After hyper-inflating the initial pricing of MLB Wild Card playoff tickets, the prices fell like a rock earlier this week and Orioles fans still weren’t buying $15 tickets on game day. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the empty seats and depressed prices at Camden Yards for Game 1 of Wild Card round in Baltimore.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
empty seats, depressed prices, Camden Yards, playoff game, ticket prices, fan attendance, ownership issues, media treatment, game one, Baltimore Orioles, postseason games, fan engagement, ticket scalping, game two, fan experience
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are wnst am 1570 Taos in Baltimore and Baltimore, positive we are trying to stave off elimination around here. So hats off to Zach Eflin. Luke and I will be gathering next Friday. Today is his birthday, so if you see Luke at the ballpark, he got a press pass for his ball. It was for his birthday. Give him some cake. I thought about some creative way to send you crab cake today, down from fates, but I probably could do that. Our friends at the Maryland lottery are powering us up. We’re going to celebrate Luke’s birthday with a crab cake and pizza and pepperoni pizza, and probably some ice cream, maybe a milkshake over there at the ice cream bar at Pizza John’s and Essex will be at back river neck road next Friday, I will have Raven scratch offs to give away. Our friends at Jiffy Lube will power us up and get us there. At Jiffy Lube MultiCare, also our Maryland oyster tour in progress with our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, one 800 clean water, as well as curio wellness and foreign daughter I’m wearing my what’s over here?
00:54
Oh, give me
Nestor Aparicio 00:56
a certainly an air was what the Orioles had offensively in game one. Look me down there for the Zach ETHEL. We talked a lot offense. We talked defense. We even mentioned Mike messine and Joe table and Armando benitas. We didn’t mention the late, great Tony Fernandez, but he was the culprit and all that, 27 years ago, you were 14, dude. I mean, look at you. You’re like your grown ass man here, and we still can’t get hits the crowds. We talked a lot of baseball. You know, anybody wants to hear offense, defense? Zach Eflin, I wrote a letter to David Rubenstein. I have been banned all season. He owns the team. His people, quite frankly, have been no better to me than the other people were. And the same result, I don’t like being mistreated, and I don’t deserve to be mistreated. I’ve never mistreated anyone. Ask around. I don’t mistreat people. Um, I’m 56 and being treated like a chump by Chris Ullman and Greg Bader and the people that credential you and don’t credential me. It upsets me. It upsets my family. I think it upsets you. It should upset you, and I think I don’t know how you’re treated when you’re there. I don’t know that they associate my poor treatment with how you’ve been treated over the last 1516, years. Doing this for me or with me, I say, but I know why I’m angry. You know, I was assaulted. They didn’t pay their bill, the guys, the dead guy who I don’t like talking bad about that didn’t treat me very well. Um, didn’t treat a lot of people really well. And on a day when they’re playing a baseball game and tickets are it started the day at 30, then it went to 25 then it went to 22 then it went to 18, then it went to 15, then it went to 12. It wasn’t expensive to begin with. It was expensive last week. And look, I’m just going to say, I don’t let you do whatever, because I had a lot. It was 8000 words there for David Rubenstein, you go read as well as all of it. And how I feel is one thing. And I always say that this isn’t about me. And I said this back in 2006 this is about how empty the stadium is. And as a guy who sells sports for a living, which is all I’ve really done, is tried to help these creep billionaires make more money by giving them more money, by talking about how awesome they are and shining up the, you know, polishing their stone for they can all make millions of dollars while you and I, you know, make a living, and The notion that nobody wanted to go to the game on Monday, that tickets were 20 bucks, 15 bucks, 10 bucks, and there were empty seats, and the rain kids are at school. It’s an afternoon, like all of these I might get mugged, like all of that. I am I’m blown away, maybe not, but I am shocked that the lemmings didn’t come back to the lights. And I think Katie Griggs and I wrote this letter, they’ve done a lot of damage. Peter Angelo’s really, really damaged baseball in our community, damaged the Orioles damaged his own brand, and he’s now left this turd for Rubenstein and Katie Griggs and everyone else to try to figure out how you put the band back together. Because the one thing we talked about in the last segment, the last time there was a one nothing game there, 27 years ago, is a long time ago. There were no nationals, any of that. Tickets were also expensive. You know, you wanted to go to game six of the 1997 World Series. And I remember, I went with Jeff Grossman from Norris Ford and Mr. Lu and we sat in the club level, which I never set the club level really, the friend of mine had tickets. I was in the second row, right above the third base, um, the the on deck circle, third base side. Remember the dugout? I remember exactly where I sat for 12 of those innings that day in the twilight. Mike Messina, but there were 49,070 49 it’ll be the biggest crowd in history the stadium, because they’re gonna, they’re gonna make the stadium smaller. First thing Katie Griggs is gonna do is make the stadium smaller. Um, I don’t know, man, I I’m, I’m. Shocked that there were that many seats available for 1015, 20 bucks, and that people didn’t want to sit in them. I maybe you’ll be the voice of reason. You shouldn’t be shocked. Have you seen what’s going on here? Because I can say all that because I’ve lived it, and I’m there’s one guy that wanted to go to the game they wouldn’t let in, who serves 100,000 of their fans and their listeners. And I had to write about that, so there’s my my squeal on it, but why didn’t everybody else want to go? That’s really the story. Well,
Luke Jones 05:27
look, I’m gonna offer the same caveat I always do when I comment on attendance, and it’s, frankly, not a topic I feel overly comfortable discussing without choosing my words carefully, because this is my livelihood, and I rearrange my schedule to work and to cover these teams for a living. I do not pay to go. I do not have season tickets. I am not going to breached, and I’m not suggesting you are either preach to anyone how they should spend their precious, exposable disposable income. So with that caveat, provided I do want to say this, you are comparing apples to oranges in terms of game six of the truth of the 1997 ALCS to the first game of a wild card series. We’ve added around to the playoffs, but people haven’t
Nestor Aparicio 06:14
reached into their wallets here. Like I get this. I get my first point. Yeah, yeah, that’s just my first point. Let
Luke Jones 06:21
me let me, let me continue. I think, first of all, I don’t think it’s that people don’t want to go because we also need to recognize here, look, putting aside safety of the city and like that part that’s that’s exist, persisted Now, as far as perception for really, the last 10 years, you know, a post Freddie Gray Baltimore world that’s been a part of the narrative, true, half true or completely false, right? I mean, that’s just by the
Nestor Aparicio 06:52
