After three decades of being media colleagues in Baltimore, former WJZ sports director Mark Viviano finally joins Nestor and Ko-host Ricig at Koco’s Pub for a candid chat about Baltimore sports journalism – past, present and future. And last October in Arlington when WNST had its media access threatened by the Orioles and his best advice.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, years, sports, mistreated, viv, paper, treated, baltimore, man, love, kid, night, story, nestor, told, day, media, worked, drew, cocos
SPEAKERS
Mike Ricigliano, Mark Viviano, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W n s t, Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. W n s t, we’re doing it, man. We’re out here doing the Maryland crab cake tour. We’re doing the Maryland oyster tour. All the brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery, at the goal rush, seven stumblers, we’re gonna have the Raven scratch offs. I’ve been giving these things away. Somebody’s gonna win $100,000 a year. I’m telling you, it’s gonna happen. Viv is hanging out. If you want to hear that, this is your life. Viv thing, I’m gonna have to have you back at some point, because I’m like, Well, I can’t get enough of this St Louis thing.
Mark Viviano 00:29
I have time.
Nestor Aparicio 00:30
I was gonna, well, when you’re not running with the kids, but like in the summer of 1983 my parents asked me they came home. My dad said, I’ll take you on vacation anywhere you want to go. And I picked St Louis because Greyhound bus went there, and had the arch. And I saw, I loved the Phillies, and I saw the Phillies play the Cardinals, and went to Kiel auditorium. And I saw Ric Flair and Harley Race battle. I saw Hulk Hogan that night. He was thunder lips at the time, at pictures of all that. So I loved St Louis, so, like I wanted to, but I love Buffalo more. And, you know, you know. So Michael cigliano, here’s our co host with a K to honor that we’re gonna have the coconut shrimp with the K, you know, I offered VIV a chance to sit on my face earlier, and, and this, this is where SIGs artwork from, back in the days, thought I was this good looking back in the day. I
Mike Ricigliano 01:21
mean, I, you know, I think it’s just that’s the way, that’s the way I drew you then, well, this is
Nestor Aparicio 01:27
the last one that exists. Okay, really. So I have it at station, and I finally pop a hole in it. From where you sit. It’s 26 years old. Somebody, about three months ago sent me a Facebook they’re there with they have dollar 29 stickers on them at the goodwill in Bel Air. I’m not kidding you. There was, like, a whole thing of them, and I’m like, sit on my face for a buck 29 for life. And they are comfortable. So the seats here, you know, my back’s been bad and all that. How are you feeling back?
Mike Ricigliano 01:56
I know,
Nestor Aparicio 01:57
man, you’re getting young. You know.
Mike Ricigliano 02:00
Now I’m retired too. Like VIV I’ve been I’ve been retired a little longer. I still do a little bit of freelance work, but really the main cartoon stuff in newspapers is done, and I’m enjoying my retired life and enjoying my grandkids. We have twins, Mark,
Nestor Aparicio 02:16
they both look like both of them. They your grandkids look like the way you drew your kids? Yes, right? They have these features. They’re these little recigs. They’re
Mike Ricigliano 02:29
identical, pretty year olds, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 02:31
but they look like, if you would have drawn a cartoon 30 years ago, what your grandchildren would look like if you had twins. It’s amazing. When
Mike Ricigliano 02:39
I did the family Christmas cards. I just substituted in what I the way I used to draw, you know, Steven Tubb, how
Nestor Aparicio 02:46
do you draw me now, older,
Mike Ricigliano 02:49
more distinguished? So
Nestor Aparicio 02:51
for my 30th, my 30th birthday reci came and he drew my face, and he copied it, Xeroxed it, and left it all over the party and ask people to put hairstyles on me. Yes, right? And I have all of this stuff from all of these years in our friendship, but our friendship much like VIV and I the media thing, man, the media thing. And I’m doing this 40th anniversary, and I do want to just shamelessly plug it, even though I have you, you’re Vivi, and I’d love to have you back more, but all of these alums get together and Viv, you should come join us on the 28th there’ll be almost 100 of us at a Guinness, and it’s all the old sports writers, all everybody from the News America and the sun. If you were in sports media and sports newspaper at any point in the last 50 years, you’re invited. Did you put this together? Molly Dunham and stand rap. No, I’m just, I’m a passenger, okay? But it’s inspired me in many ways, when you talked about losing friends of yours, and also friends like Kurt Menifee that you work with, you a young man, that are still with us, right? These are our six, one of those people, and we share that 40 years later, and we were at a lot of places that went out of business, the evening, sun, news, American sports first,
Mark Viviano 04:04
CNN Sports Illustrated,
Nestor Aparicio 04:05
there you go. You the last ever broadcast you already brought you know goodbye. CNN Sports Illustrated, brought to you by Mark Viviana. So we closed some places down, but sports first. Can you describe to VIV what sports first was? Because it’s really reason you were here, right? You had a budget to hire a sports cartoonist. I
Mike Ricigliano 04:22
was on a paper in Buffalo that folded the courier. I was out of work. I did. We started a greeting card company, and we but we got pregnant with our second son, and so we needed covered. So a friend knew about this job at sports first as an art director. So I took the job, you know? And, yeah, it was, it was a fun young crew, really. It was a very young, talented crew. They’re all vivs
