It’s always a bunch of everything with our pal and lifer sportswriter Dave Sheinin of The Washington Post who talks music, Orioles baseball and Ravens football with Nestor on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Kooper’s Pub during the Fells Point Oyster Fest.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lamar, question, baltimore, chad, pearl jam, report, night, music, ravens, sports, game, man, hard, cooper, washington post, tokyo, anymore, sticks, people, shining
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Dave Sheinin
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We are positively in Fells Point, Maryland, for the Fells Point oyster fest. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. I told Roz, I gotta get the Raven scratch offs. But I have just a nice little batch of these gold rush seven doubles, and a really nice crowd down here at Cooper’s today, all weekend long, this is going on, Springsteen’s in town, Pearl Jam’s in town. Late street dive is playing tonight at Merriweather. Pearl Jam was last night. You would think I’d be hungover. I had like four beers before the show that free water at the CFG Bank Arena, and Pearl Jam singing me all night. I woke up this morning, I didn’t realize who I was or where I was going, but I’m going to sticks tonight. I got my sticks belt buckle on day shine it’s right shotgun. It’s all brought to you also by our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions, you talk about keeping the water clean. They are my well water specialist. 800 clean water. They keep my well water clean. They they actually took care of my plumbing a couple weeks ago when I had a little pipe issue. They could do that for you as well. Our friends at Jiffy Lube power, Luke up, and I would have had a couple royal farms coffee this morning, but I’m pretty caffeinated. I’m ready for more rock and roll, more rock and roll. And then you like, during the break, you go to the bathroom, you come back, and you like, look over at the Pendry and Coopers has the greatest view ever, right? Yeah. I mean, you could see the dominoes. Did you see the Willy Wonka factory, the Under Armor factory? You can do all of that here. You love Baltimore. You made Baltimore life you’re not like a real lifer. You’re a lifer now, yeah, but you’re an adoptee of this area. You literally live in Fells Point,
Dave Sheinin 01:29
I mean, and it’s going on 26 years now. So, I mean, this is home, no question about
Nestor Aparicio 01:34
it. Well, people say, Well, do you do progress in Baltimore? And I’m thinking, No, we have problems. We’ve always had problems, but to say there’s no progress, you haven’t seen the shining city of Port Covington down there that I’ll never call Baltimore Peninsula, but looking over at this Pendry, for all of us that came down here and got sideways at the cat’s eye, or, you know what I mean, or rolled over to rotos when we might have been 18 or 19, or Diana, SOS even younger than that, breaking The Greek plates on the floor, that was an eyesore for like, and so much so that people watch homicide and think like it really was the police station, yeah, which cracks me up, because I remember when they were shooting it. I tended bar right here with John sada and Richard Belzer, one Richard Belzer, wow, I tend to bar here one night for it was for leukemia. Believe it or not, it’s when I met Patrick Russell. He talks about all the time because he remembers it his dog, Cooper, and yeah, they did a fundraiser here one night with the homicide crew. And that night I parked over here, and it looked like a cop station, maybe because it had a police station thing on it, but it was a completely gutted, awful. It wasn’t any it was a facade. Was like Blazing Saddles.
Dave Sheinin 02:49
Oh, yeah. I mean, it was just, it was a wreck. I mean, it was terrible. You would not want to get, you would not want to set foot inside of that thing.
Nestor Aparicio 02:57
And Springsteen’s in there sleeping right now. We can’t get to him. Yeah? Let’s
Dave Sheinin 03:00
go wake him up. Let’s
Nestor Aparicio 03:01
go wake him up. Yeah, Eddie Vedder, now they’re probably over there having crumpets right now. So I don’t when anybody listens to this, you’re gonna know whether Eddie Vedder got on stage, but there is something about Pearl Jam at our arena on a Thursday night. Friday. Springsteen in the East Street. Band still alive. It’s 2024 all of that back to back. Night sticks is up the street at the Lyric Lake Street dive, which is, my wife is going to Merriweather. And Wendy from curio told me she’s going to Lake Street dive. My wife got a single in the fifth row. Yes, does. She loves Lake Street dive. She’s great. She’s skipping out. I mean, music brings the people together, right? Yeah. And
Dave Sheinin 03:39
this is a fantastic music town. Man, it really people don’t even understand the bands that this place has put out lately, you know, from future islands, Dan Deacon, not in the hip hop scene in Baltimore. Man, this place is rich in music Well, and
Nestor Aparicio 03:56
you love music, and I love music, and it’s like sports first, because, like, that was what we did. And there’s rah, rah. But like, Lawrence Gowan came on this week from sticks, and he’s Canadian, you know, he’s been doing this his whole life. He loves hockey, famously loves sports, but he’s like, sports disappoints you, yeah? He’s like, I’m a Maple Leafs fan, like, it’s never even given me what I want. If you’re an oral fan, it hasn’t given you what you want, right? Whereas you got what you wanted. If you went and saw Pearl Jam last night, you know, my wife’s gonna get what she wants. Another Lake Street dive, I’m gonna get what I want. It sticks. There’s something about when you leave a show 99% of the time, unless the band was sick out of shape, bad at a key, didn’t care, lost a step or whatever. But even musicians that lose a step, Frankie Valley side and lip sync, lip syncing and all that. But even Bruce has lost the step. Oh, he’s here, like he might admit that, yeah, but it’s still great. I went saw it last Saturday night. Yeah, it’s still as great as any. I don’t feel like it’s Willie Mays at the Mets, right? You know? Mean, I feel like it’s vibrant. And musicians find their key, they find their tone, they find their energy, they find what they can and can’t do after 40 or 50.