way, the city numbers, literally, on Tuesday, murders are down, like 40. The crime is down. But, go ahead, yes, but,
Luke Jones 06:59
but I’m putting that part of the discussion aside because I don’t think it applied that. You know, if you want to say that about a Tuesday night in April when they’re playing the Kansas City Roy, that was a bad example. That Kansas City just the Chicago White Sox, let’s say, since they’re terrible. So putting that part of it aside, we do also have to understand these games that are played at four o’clock in the afternoon, or there was a game that started what at two in Houston, these games that are set in a very short period of time, they are not at a convenient time for Anyone who isn’t retired, super rich or has very flexible employment. I can say, as someone who was a teacher out of college for five years before I transitioned into sports media, I got three personal days a year. I longed for the Orioles to be back in the postseason after I didn’t get a chance to go in 96 and 97 the first ever Orioles postseason game that I watched was as a media member in 2012 in the division series against the Yankees in person. So we have to understand that a significant I have friends who wanted to go, they can’t make a Tuesday afternoon work. Now, let me be clear. Now, 96 and
Nestor Aparicio 08:23
97 your dad might have not had the financial means to even find a ticket. We had
Luke Jones 08:27
to have. We basically had friends who we could get tickets, who were generous enough to not gift them to us. Some I don’t want to suggest that, but we had some connections that we could get it in a more affordable way. Because, you know, we
Nestor Aparicio 08:40
certainly couldn’t games in 96 and 97 No, I
Luke Jones 08:43
just, I just told you my right, okay, right, exactly. And we wanted to go. So I want to make, I want to make clear about that so you have that you’ve now added an extra series of games, potentially to the menu of games. As an Orioles fan to attend games at Oriole Park in October. So let’s say right now that the Orioles win today or win on Wednesday. They win on Thursday in advance, right? So they would have the potential to host three games at Camden Yards in the wild card series, two games in the Division Series, presumably three games in the LCS, although there would be a scenario where they could always four and have home field and then same thing in the world series, three or potentially, but less likely, four. So you’re talking about up to 11, maybe 12 games that you could potentially buy as a fan. That’s expensive. Now Tuesday, the price shrunk. But again, there, not everyone in your fan base is flexible enough to do that, even on, even on in a year where, like last year, the Orioles had home field, you’re talking about three in the Division Series, three in the LCS and or four in the LCS, four in the World Series. So you have a lot of games there. There. A lot of money, a lot of disposable income that goes into that you have an organization. And this will tie into one of my bigger points here in a moment. I’m trying not to dance around this, but I’m trying to spell this out, because I think this is way more nuanced than solely blaming the Orioles for the last 30 years of and really 40 years of, you know, my lifetime, they’ve been really lousy. It’s up for about five or six years, you know, maybe add a couple more than that, where they just missed the playoffs. Point is, it’s been very little to write home, about as much as we celebrate and prop up 66 through 83 everything since then, saved for a handful of years, has been mediocre to garbage. That’s a long time. But, you know you have that so you have a fan base that also even season ticket holders. Mind you, and I know people personally who felt this way back in what was it late August, when they jacked up season ticket rates and in concert, they also reduced some of the perks of being a season ticket holder. That was a colossal faux pas in terms of perception and fan relations and PR and all that. So you have that, which is a fresh misstep. You know, this is a David Rubenstein era misstep. So, so you have that. And let’s
Nestor Aparicio 11:21
also call him Peter’s bed. I can’t blame him for anything anymore, right? I mean, but I can blame him a little bit that there were empty seats. I
Luke Jones 11:28
mean, I’ll get to that. I’ll get to that. They also had a very mediocre second half of the season, so as much as people were enthusiastic, late into 22 and that rolled into 23 although they had a bump in attendance last year. But it wasn’t, you know, I had the numbers in front of me, and again, these are public, you know, the the numbers. They claim all teams fudge the numbers, whether that’s right or wrong. That’s kind of how it works. But in 2022 the Orioles had averaged 17,005 43 in 2023 it went up to 23,911 in 2024 it jumped to 28,514 so it’s not as though there hasn’t been growth. Uh, their 19th in attendance this year, they were 21st a year ago. And in 22 they were 23rd so there’s been growth, but there has been league wide growth. The pitch clock, for example, has been a welcome addition for Major League Baseball. We can debate how good that’s been for pitching and the health of elbows and whatnot, but it clearly has had a positive impact in terms of interest, and I think that reflects in attendance and numbers have the Orioles grown as dramatically as anyone who supports the Orioles, and certainly the organization itself would have liked, considering the jump they’ve made from 110 losses in 2021 till now, I would say no, but that’s now. You know, where we look at that, we look at a mediocre second half that. Let’s face it, everyone was talking about the Orioles maybe challenging the 70 and 69 Orioles for 100 800, 910, wins when they were 24 games over 500 in June, they played sub 500 baseball. The rest of the way, they were 500 in the second half, and that was because of a five and one finish. So look, let’s not act like enthusiasm for the club was at an all time high going into this month of October. There was a lot of disappointment. A lot of that buzz was zapped. I would agree. We’ve spent
Nestor Aparicio 13:27
most of September thinking they can’t win the World Series. I spent most of April and May and June thinking they were going to win the division and they wouldn’t be playing till Saturday night, right? So when
Luke Jones 13:38
you have that, coupled with what I mentioned about lot, a sizable portion of any fan base, but this talking about the Orioles specifically, who have disposable income and only so many days they can take off work, may not be in a position where they can just take off in a on a whim, unless you’re going to call in sick and run the risk of your boss seeing you on TV. Ala Ferris Bueller, right? You know, so, so, so it’s not as flexible, and I think there were plenty of people and I again, some of this is anecdotal, but I think it’s also just common sense that we’re waiting to say, You know what, if they advance, then, hey, I’m all in on seeing them play the Yankees next week. And if they advance, you better believe I’m all in, and I’ll even fork out $500 for an LCS ticket, right? I’ll even shell out $1,000 for a World Series ticket to see them for the first time in my lifetime, or for the first time in four decades, in the World Series. So I think all of those factors I just mentioned are absolutely variables. And any, oh, by the way, there
Nestor Aparicio 14:37
were 70,000 people that were out drinking Sunday night, putting money in and just sort of like they’re not coming back Tuesday afternoon, right?
