getting like 15 billion out of this dude, the Blue
Nestor Aparicio 32:33
Jays played in Buffalo that, you know. I mean, the A’s will play in wherever Sacramento, like it boggles my mind, dude, and it harkens me back to when coward wrote the book and tried to convince me playing baseball Camden Yards with the SWAT team circle in the building and tanks out my view was a better idea than like, playing that game in Bowie or Wilmington or wherever. But nonetheless, Joe Boyle is here. He is an author who was based down in the Tampa, Florida area, and has been for four decades. But he is Balmer through and through. He still says him the right way, the way I order, yeah, get water and all that. The book is about Tom Maddie. I would hope everyone would go out and take a look at it. It is last man standing. It is Joe poorly, P, O, I, L, E, y, speak to that cover. There. You got some old pictures there. Look at you. It
33:30
was really cool because the publisher and my editor let me design it. These two pictures are famous pictures. I mean, that’s the one from the Green Bay game with the original risk van. And this is the game from the NFL championship game against Cleveland where Tom scored three TDs. And that shot was on the front of Sports Illustrated the next week. And the publisher had to pay some good coin to do it, but they believed in me enough. And then we have Jack Nicklaus, his old college roommate from Ohio State who wrote the forward. And yeah, I was really happy with how it turned out.
Nestor Aparicio 34:04
Well, get the book. Check it out. Joel and I, like, back to baseball and money and Rubenstein and me being a cheerleader for the team or not being a cheerleader for the team in regard to journalism. And dude, we’re just at a different point where this guy bought the team. He’s in all the commercials, but he’s not in all the press conferences. And, you know, I went out to Beth to Philo last month for the election. Met him. I talked to him about the trauma and the 10,000 empty seats. At some point, the reality is the reality of whatever the economic reality of this is. And the thing that disappointed me the first, a couple things disappointed first, he doesn’t know anything about baseball. So, like, literally doesn’t know anything about baseball. Like, and would be afraid of coming on because I could not, I would have to agree to not talk about baseball, because I just don’t been in the same way when I’m in a cocktail conversation, somebody didn’t know anything about rock and roll. I don’t talk to them about rock and roll. I talk about something else. But there is a point. Where he’s a billionaire who bought this thing, who put himself in front of it, that there’s been no transference of acknowledgement of like this thing, where he and Katie Griggs get in front of everybody and bring Ripken out and just say, look, new sheriffs in town. New thing. Ask anything you want. Come buy tickets. We’re going to do things differently. We’re going to be a community organization. I don’t feel any of that. It feels very like they’re trying to pretend none of this happened. That’s what the 10,000 empty seats were about. That’s what I wanted to impress upon Mr. Rubenstein when I only had two minutes of his time. The error I made, and I’ll admit this to you, because I reread my letter to him is I never said to him, Mr. Rubenstein, did you get my letter? I never said to him. I wrote you a letter because I didn’t write it to be the dick or be smug. I wrote it for him to read it. It’s my real feelings. It’s not Hunter S Thompson, it is my experience in walking with the Angelos family and trying to help them. I’m not the only one. Mike Flanagan died trying to help them, literally like so we you know, I am not the enemy. I am just a guy with some questions and maybe a flashlight to hold back on you and say You said you were going to do X. Have you done this or not? This is basic blocking and tackling 101, community business involvement to say we have this brand that we think is great with a great logo and some good young kids, but we’re trying to get top dollar out of people. We’re trying to get the most valuable thing you have in life beyond oxygen and and water, which is your time they’re trying to get to get you interested in them. And that’s the hardest part of getting the girl, is to get her interested in you, right? And I’m already interested, and I have a wallet that I’m holding out, and my barrier and my bar to entrance is they won’t take it from me, right? They won’t take a phone call from me. It’s absurd. I mean, it’s childish, it’s bizarre, it’s all of that. And I am just this guy, but saying for my wallet you must, I don’t know, remember Papa Joe Chevalier had a bill of rights, a fan Bill of Rights. I’m trying to figure out how they get those 10,000 seats filled, and what they need to do, and they need to raise their bar for their own level of expectation for what they’re promising the community and delivering for the community. And I they and I guess if you make no promises. You can’t break them. We just
37:42
haven’t heard anything. I mean, yeah, they just made a couple of trades or not acquisitions. I know O’Neill and Sanchez. It sounds like
Nestor Aparicio 37:49
a lot of money, but it’s not. It’s just a 240 outfielder. My question for you is,
37:53
though I don’t hear much from Cal. I mean, does he have any input into what Rubenstein thinks I
Nestor Aparicio 37:59
have John maroon on next week, I’ll ask him about Cal little bit. I don’t, I’d like to ask Cal about Cal and cows can come on. I mean, I just, I really don’t know, and I, and I’m so excommunicated, you know? I mean, I’ve had, I’ve had charities ban me because Chad’s like, it’s crazy, right? But I I don’t know what to say after doing this for 40 years. And Cal can speak for himself. Cows got social media. Cal, you know, has his image thing and whatever. But yeah, I’m here, and I’m promising you as a citizen, as a business owner, as a media leader, as a voice every day, as a guy, that they can continue to pretend nobody listens to me, even though every metrics will show 10s of 1000s of people that listen every day and interact with me from Florida, and like, my heart’s good everybody, everybody’s heart’s good here, but it needs to be run differently. It needs to be attacked, not run from the history of this and the problems of the last 30 years need to be addressed. They don’t need to be attributed. Nobody needs to say Angelo’s was was blank. I mean, whatever he was is, doesn’t matter. But those 10,000 empty seats, that’s about Peter and then that, you know that that to me, that’s about 30 years of allowing those that to happen.