Dave Sheinin 05:11
I don’t think I’ve ever once regretted in my life if I’m on the fence about whether to go to the show that night or not, especially a club show, because in Baltimore, I go to auto bar a lot soundstage, Ram’s Head, live. I’ve never once in my life regretted going to the show. I’ve regretted not going to the show. Always, you always regret what you don’t go to right? And I have never once regretted going and if I’m on the fence, 95% of the time, I’m going
Nestor Aparicio 05:39
well, my only issue with concerts other than the price, and I get the value and I get, like, I didn’t mind my club
Dave Sheinin 05:46
shows, man, club shows are still 2030 bucks in a lot of Yeah, and
Nestor Aparicio 05:50
in falling in love with new music, Lake Street dive would be a great example of a band that I like enough, but I don’t listen to them enough. My wife listens. I’m like, I would go tonight, maybe not for 100 bucks. You know what I mean, is more of $100 show for her than for me. And I’m like, well, then you go and I’ll go to, you know, like, I’ll do what I do, but new music and finding new music when you’re not a radio head anymore, like you when you were a kid, yeah, streaming side of music and whatever. And the kind of music you play, where do you find it? I mean, you have young girls too, so that, I’m sure they bring music to you. But finding new music is not about B, 104 anymore. Putting the radio station on, you know, you have to seek it out to some degree.
Dave Sheinin 06:34
No, no question. And I mean, but there’s plenty of ways to do that now, you know, I mean, the the streaming services, as much as I hate them as a musician for the way they’ve sucked the revenue out of our pockets. As musicians, they do a great job with their algorithms of turning you on to stuff based on what you’re already listening to. If
Nestor Aparicio 06:53
you like Bob Dylan, you might like Dave shining, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean,
Dave Sheinin 06:57
I’m more power pop, I suppose, than full but, yeah. But yeah. I mean, yeah. If you if you like a certain artist, and you listen to them a lot, the algorithm will turn you on to something else similar. I also have an 18 year old daughter who turns me on to so much new music I and I give it back to her. She’s way into the 80s and 90s. She loves the cure and the Smiths and the replacements, so I turn her on and stuff like that, and she gives me boy genius and claro and hogier to alipa,
Nestor Aparicio 07:28
you’re not a pop tart.
Dave Sheinin 07:30
I don’t, I don’t really do, yeah, I mean, I respect her, you know, I’m not, but I’m not gonna, like, gosh, I
Nestor Aparicio 07:41
didn’t know you to be snobby. And I’m a little bit of a snob. Okay, I admit. Well, when you say you and you just jump right on me, like, I’m not folk on power pop. And that’s like people, a young lady just I gave her lottery ticket. She’s, what do you do? And I used to say sports radio, but I don’t really. I got bored with doing sports radio because I sort of invented it and did it thumb with it. I want to, I’m like, Sting. I don’t want to do the police anymore. I want to do the symphony. I want to do something different. You’re
Dave Sheinin 08:07
the master of all media. No, well, thank
Nestor Aparicio 08:10
you for that, but, but the the music part of you saying I’m a power pop guy, I’m thinking, were you a material issue guy? You know what I mean? I’m thinking what power pop would sound like to me in the late 80s, probably like REM after they jumped the shark, was a little bit of Power Poppy. People was power like
Dave Sheinin 08:29
squeeze. Matthew sweet, big star in the 70s,
Nestor Aparicio 08:36
booting the blowfish. Was power pop. No, okay, okay, that’s rock. That’s right, yeah, yeah, our pop kind
Dave Sheinin 08:43
of schlocky rock, but yeah, just, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 08:46
be nice to my boys, you know, don’t bring me
Dave Sheinin 08:50
any Hootie man. Come on, you can do better. Net. Wow.