Luke Jones 14:44
Like there’s also that. And if the Ravens started playing Tuesday afternoon games that with flexible scheduling, and you don’t know the time of the game until two days late or two days ahead of time,
Nestor Aparicio 14:53
they’d have empty seats. We’ve had hundreds of friends that spent three days down, including my kid and his wife. Getting pissed on at the beach all night on the sand. Three, three day, everybody was sore on Monday that went down to the beach. So there, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of ways look to your point. 1979 there was the Orioles, and I don’t know, kiss, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot of ways to spend your money, places to go. And this goes back to my letter to David Rubenstein, y’all got work to do. Y’all got work to do, right? I
Luke Jones 15:28
was just those are you just said what were going to be my last two points go back to the Orioles of the 60s and the 70s. There were gay playoff games that didn’t get weren’t sold out. And look, I’m not saying that as a commentary of, oh, well, Baltimore’s not as good of a baseball town as Philadelphia or New York or Boston or a Lawson. It’s not about that, right? If we want to rank the passion of fan bases, I mean, that’s a discussion for that. I really don’t, wouldn’t want to have, but that’s something we would do in February, because
Nestor Aparicio 15:55
Luke a lot of times, and look, I’m a cheapskate too, right? A lot of times it’s a price point issue I have, literally, I I’ve seen the Rolling Stones a lot. You know that there have been three times that I’ve driven or flown I was in San Diego to see the Rolling Stones and the tickets for 250 bucks to go to a baseball stadium. My wife and I listened for three songs outside. We went and had dinner. I wasn’t spending 500 bucks to see the stones that night. When it’s 80 bucks or 100 bucks, I will go. You know this Sure. I think the price point on the Oriole thing was out of whack, like I looked at it last week. I’m like, what planner did you come from Seattle? Katie. Where are you from? Where you think people are gonna spend $125 at a four you’re gonna be lucky to get 48,000 people down there if he gave them tickets for free, because they got to get off. They’re saving their money. They went to the A they were to be all the things we just said, right? But once the price point came down, that s 2030 bucks, it’s playoff game. Weather is clearing, Burns is pitching, tickets are available. I got to do is click and go down there. You mean, you and your dad didn’t have that ability in 96 and 97 to just say, oh, tickets are available. I can just go. It’s that easy to get a ticket. And it’s, you still have to take over, but you still have to take off for work. I understand, I mean, and I so I think worse today, by the way, the game too. I just don’t think people are going to rush down there. They didn’t rush down to give 15 or 20 bucks yesterday, while they’re going to get 30 or 40 today to watch them get a limit. They can’t eliminate a team in game two. So I
Luke Jones 17:25
or you might have or or you could also, I think that might end up happening. I’m not convinced, though, because Game Two does have when you buy tickets ahead of time, Game Two has the connotation of you might get to watch them celebrate and clinch on the field. What? Before you know it, right? And if you have the ticket, I don’t necessarily think you’re just dumping it, because you think it’s over. I think for a lot of people,
Nestor Aparicio 17:47
just what they need to get off and what, what? And again, it used to be, when can I get a ticket? Now it’s I can get a ticket anywhere I want. How much do I want to spend it? Do I really want to go? And right? Well, and you, you
Luke Jones 17:57
just said something. And this is going to be my final point. Look, this is way more nuanced than and I’m not picking on anyone in particular, because I honestly, I came home, I wrote my my column for Baltimore positive.com and then I went to bed, and then we were up early on Wednesday morning after little inside baseball. So I didn’t have a chance to browse what any media fan blog anyone would have written about attendance. You know, there’s a tendency that for it to be low hanging fruit, to just say, Oh, well, this fan base. Boy, you guys are bandwagon jumpers. Or, boy, you guys don’t, don’t give a hoot about it. But, and I think that’s, I think that’s largely bunk, and I think there’s always way more nuance. There are way more variables at work here than anyone wants to admit and again, that’s why me and my ivory tower as someone who is paid to cut to go out to Camden Yards on average 60 or 65 or sometimes more than that, times a year. So I always want to tread carefully, but you just said something, and this is where it goes back to what’s happened over the last 40 years, but more specifically, over the last 30 years. You know, from the time that Peter Angelos bought the team in 93 to the time that John Angelos took control with Peter’s health failing and then certainly with ownership having changed hands this past calendar year, a lot of damage was done over that time. And I don’t mean that in terms of people in this town hate the Orioles. I think you do find people that moved on from baseball in the way that I the pandemic kind of brought this to the forefront. I think we all at a time when our lives were turned upside down for the better part of a couple years, I think everyone, there were a lot of people out there who readjusted their priorities. And I’m not talking about baseball or even sports, just in a general sense, what was important to them, certainly financial impact. But when you have something that was once such a treasured brand and. Even talked about it for as much as we romanticized the days of Brooks and Frank and Boog and Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken and Eddie later on. It’s not like Memorial Stadium was sold out every night. And it’s not like the those postseason games were even sold out. You know, there were times for World Series games. I I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the replays on NASA for some of the you know, 1970 you could look there were empty seats at Memorial Stadium as the Orioles would get ready to clinch. So I’m that’s apples to oranges. But my point is that was a long, long, long time ago. I joke about it a lot, but I’m 41 years old. I’ve never seen the Orioles play in the World Series, and I’m not counting me being in diapers as a two week old, when my dad was holding me in my parents’ living room. Now, in 1983 two weeks after I was born, I’ve never seen that. I’m 41 now. I’ve only seen the Orioles in the playoffs. What 90 690-712-1416, 