39:16
Yeah. I mean, you’re basically saying what I’m thinking. I mean, I don’t again. I’m detached, but I follow it. I don’t feel
Nestor Aparicio 39:25
money. Do you buy the package and watch them under 30 nights a year? No,
39:29
no, man, no. But you know, I don’t feel like much has changed. You got
Nestor Aparicio 39:34
Orioles ish all over your wall. What are you willing to pay Joel was I’m not being a jerk. I’m Katie Griggs calling you right now with a survey and saying, You’re in Florida. You love our baseball team. How much for the MLB thing where you get your brace games, you get all the things, but you get the Orioles. You can listen to the app. You can get Kevin Brown on satellite. Eight. We take it with you to the beach, wherever you’re on a plane, wherever you want to go. What’s is it $300 a year too much? I was just gonna
40:06
say it depends if it’s a couple 100 bucks. Yeah, I would do it. But, you know, you gotta watch your budget. But, yeah, I mean, but they’re not reaching out to me, and it doesn’t sound like they’re reaching out to
Nestor Aparicio 40:16
me. Where are they getting their money from? If the people who actually love it aren’t watching it, or if they’re putting games on Apple TV and making me on a Friday night say I’m just not gonna watch it, or and I go over to a ball camp, and maybe a Cooper’s north, they’ll be able to figure out how to get it on. I mean, like, I What? And then they don’t answer questions from people like me and don’t have an answer. And they don’t only just fear me, they devalue me and demean me and allow my Caucasian employee access that they denied me last year in Texas as a reporter, and expect me to give them a credit card or, like, say things have changed. I’m I’ve been dying to say things have changed. Yeah, when they change, I’ll be the first one to know, because I’ll give him my credit card, because I want to, I want to. I like I want in the Birdland thing. I want it, but it nothing comes without a press credential for me, like there, and that’s as simple as that. I own a radio station. I’m a real media member. I’ve been mistreated for a long, long time. When that changes, they’ll get my credit card. And it’s not even about me, it’s about what’s going to get those 10,000 people there, what, what’s going to make that what’s going to activate those people to love the team, live and die with the team. Watch the team. Invest in the team, take the team with them in lacrosse season even. And like you mentioned, even lacrosse is growing where you are, right?
41:39
Oh yeah, it’s a accredited high school sport now, yeah, but I mean, to your point, it’s almost like they’re just waiting for the fans to come back as the team wins, you know, and the team is winning. Attendance was a little bit better this year. But like I said, I think the way the season ending on such a sour note, they need to do some serious reevaluating, you know, in terms of promoting and all, because if they get out of the blocks a little bit slow next year, they’re going to see some decline in attendance, because people were fickle. You know that I knew you have to give them a reason to show up. And I
Nestor Aparicio 42:23
tell them in concerts, when bands come around and it’s not as good as it used to be. It’s too much money. I just don’t go. They get nothing. They do. It’s like an airline seat. It either gets used or it doesn’t get used. And Joe, I hope you saw a lot of books, dude, I love you. Get me ranting because you pinch at me and you do that on purpose. You know, like a caller that calls and ribs me. Joe poorly wrote a book called Last man standing about the late great Tom Maddie. I’m not going to tell the story about when Maddie came up to me in the lobby, because it’ll make me cry, but the book is available. It has a great cover. Hey, happy holidays to you, my friend, and take care of yourself down there. One day, we’re going to have a beer and a ball game together. Definitely.
43:01
That’s available on Amazon. I’m also maybe going to send you a link to it, you know, if people want to buy it, yeah, it’s if you like, even if you’re not a colt fan, per se, or you don’t remember that era, if you love NFL history, there’s a lot of that in there too. And yeah, the next time I’m in Baltimore or you’re down here, man, look me up. Alright, man, you
Nestor Aparicio 43:27
and me will be over at Yoders eating fried chicken before a a spring training game If Katie Griggs provides me with my proper working credentials. Because Luke and I, I mean, there’s no better place to be in Sarasota in March, I’m in. I’m all in. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T, A of 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive and media access with media guys.