Nestor Aparicio 08:54
I had a great summer with hooting the blowfish. Really. It is amazing how we’re all different, though, right?
Dave Sheinin 09:00
We all have our things, man, you know, yeah, like, I
Nestor Aparicio 09:03
love the cure, but some people just don’t get it. I love Depeche Mode, but Depeche modes not in rush. They’re bands like Depeche Mode and rush. You look at them and say, they really don’t. They have some distant cousins, but they really don’t have any. They’re not like sticks and foreigner and re you know, were the same sort of
Dave Sheinin 09:23
thing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, right. There was always that one guy in high school who listened to rush. That must have been you. That was me, yes. Two guys, me and Kevin Eck, two guys, yeah, I
Nestor Aparicio 09:31
only had one. We were doing red Barchetta. Yeah, it wasn’t me, but I wasn’t in the yes corner, or necessarily the Pink Floyd corner, yeah, yeah. I was more in the AC, DC, Judas, Priest, Iron Maiden group,
Dave Sheinin 09:41
yeah, that’s like Prague rock or something,
Nestor Aparicio 09:44
or like, Genesis, Genesis, yes, Emerson, Lake and Paul, right? Yes. That was, that was, that’s not me. Those guys all play chess.
Dave Sheinin 09:55
I missed all of that. Yeah, yeah. I missed all of that stuff. Oh,
Nestor Aparicio 09:58
man, we can. Go at this all day. Dave shining. He really is a sports writer from the Washington Post and Olympic so what else you doing now? I mean, I the Olympics never end. And now, like the LA things, like on autopilot now, right? So figure that part of it out well before LA.
Dave Sheinin 10:13
There’s a 26 Winter Games, only 18 months away. I suppose in Milan,
Nestor Aparicio 10:21
Italy, you go to Tokyo? I
Dave Sheinin 10:22
did go to Tokyo. That was talked
Nestor Aparicio 10:24
about that I was total lockdown, shutdown, not
Dave Sheinin 10:28
as bad as China, okay, China was worse than Japan for the Olympics, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 10:34
from a lockdown. Oh, I love Japan. I mean, you and I could go all day. Was Japan open when you were there,
Dave Sheinin 10:40
it was quasi open you once you were in for 10 days in the country for 10 days and tested every day for covid. Once you got to the end of the 10 day period, you were free to go.
Nestor Aparicio 10:52
Did you go eat rum? And I need to know. I mean, so you had a Tokyo experience? Oh, yes, yeah. Tokyo is probably my favorite city on
Dave Sheinin 10:57
Earth. It’s an amazing city. I highly recommend anybody who hasn’t been gotta go. I
Nestor Aparicio 11:03
tell people, and they’re like, well, the food, get some. Go to McDonald’s. Amazing. Don’t do that. I mean, but, but Tokyo, I went 52 I went 20 years ago, and I went again, like five, six years ago, and the amount of English has come a long way. Was really hard to navigate 20 years ago, but Olympics and things like that. And I think the same thing’s true about Europe and Paris, that you you can get by with your English. But in Paris, they want you to try to they
Dave Sheinin 11:28
do. They respect you for trying. They do, even if you can’t get to the end of a sentence. They respect you for trying.
Nestor Aparicio 11:35
A little merci goes a long way, right? I mean, merci works. Messy. Boku.