2324 that’s two hands with fingers left over. And then when you, when you pair that with what was truly bad ownership, with Miss State missteps, such as firing Davey Johnson, not bringing back John Miller, who, by the way, we didn’t, we didn’t spend any time on it. But there was a great piece in the athletic about John Miller coming back to Baltimore a couple weeks ago, I recommend anyone check it out. You know nothing that was, I don’t think it covered any new territory, but as a reminder for someone like me, John Miller was my my generation’s Chuck Thompson and Peter Angelos. That was gone all the missteps, and we don’t need to rehash it over the next for 20 minutes. God, my God, I talked about it the last 30 years, right? Literally, sure, but, but I think in the process of all of that playing out, talking about the other lack of success on the field and the missteps and bad decision making off the field, it’s not so much that people hate the Orioles, or not even that. They don’t care about them at all. But I think that era caused prompted a lot of people to revisit their priorities to the point that if you only have a couple paid off days in your employment situation, and you only have so much disposable income for to do anything you know, whether it’s Raven tickets Orioles tickets. Maryland football, Maryland basketball, you love going to the movies. You love going to concerts, like you only have so much, right? I mean, again, unless these games are fine for people who are rich, retired or just have extraordinary employee employment flexibility, that’s that’s a relatively small percentage. And then you get into the fact that Baltimore is not a gigantic market. We don’t we know that it’s just your pool of people. If the same thing happens in New York, and the Yankees are a wild card, you know, wild card team hosting wild card games. You know what? Ballparks probably sold out, but the percentage of fans that are able to go compared to what the New York metropolitan area areas footprint, to what their base is in that area, is absolutely a way smaller percentage than what it would be if, if it was a seven o’clock game that you had plenty of time to plan for. So my point is, when you have something that was so bad, so damaged for such a long time, you wonder how much people care about it. And when I say that, I don’t mean they don’t care about it at all. But considering all of those inconveniences I just mentioned, how much are you willing to go through? And I think what we saw on Tuesday was a symptom of some of that, and I think that’s why. And you and I have talked about this a lot, and again, you have talked about this in greater length than me, and I try to stay I’m busy trying to keep up with us on the field. I mean, I’m still my head’s still spinning, recovering from Sunday night and no sleep and not really getting to give it as much oxygen to the Ravens game as I typically do, but because I was going right into baseball, and that’s fine, I’m not complaining about that, but I think what we see here does speak to there’s still a lot of work to be done to repair and rebuild and kind of regenerate this brand that on the field, despite what happened Tuesday and despite what’s happened in the second half, is still very much trending upward in terms of The talent, and this is the first time they’ve been in the playoffs back to back years since 96 and 97 it’s the first time they’ve won 90 plus games in back to back years since 82 and 83 these are the good old days in terms of for someone like me who did not actually experience the good old days, but boy, there’s a lot of damage done for a long time, and they’ve got to continue to recruit people. I said this to you when we were texting about this again, another inside baseball moment that I’ll share, when you said to me how shocked you were. And look, I was surprised, but I can’t say that I was 1,000% stunned that that oh my gosh. I can’t believe that this would happen. I thought when the ticket started to. Really go down people would, it would have been timings. It, I know I and there was a lot of walk up. I
Nestor Aparicio 25:06
mean, I they probably should sell 5000 tickets in the morning on Tuesday, they just didn’t sell 12. And really, and this is Shame, shame, shame. And Joey not pointed this out. They scalped their own tickets. They’re their own scalpers. They’ve done, trying to figure out how to squeeze $100 out of tickets that used to be 30 last week, and the fans just everything you just said, whether it anywhere from me, which is fu to I gotta work, or I’m not that interested,
Luke Jones 25:37
or what I can only afford to play off games, and I don’t want it to be a wild card. I
Nestor Aparicio 25:41
blew $300 on the Ravens on Sunday night or whatever, right? I mean, I don’t know, but it felt to me like the price point, the urgency of the game, their ability to win burns on the hill. You know, the whole i Me too, means something completely different. But I want to be there too. I want to be there. I want, you know, and it’s 20 bucks. I mean, at 100 bucks, I I’m out. At 20 bucks, I’m in. And it’s, that’s my concert thing, you know? I mean, I went to see the pretenders a couple months ago. I paid 30 bucks for a throw tickets at the Warner. If it’s 125 bucks, I don’t go. Yes, there’s a lot of concerts you see me out at, and you’re like, oh, Nestor goes to a lot of concerts. No, I go to the ones when the tickets are 20, 3040, bucks, when it’s 130 150 180 I look at it and say, my wife, it’s not a $400 night. It’s just not. And I don’t think that that Tuesday afternoon game was $100 experience for me. Tickets were 12 bucks at game time. It certainly was a $20 experience, or a $25 experience and affordable and the price of a movie, or, you know, whatever you would say. So they took the price out at the end, after the damage was done. Luke, I was at the Beaumont the other night. After the game, I picked my wife up the airport, so when the game ended, I went right to the airport. You went to Catonsville. There were eight people at the bar, and the bar only seats, like 10. It’s a little Beaumont. I’m gonna take you over there for delicious steak and burger, great lamb chops. But every person at the bar was wearing orange, not my fantastic curio orange, but orange. And they all had hats backwards, and they were beaten down. It was an hour after the game, hour and a half after the game, at 830 and everyone at the bar was bitching about what they paid for their ticket. Paid 125 bucks. I’m pissed they ripped me off. Now there’s that now that, right, like, literally, I heard that, and it wasn’t, we didn’t get a hit and they suck and I don’t love the or it was,
27:35
they ripped me off. The guy next to me paid.
Nestor Aparicio 27:38
You don’t think that on a plane. I don’t feel that. I mean, at the ELO concert where Ed stilkin I got two tickets in the eighth row for 35 bucks in Philly two weeks ago, when I paid 150 for a ticket three years ago, because I really wanted to see Jeff Lynn. We’re all around and we’re all like, yeah, I I got it. I got
27:54
40 bucks. You paid 40 bucks today, too. Some poor bastard paid $600 sitting next
Nestor Aparicio 27:59
to us, literally, literally, because it’s the eighth row and it’s the premium VI, this scalping, this dynamic pricing, and the scalping of your own tickets. You know, it’s one thing for Taylor Swift to do it and have people pissed off. People were pissed at Springsteen, man, I mean, guy who dedicated his life to Springsteen the way I’ve dedicated my life to these baseball teams. Got back streets was the name of the his publication. He did it for 40 died a couple weeks ago. I want to speak about on the right way, because I read his work once, there was a website 1999 dedicated to through Springsteen’s tour. Backstreets was the fan place to do it right. He got so pissed he shut the website down three years ago at the age of 70, whatever, After chasing Bruce for 50 years, said you’re going to charge people 1000 bucks to see your like, I’m a fan, and I go on, and I get this dynamic pricing where you’re trying to charge me $800 for a stadium show ticket. Taylor Swift pricing. Fu, Springsteen, Fu, Bruce. A lot of that went on, and when I went to the first show of that tour, I was tailgating outside in Tampa, outside drinking. Everyone that was there was hardcore. Was the first time Bruce had played in seven, eight years. Everyone was pissed at Bruce. They’re there. They flew in, they got a ticket, but they’re like, the only one I’m doing, and gotta be really careful. You gotta be really that’s that’s my thing. You get sure and and again, they’re banning me and allowing you in. Today, they’re banning the Venezuelan guy and letting you in. And then they call me and yell at me for saying, I’m Venezuelan in your Caucasian and I’m like, Well, what makes him different than me? Well, how dare you? Okay?
Luke Jones 29:40
How dare you
Nestor Aparicio 29:43
fu your stadiums empty. What’s wrong with you people? What’s wrong with you people? This is a new owner. Angelos is dead. I haven’t done anything to David Rubenstein or any of his people other than love and promote his baseball team, and I’m being treated like garbage and every one. In my audience, everyone listening, I want you to know how they treat me, because they would treat you the same way if you had a radio station and you were me and they better, not they better. He’s a billionaire. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about you. They care about anybody. He bought the team to to love himself, because that’s what billionaires do. I’ve seen this by all. I’m 56, years old. I recognize, I recognize what I’m seeing here, and I don’t think they’re gonna change much, too much. They hired this woman from Seattle who doesn’t really know where Charles Street is. I don’t know how quickly you can salve whatever that wound is, but they open new wounds by scalping their own fans on Tuesday that the people that paid full price are pissed, and that that is that goes back to the Springsteen story of man, man, man, don’t come on. Now these are the good times we’re and they lost, and we’re gonna feel bad about that, but I feel the worst that their brand, well, maybe the best, because it says you’ve got work to do. Now, whether you know, Greg Bader will never acknowledge that it was a bad school day in the game, like they’ll have excuses inside, and that’s why I wrote, I hope you don’t blame this on the weather. I hope you don’t blame this on the start time, because I’ve been here a long time. People should have more love for the Orioles, and they don’t. And that’s that’s your fault. Greg Bader, that’s your fault. David Rubenstein, that’s your fault. TJ Brightman, that’s on you now. Katie Griggs, whether it’s not your fault, but like, do better be better. Do better be better was my letter to David Rubenstein, because I had been treated like garbage by the new people, and I don’t deserve that and everybody and I have no problem saying it, because I’m locked out and you’re in, and tickets were 12 bucks yesterday, and they had 5000 empty seats, and they shouldn’t be doing this to me or anybody else. On behalf of Peter Angelo, say they shouldn’t be fighting a dead man’s battles. It’s gross, and I’ll say it out loud. There
Luke Jones 31:55
are two factors in the one you’ve heard me say over and over and over, and this really lends itself to what you just said when I get to the second one. But there are varying degrees of fandom. You have your people who are able to do it and want to do it and are passionate enough to do it that they have an 81 game plan. And there are people who have half half the games, and people have 13 game plans, and, you know, they’ve had different other packages over the years. So, so you have that. You have people who love watching the team but don’t want to go to the games, right, and are content watching it at home. And by the way, there’s they’re paying money on that because they’re subscribing to mass and in some shape or form. So you have varying degrees of fandom, and in in step with that is you have varying thresholds of being inconvenienced, or to go out of your way to go to games and pay and I mean you, you said it, you keep focusing on the cost of the of the tickets noted, however, I would also say you can give me any number of free tickets For anything I might be interested in. But How convenient is it if it’s if you give me free tickets, but I gotta drive three hours and I know, look, I’m not. I’m just, this is an analogy here. It depends how much I really, really like that thing, if I want to get in the car for three hours and go drive to do it in the same way that, no, I’m not saying someone three hours away from the Orioles, but if it’s a pain into the you know what to take off. And I’ll use my school teacher example. Again, anyone who’s listening right now who has been a teacher, or is a teacher writing sub plans sucks. It sucks. It’s a lot of work. It’s very tedious. You can put out the most perfect plans, and your students might misbehave, or the substitute teacher might not know what they’re doing. It is a pain in the butt to write sub plans. So even if the tickets are $12 and but you didn’t find out to the night before or $20 until that morning, it’s still not practical for me to be able to do that. So again, so much of this is fundamentally it’s this simple. They need to grow their base. They need to grow passion in this franchise, in this team and its fan base, as far as you think about what their base is, as far as how many people are showing up on a Wednesday night against the Chicago White Sox in May, how many people are showing up the second week of September, the San Francisco Giants in a year, they’re playing out the string, right? You know that that’s, that’s your season ticket base, but it’s bigger than that. You’ve got to continue to grow. And they have grown since where they were four years ago. But it’s got to continue. It’s got to continue because there is still a lot of scar tissue and it, you know, I don’t think it’s like some perfect
Nestor Aparicio 34:39
word I use was trauma. I use, I the word I use with his representative, Chris Ullman, who you saw whistle the national anthem, just perfectly. The first words I used to David Rubenstein’s person was, it’s been a lot of trauma here. There’s been a lot of trauma here. I buried Mike Flanagan. There’s been a lot of trauma here.