Dave Sheinin 11:41
Boku, throw that in a man, yeah, you, they’ll they’ll smile. You almost
Nestor Aparicio 11:46
look French. Man, yeah, when I say you don’t speak French and be like
11:49
this. Paul, all right,
Nestor Aparicio 11:53
let’s get some sports in here. You got anything? Let’s do football quick. I mean, by the time this airs, are gonna win or lose, but just in the general sense of where the ravens are, and navigating a salary cap and having an offensive line that’s going to be cheap and young, because that’s what it’s going to have to be. I am a believer, but I’m also like this Dallas buffalo thing coming up here. They’re not going to start five and one. In my mind, they’re not going to be 13 and four. No, this whole AFC Championship game at home thing they we can’t talk about that till November, for me, but last year’s not this year. And I learned this, um, I had a smart ale back in 2002 right to me, was a poignant thing. A fan wrote to me and said, last year was a long time ago, and that was about Trent Dilfer back in Oh, one last year was a long time ago. It does not true in every
Dave Sheinin 12:48
sport, right? Yeah, it really is, because so much of the team turns over Wow. I mean, look at the look at the ravens, man. I mean, almost an entire new offensive line, right? I mean, there’s new new personnel on defense. I mean, it’s it takes you a few weeks, if you’re not paying attention over the off season, it takes you a few weeks to start to know who’s who. That’s where I’m at with the Ravens. I don’t pay attention to free agency and to mini camp and rookie camp and the draft, and I just can’t do I don’t have the bandwidth. So when they show up in September, I start to learn who the ravens are. And I’m still at the point now where I’m still trying to put names to jersey numbers. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 13:25
got Chad whistling your NFL agent to the stars. The thing that screwed me up the most is when he’s wearing his Oreo, he’s a, oh, my God, he is. He’s texting Brandon high right now, you know, bring it, get the ball. Pen, go. But the numbers, what they did from the vanity so that he can market these guys, so they can get their n, i, L, and all their light, like changing the jerseys, the numbers has effed me all up when number two is tackling somebody and it’s a linebacker, yeah, you know, I mean the college part of that, I thought it looked amateur, even at that level. Now the number thing makes it a little harder. When you see a number four flying to make a tackle in the secondary, you’re like, Oh, is that a safety? So learning players numbers in the first couple of weeks is the most important thing
Dave Sheinin 14:15
that’s really hard now that, I mean, we’re treading into old man yells at clouds territory here, right, right, but, uh, but, no, I feel you on that. It’s just, you know, I mean, if you’re not, if you’re not a hardcore and you’re not paying attention to this all off season, you don’t know who anybody is on week one. So I’m okay with that. I’m okay with learning this team. By the end of the year, I’ll know this team.
Nestor Aparicio 14:37
I’m learning a whole new way to do this after taking four hours of phone calls and doing therapy radio on Mondays when they lose and then all week stretching it out, talking about, it’s the greatest thing ever that I like the games more when Chad Steele’s not towering over me, screaming at me, right? Literally, I like the games more when I don’t have to spend 20 hours this. Week, talking about how crappy the offensive line was last week. And I like it more in an intelligent way where, like Luke and I get at it three to five times a week about really core issues, and go back and forth about it and present that, and then I move on and talk to you about music or Lawrence Gowan, yeah, like, that’s my declaration of independence this month was I’m not going to be mistreated as a journalist anymore. I’m not going to be treated like shit from the minute I walk in the door, just because it says, press on it. And that’s really what’s happened with the sports teams and in our industry, in a large way, some of the agents are at fault too, and I’ll bring Wesleyan on that too. But for me, I the conversation. I like sports more now that I give a little I know as much as I’ve ever known. I can go all day, all night. I can show up in Las Vegas this week and do a raven report for half an hour for them. But the fact that I don’t have to do 40 hours a week, it allows me to exhale on a Sunday morning and just watch the game and then really be an old school sports writer again, like what Jack Gibbons taught me Don’t cheer for, you know, watch the game and present it as it is. And I’ve managed to put away my purple and orange underwear and go back to being just a journalist again. And I’m enjoying that part of it as a as a grown up, knowing I have a lot more wisdom at that point now, but I’m enjoying watching the game, and at four o’clock it’s over with, and I the post game is mine now, right? Like I get to say what I want to say, yeah, and and conduct it in that way. I did this for 25 years, man, every minute of every day, I’m like, you, like, yeah, it wore me out, right? I mean, it broke my spirit. It wasn’t fun anymore.
Dave Sheinin 16:43
It wasn’t fun anymore. That’s right. And then once you get a taste of not being there and not being on deadline and not having to think through the game about what you’re gonna say or what you’re gonna write, and you’re on your couch and you maybe have a beer in your hand and you’re watching it that way, consuming the sport, it’s hard to go back, because the
Nestor Aparicio 17:00
hardest part is to ask you a question that you know they’re not, they’re gonna lie, deflect or not give you an answer. And your whole purpose is, I mean, like they all went out there on Monday, and Luke wasn’t Lamar wasn’t practicing, right? Yeah, yeah, right. So the first question is, where’s Lamar? Right? And John’s such a jerk that he can’t just say, just gave a day off. That’s all you have to say. Just get a day off. But it’s competitive advantage, because Marvin’s at an oakler Las Vegas now, and they’re going to be preparing for Josh, stop. Just don’t get your fans on edge. You don’t don’t get your customers on edge. Just how hard would it The reporters are there to report? They’re reporting. The Lamar is not out there. How hard is just to say Lamar is fine? You’ll see the injury report on Wednesday, because I’m John and I’m thinking, I don’t need any more of that. I didn’t even like that on Facebook, live at three o’clock when I tuned in as the, you know, the Dallas hook line, right? Like the cliffhanger, is Lamar healthier? Is he not? Why are you starting rumors? Why can’t you just, it’s just such a game, like, that’s the part of it that I hated. It was, like, the obvious question after the game last Thursday was Lamar ran the ball 16 times. That’s probably too much. Yeah, you’re not allowed to ask that question, because they’ll take your press pass because I asked that question, and they bird up and they got angry at the question, and I’m thinking, why am I there if I can’t ask a legitimate question? I mean, I’m being serious. I mean, how much effort I put into getting on a plane, to fly, to ask that question.