Luke Jones 35:01
Um, and, but even when it’s not that deep for people, there’s still a sense of what can you continue to do to make this the thing that boy, I have to be there. I’ll give you. This is a and I’m, you know, I’m not trying to change a subject, but this is just a little detail that I thought was weird about Tuesday. I love Scott Van Pelt. I like watching the ESPN the Sports Center late at night. I think he does a heck of a job. He’s a Terp. You know? He went to Memorial Stadium as a kid. I love when he has Tim curtsen on and he does the O’s bows. You know that that whole shtick, it’s great. Scott Van Pelt throwing out game one of your first playoff series. Now, that has nothing to do with ticket sales, but this is a tiny little example of it’s not inspiring anyone. It’s not getting anyone juiced up. Where’s Adam Jones? Where’s Nick Marques? Where’s JJ Hardy, who scored the go ahead run in the last Orioles playoff home win in the Delman young game? Where’s Cal Ripken behind no plate.
Nestor Aparicio 36:00
If you say, Okay, well, we’re saving Cal for later. He could throw out more than one first pitch. Jim Palmer can throw out more than one first pitch. No one is going to sit there and say, Oh, if Cal’s throwing out game five of the ALCS, or dream a moment and game, you know, who should have thrown it out? Dempsey. If I were in there, I would, I would say Dempsey. Dempsey might have thrown out game one for me. I would have even I would get along with Dempsey well enough. They pissed Dempsey off. They pissed off so many Dempsey just go down the list. Terry, all these guys, like, there’s plenty of people, but they’ve been trauma. They need to heal things with everybody. I say Dempsey were like, wow, he’s pissed it can’t have him. You’re Aparicio. It’s too deep.
Luke Jones 36:44
I’m what I’m talking about here is trying to something that’s going to energize your fan base, like for the atmosphere there again, some of this is also, oh my gosh, that experience was absolutely incredible. I have to come back. I’ve got to get a 12 game plan, a 13 game plan. I’ve got to go in and convince my boss for us to get company season tickets. By the way, I’ve
Nestor Aparicio 37:01
said that about Ray Lewis not dancing the minute Ray Lewis danced, the experience changed the stadium. It
Luke Jones 37:06
really did. And I was even just going to say, even if it’s not a former Oriole, and it probably wouldn’t work because the Ravens practice on Tuesday, it would have been worth reaching out to the Ravens. Hey, is there any possible way that we could get Lamar Jackson here? Is there any possible way John Harbaugh could come out and throw out the first pitch? Is there any possible way Derek Henry, who you’re, given the day off because he sore from Tuesday, although they didn’t really touch him too much in that game, that he could come out throw out the first pitch? That, again, would have energized the crowd that’s there, that for the people who were there. And yes, I get it, there were 5000 empty seats. That would have made for a better somebody’s a fan of Scott Van Pelt to go nuts about. I
37:42
like Scott Van Pelt,
Luke Jones 37:43
but he is I really like Scott I met him. I even met him on the the Delaware short, you know, in Dewey Beach one year, and had a conversation with him. It was awesome. But ESPN is not culturally, culturally relevant to the degree that it was 20 or 25 years ago. I mean, when was the last time you turned on ESPN? That wasn’t a game. At this point, I
Nestor Aparicio 38:03
haven’t watched Scott Van Pelt do his show and sure, so long time. So what I mean by that? And I’m
Luke Jones 38:07
not picking on Scott Van Pelt, let me be very clear, Scott Van Pelt would be a great choice for a regular season game, even a good regular season game, but your first playoff game when you’re trying to energize your fan base and make it unbelievable, there wasn’t no route, there wasn’t a rousing ovation for him. So again, that is a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re talking about as far as attendance and growth in the brand and all that. But that’s just one little example of like, really game two. And I say this as someone Do you know who’s thrown out the first pitch of game two? This is better, but it’s still not good enough. I hope it’s Joe jet, Steve Pierce. Really. I love Steve Pierce. If you recall, I was probably the president of the Steve Pierce fan club, and by the way, they could have used his bad against the left handed Well, this
Nestor Aparicio 38:54
shows that Rick Dempsey was unavailable,
Luke Jones 38:55
but, but I just look at that, and I just say these are not choices that are enhancing the in game experience when you actually are get into the ballpark. So again, those are such tiny things. I don’t mean, you know, I’m not picking on that as like some major reason why the ballpark’s empty, but these are all the details that are going to matter and continue to matter that they have to get right, and I’ll leave you with this final thought, because I’ve had more to say about this than I thought I would. Because, again, I really try to tread carefully. I’m not trying to preach to people how they spend their disposable income. I pointed out that these are the good old days for anyone who’s under the age of, say, 45 in terms of being to the playoffs back to back years for only the second time in my lifetime. But, you know, I look at this and, you know, I they’ve got a lot of work to do. They’ve got a brand that they’ve got to make people continue to care. And if there’s something that, if I’m David Rubenstein, or anyone that’s part of this new ownership group who, let’s face it, are still. Saying what this place is all about. David Rubenstein hasn’t spent he’s even talked about this. He hasn’t spent a ton of time in Baltimore in his later years. Certainly hasn’t been plugged into the day to day of the team. And never
Nestor Aparicio 40:12
will be, and never will be. Well, he’s a billionaire, except he’s not, however, in the Baltimore run. So whenever you blame him forever, you might as well blame Katie Griggs, because he’s not really going to run the place. That’s how place. That’s but, but that’s but, that’s when I look if, if I’m a billionaire, and look, I’m not a billionaire, I’m not a millionaire, I never will be, right, and that’s okay.
Luke Jones 40:33
But if I see that, and I officially bought the club back in early April and took over the remaining, you know, bought the remaining stake, you know, later this year, you know, earlier this year or after that. And I see that there are that many empty seats, I’m looking at that and saying, I’ve got to, I’ve got to evaluate everything here. And I would hope they’ve done some of that, whether they’re going to make changes or not. But I’ve got to look at everything here and say, Look, things are, you know, loss was not withstanding second half notwithstanding. Things are certainly up from a baseball standpoint, and Mike Elias and his team have done a great job. So I’m not concerned as concerned about that. We’ll talk about payroll, things like that. But that’s trending. That’s trended very well in the last few years. But I’m looking at something like that and saying, where are we on the business side? Where are we on the fan relation side? Where are we on the season ticket side? Where are we on price points? And how do we treat the media outreach? How do we treat again? Media fine, but business sponsorships, partnerships, in the community, all those different things. And I’m not saying, I’m not at all suggesting that all that is all 100% bad. I’ve said to you over and over, there are good people that work in that organization beyond baseball, but we have, we talked about this from the moment that we found out that David Rubenstein and his group were buying this club, that you typically see sweeping changes. I mean, when Steve bashati took full control of the Ravens in oh four, what happened? He hired Dick Cass right? I mean, that that happens, and Steve had been part of it for four years at that point in time. So that’s where I think it’s premature to judge in terms of, I want to see what this off season looks like, or is it going to be a case where largely the Angelos era people running departments and running the business and all those different things, if that’s all stays in place, then I’m not sure, from a brand standpoint, that you have enough self awareness of things Need to continue to get better. Off the field, business wise, ticket wise, community outreach wise, forming partnerships, yeah, media treatment, throw that in there. Fine, all those different things that’s all part of it that extends and is part of recruiting people, and wanting to get people to say, You know what, it stinks, I got to take off work. But my gosh, I love the Orioles so much, and they’ve been so great, and they’ve done so many good things here on the field, and they’ve improved off the field and in a variety of ways that I can’t miss it. I’ve got to find a way to be there. I’ve got to make it work. I’ve got to get someone to babysit my kids. I’ve I’ve got to get someone to cover my shift. I’ve got, you know, you’ve got to create that urgency in people that they want to be there. And then, if you do all that as much as you can, it is a smaller footprint that Baltimore has from a market standpoint, and you do have a team in DC that is absolutely part of the reality here, that exists for the Orioles and the Nationals, compared to just the Orioles in the 90s, right? That’s a reality. It’s part of it. But you can’t just let that be an excuse, or the weather be an excuse, or the game time be an excuse. All of that has to be looked at with a discerning eye to say we need to try to maximize this thing. Because, hey, the baseball team’s trending up and should continue trending up, even if they take a face plant this week, and it’s going to be disappointing. And yeah, that that’ll be another challenge, because you’re going to try to recruit people to buy tickets in the off season. And yeah, you’ve raised ticket prices, which, again, was a mistake, to raise ticket prices and decrease the perks when you haven’t won anything yet, when you haven’t even won a playoff game yet. That was a mistake. That was a misstep. And then, as you mentioned, and it’s a cogent point, because I saw people complaining about it on social media, and I get it people who’ve dropped 150 bucks on tickets, and then suddenly someone sitting next to them got theirs for 20 Yeah, they’re ticking people, people off all over again, so they’ve got to be aware. And I’m not saying that these all, everything we just spelled out is not they’re not variables that are exclusive to Baltimore. Every market has challenges like this in some shape or form.
Nestor Aparicio 44:47
Baseball has a challenge that was pretty obvious on Tuesday, right? I mean, baseball has a problem with this round of the playoffs not getting playing in the middle of the day, overcharging for the tickets, being over speculative. Scalping their own tickets. And, I mean, Houston was empty and there were $3 tickets, and they and those have bought World Series tickets and playoff tickets. And same thing with the Yankees and a bigger market. Somebody sent the meteor day. Where has this happened before? I’m like, happening in Atlanta all the time. Atlanta was because they were in the playoffs every year, and nobody wanted to go to the first round anyway. And then bought a then by the time you get to the World Series, tickets are 800 bucks. You’re like, well, I spent an 800 Well, you didn’t spend 50 last week. Well, maybe, maybe the Braves ain’t as important as I thought they was. Yeah, and
Luke Jones 45:31
let me be clear just on that, because we’ve, we’ve that element of it like I would hope, in terms of success, I would hope Orioles fans aren’t complacent yet in terms of like they just got good a couple years ago, right? I mean, there was a lot of losing, so that’s where I’ve said, Do enjoy this. I don’t. I’m not telling anyone how to spend their money. Let’s be clear about that. But at the same time, don’t take this for granted. We also know that even even this disappointing 2024 season is a heck of a lot better than most of what we’ve experienced over the last 40 years. So that part of it that you know, did apply in Atlanta, where they got complacent. I mean, that was also after the Braves had been to the playoffs 10 years in a row, or whatever it was. So you know that part of it I’m not as moved by, but every other factor that we just talked about, from the scar tissue of 30 to 40 years of bad baseball and a lot of bad off the field stuff, including treatment of fans. That’s part of it. It’s not one issue. It’s not two, it’s not three. There are about, you know, we just covered probably a dozen different variables that I think all have validity there. So it’s it stinks not seeing a full ballpark. It’s disappointing. I you know that that that hurt, that hurt. You know, like, as someone who cares about Baltimore, I hated seeing that at the same time. I’m not going to point the finger and blame it, blame fans, or, you know, there’s work to be done. And let me be clear, I’m not blaming David Rubenstein for that. I’m not blaming anyone kitty Griggs. I’m not bringing blaming the brand new people, but they do have to deal with the scar tissue of that, and that’s, you know, that’s why they there’s still a lot of work to be done, and that’s why I am intrigued to see if there are more changes coming to this organization, from a business side standpoint. Because if they’re not, then, you know, some of the missteps that we talked about, you know, this summer with the season tickets in August, and what we saw with the price point, you know, I’m afraid that’ll continue. And that’s not to say that the growth will stop, but it feels like it’ll it’ll cap, you know, it’ll put an unnecessary ceiling on it. It will stunt it. So, you know, I want this to thrive, and I think it has a chance to thrive. I think this has an opportunity to truly be a clean slate. But it’s not a clean slate if you keep a lot of the Angelos lieutenants in place. I mean, let’s just call a spade a spa. I’m not even going to name names. People know, people who care to read up on it and have followed it. From that perspective, have known who we’re talking about for years. So
Nestor Aparicio 48:04
the Angelos ideology was just the fact that anybody worked under those conditions and treated people the way I was treated on his behalf, it, it, it, I don’t. I don’t even know what to say, because I’ve walked the walk and the arrogance, the the years of losing the just the just the general awfulness of it. I mean, it kind of caught very soon. It was, it was it was, it was glaring. And you said scar tissue, for some people, they’re
Luke Jones 48:39
still open wounds. You’re there today, and I’m not, and I understand, but, but six months, but you, you are also an out, but you are also an outlier compared to what the fan base is, right? And I don’t mean that I’m not belittling that. I’m not dismissive of that. Of course not. But what I’m saying is that’s a different entity than just talking about someone who I’m not the only one that is treated by Peter Angelo’s.