Dave Sheinin 18:29
Reporting in this job has never been harder. It’s so hard right now to report, to do a good job, to get to the bottom of things, to do a profile of a high profile athlete, the hoops you have to go through, the handlers, the PR, you know, the it’s almost impossible now to do a real to do what I used to do, you know, get into the head of a superstar athlete for a couple of days. It just doesn’t happen anymore. Or you have to sell your soul to do it.
Nestor Aparicio 18:59
You have to sell your expound upon that, because that’s the crux. When people ask me how I got thrown out if I did something wrong, the bottom line is they’re cowards. They didn’t want to answer questions. They don’t have to answer questions. The notion that there was accountability, and we were going to build the press box in the middle of the stadium, and then 30 years later, condense it, move it in the corner where there are no questions, because they’re in control of it while they use state money. It’s got little offensive to me, and I don’t mind saying that as a citizen, because I’ve been behind the lines, and I know how they behave. And it’s not with integrity. It really isn’t. It’s not, it’s not with honesty. If it were, John Harbaugh would have met the media monthly and said, Lamar is fine. Don’t, don’t worry about Lamar.
Dave Sheinin 19:41
Everything’s about, everything’s about controlling the message. They all have their own in house, news gathering operations, right? Ravens.com orioles.com they want to control the message. If you know they don’t need the Washington Post anymore. They need TV. You know they need. Fox and city they own, though the TV they control, well to some explicitly, or, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, they don’t need, they don’t need the Washington Post. As crazy as that sounds, I mean, we’re still our name still does go a long way, but they don’t need us the way that they need TV and and they need their own in house operation, which is only giving you half of the story, right? Because it’s the store, the part of the story they want you to see. But reporting as an independent journalist now is never been harder, and it’s the one thing that you know would force me out of this job if I didn’t need the job. Well, the
Nestor Aparicio 20:36
real reporting, if it was the New York Giants quarterback, and they were real people there, right? Or up in Green Bay, where Chad’s running back is the quarterback isn’t on the practice field on Monday, somebody needs to find a big why? Yeah, why? So, if it’s his wife had a baby, if he’s got the day off, he’s got the flu, if he had the sniffles, if he’s got a bone bruise, whatever it is, there would be a report. Instead, John comes out and says the reports Wednesday, and now they’re so why did he just practice on Monday? I still don’t know the reason for that, and it just moves on. If it was
Dave Sheinin 21:10
just an off day, if they were just giving him an off day, you should say that, because if you don’t say that, and you make it this mystery, it’s just going to add layers of intrigue to it and make people leap to conclusions and try to report out on the margins of what it is when it’s something as simple as the guy needed a day off and we gave him a day off,
Nestor Aparicio 21:30
it’s a perfect time to bring Chad. And I will take a break. Dave shine, it’s here, Chad. We see gonna be I have you guys, because this was like the perfect time to bring him in and say, if it’s running back and the coaches and speaking, and we’re questioning whether he’s even healthy. The agent the player like, no, no, no, no, no, I’m
Dave Sheinin 21:44
fine. Yeah, great. Start
Nestor Aparicio 21:47
rumors about me, right? Yeah, all right, take a break. We’re at the Cooper’s. It’s all brought to by the Maryland lottery. Dave, shining from the Washington Post, is here. Chad weisling here wearing his Oriole jersey. He’s got sort of his NFL agent cap sideways. He’s got his Springsteen cap on the other side, I got my sticks belt buckle on. Do you wear an Iron Maiden? Anything under there? He’s a this is a metal guy here. Watch Nice. All right? Our pop, okay, this guy’s, this guy’s Pantera. Back some more. We’re Cooper’s. We’re doing oyster fest. Stay with us. You.