Nestor Aparicio 49:03
I’m just the loudest. I understand people that were missing. I’m just saying that. Don’t yesterday. You know what the other people did? They just went away. John Lowenstein just went to Las Vegas and was never heard from again. I’m talking I’m talking about fans. I’m talking about the fans have gone away. That’s my point. My point is, fans have said, I’ll go to Ocean’s calling. And I’m not that. It my kid. My kid. His last name’s Aparicio. He’s 40 years old. He grew up on baseball. He grew up and watching his father be mistreated. He grew up watching these people be creeps. And he’s just like, it’s baseball, it’s old, it’s white, it’s slow. I’m not I’m not that interested. I don’t really care what gunner, Gunner Henderson. I care about me. What do I care? So those people tell my 40 year old, but my kid should be a baseball fan. My kid should be I should be able to call Mike. My kid wouldn’t go down there no matter what. Like, like, literally, if I called my kid today and said they gave both of us press passes and we’re going to sit with Mr. Rubenstein, because it would be an honor to sit with Mr. Rubenstein. Um, do you want? To go, my kid would be like, No, he’s not working that. He’s just like, Nah, I don’t really want to do that. I don’t like I think there’s a lot of that. And I saw on my Facebook people saying they lost a generation. They did your brother go to the baseball game. You love baseball. I
Luke Jones 50:15
don’t think my brother watch. He watched a little bit of the game. He’s just not a baseball fan. And look again, part of this is also we have to recognize what’s what the landscape that is. Over the last 30 years, they haven’t made him one and his brothers, big time. I understand that. But part of this is also it’s just the landscape of professional sports in general. The NFL is the only thing that’s truly an event anymore. The Olympics, you know, the World Cup. But something that happens every year, it’s season, that is the only thing that’s truly an event, and the ratings bear that out, right? Football or baseball, hockey, basketball, lacrosse. I mean, you have the W your women’s sports picking up all but they’re all They’re all niche, right? They’re all something that has a certain the challenge for the Orioles is they’ve got to expand that. I’ve said it to you, no matter what they do, they are never getting back to where they were in 1997 like, there’s not going to be 3.6 million. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do a heck of a lot better than what it is right now. So the challenge, and this is what, this is my last point. And then, you know, I’m exhausted talking about this, but, and you got a game to go to. It’s a very simple. It’s very simple when you see that many empty seats for game one of a playoff series, and again, it’s the wild card series, and we’ve talked about all the different factors that tells me that there is a problem. It’s not insurmountable. It doesn’t mean it can’t be remedied. It doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. It doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. It doesn’t mean that you can’t recruit more and more people. We’ve seen baseball grow and thrive in some markets over the last 20 years, while the overall popularity of the sport has come into question. But when I see that, that tells me, and that tells me if I’m an owner or if I’m a boss, we got work to do, and we got to look at this. We got to revisit this, because you know that that’s disappointing, and it might be that in future years, if you make the improvement, there might be only 500 or 1000 empty seats. And some of it might just be that, again, it is a smaller market, right? And there are a lot of variables at work here. No other sport has weekday afternoon postseason games, and no other sport has the volume that baseball does and puts those games on in weekdays, which madness does on those Thursdays, and kind of stops it a little bit. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Fair enough go look at those arenas in the first and second round. Oh, they’re the empty seats. So, so again, yeah, so much of this also comes back to these are TV events, right? I mean, these are TV events. So again, do what you can to improve that, grow the brand. There’s absolutely worth the need to do. We talked about that back in February and March, and we talked about that in April, when, when it became official, right? And I’ve said to you over and over and over, I didn’t expect them to make wholesale changes to the organization and the business side in the midst of a season that makes no sense, but that’s why I am interested to see what happens this offseason, and that to me, will tell me if they’ve recognized what we saw on Tuesday and what we might end up seeing on Wednesday. And, you know, however long the Orioles, yeah, I would, I would suspect this won’t be an issue if they advance and they’re playing the Yankees and they, my goodness, if they advance to the ALCS in the World Series, I don’t think, I don’t think they’ll have the same issue selling up, because the ballpark was full for the two games in the division series last year. It was packed people. It was juiced. But I think you have to look at what you saw Tuesday and react accordingly and say, there’s a problem here. There’s there’s work that needs to be done here that’s beyond Adley rutschman needs to hit the ball or they need to score some runs. There’s work to be done off the field. And I, we knew that, so that’s where again, I’ll say, what was I surprised? Yes, was I 100% stunned? 100% flabbergasted, shocked. We’ve talked about these issues, and you certainly have talked about them at much greater length than I have, so they’ve got work to do. And I hope if anything can come from that is there’s some recognition and some self awareness that there’s some work to do. Luke
Nestor Aparicio 54:17
Jones can be found at Baltimore, Luke, I am Nestor, my dear. David Rubenstein, letter is available as well as my declaration of independence in regard to journalism and what I’ve endured and what I’m never going to endure as a 56 year old, Lucas at the ballpark, I am a monitoring from elsewhere, from Parts Unknown, unlike the executioners, we will gather together next Friday, hopefully. Orioles are still playing this weekend in New York, we’ll find out Zach effel in game two Raven scratch offs, you will have these at Pizza John’s next Friday, it’s Luke’s birthday. Sorry I made you talk about such dour things on your birthday. Hope they give you a victory on your birthday, we’ll get together and have some cake on Thursday. Looks at the ballpark Baltimore, Luke, I am Nestor. We are W NST am 15. 70 Towson, Baltimore, FACING ELIMINATION, backs to the wall. Let’s see how the Orioles, uh, respond you.