Nestor Aparicio 04:47
age now, you know, yeah, right, 15 years old. The guy that was my big brother was 20, Chris, Pika, I’m sure you know, Chris. Chris was the person that showed me around the. First night I walked in there was January 16, 1984 was a day I walked into the I was 15 years old, and I worked at sports first for the Colts left eight weeks later. I was there the day after. I didn’t work the night that the team left. I worked the next day. I worked three nights a week. They paid me $3.33 an hour. I worked 6pm till 9pm I other kids were going to Roy Rogers and flipping hamburgers and whatever I was getting on the bus and going down to the paper and putting the paper out when I was 15 years old. So and sports first was this thing, and I got the gig a guy named Tom Robinson Robbie, who later became the sports editor the Scranton paper, Binghamton. He was from that area, that part of the world. He sent me a LinkedIn today because he’s gonna be a part of this thing two weeks. And he said something about you and and he called you, I love the inside Robert ursays brain cover. He said to me, 815 last night. Remember the tiny, dot, rational thought or something similar? Resig was is an absolute genius. So he called you a genius last night, and he wanted to know if there’s any copies of sports first floating around. I have some that I told him that I said we’re sick as a trove. I
Mike Ricigliano 06:15
think i The stetkas gave me a bunch of there. So I talked to Bill Steck this morning, right? And he was on that bill stack. It was another guy. Instead. He was on that staff. So in the photo of that staff study, well, you
Nestor Aparicio 06:27
mentioned people passing and leaving us. You know, through this, we lost a guy named rich Pietro who worked with Dick Girardi at Girardi was another sports first guy, right? Rick Pietro was a Dundalk guy who knew the papers, old paper guy, and new to horses. And he did the horses, but he became the first guy around there that understood computers. If anybody had a problem, you went to Pete. Pete had dementia last few years. We lost him about three months ago, and it turns out it was Chris Zhang’s picture. There’s one picture that was taken in the newsroom of sports. First of the whole group, right? 25 white men, and Kathy Frazier, who was my boss, he was the high school editor. And this picture showed up, and I shared it, and it went nuts when Pete died, like three months ago, and Chris sang was the one that gave it to Petros, kid who took a picture of it, sent it to me, and I made it famous. And I started looking at all these people. Some of them were alive, some of them were dead. Were SIGs in that picture? I’m not in the picture. I wasn’t there, like they took the picture, right? So I’m not in the picture, but everybody else is. And I want Pete kurtzels in that picture. Yo, come on now. I’ve been going through all these people. Oh, Bill Clark, if you remember Bob Clark, excuse me. Also gone. So Mark hyman’s in that picture. So like all of these people in this picture said, he and I started thinking we got to do a reunion. And like it was 40 years ago, three days ago, I Googled it, and it turned out that the paper folded on September 21 1984 my son was born on September 22 1984 and on the day after my son was born, I remember running to you in the newsroom. I was in there doing a story, I think, on rush or kiss one of the bands, I was doing a story, and I was out in the main newsroom, and I told you I became a father. And you were kind of like, shocked, because I was like, 12 years old, so but you’re like, hey, you know, the paper went out of business last night. I think you were kind of cleaning your desk out like it was a crazy, crazy time. But at this one, I met you, man, 40 years ago this week.
Mike Ricigliano 08:32
Crazy. That’s a cool. That’s a cool. There’s a lot of cool anniversaries coming up. Also, the dummies anniversary is coming up the dummy. Oh,
Mark Viviano 08:41
Chris Thomas had him on the air. Yeah, always, yes, right.
Mike Ricigliano 08:45
So that’s my dummy, and that’s and that’s that anniversary is in October, so I have to look up to date and post some stuff sports.
Nestor Aparicio 08:52
First was this very ambitious daily sports newspaper. They didn’t know they were loop. We were losing the football team. They put money into a young staff. Probably put half million dollars into people. They already had a press. There was a
Mark Viviano 09:05
Baltimore. Was it regional? Just Baltimore?
Mike Ricigliano 09:07
Well, it was, it was printed in Gaithersburg, and it, it did have their, their goal was to distribute in the DC area to to make it a Baltimore DC. They did do that a little bit but, I mean, I’ll tell the story at the other thing, but I was, one of the things they had me do were these full page caricatures of the Washington Redskins, and it was cut color. So you probably don’t know what that is, but now you just, I just painted on and scan it, but back in the day, he had an
Nestor Aparicio 09:40
exacto knife, and he would cut Amberlynn cut Amber lifts with an Hey with an exacto knife every night. And so
Mike Ricigliano 09:48
Viv, I literally, they would send these. They would do these. I would do a full day doing this caricature. It would go out, and I would, I’m telling you, maybe one person, huh? Of these, because there was very few. There was no
Nestor Aparicio 10:02
distribution. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were underfunded. Also,
Mike Ricigliano 10:05
most of the people that did read it were Baltimore people. They hated the Redskins. So, you know, they didn’t want, well,
Nestor Aparicio 10:10
they hated the Redskins because the team moved in the middle of the paper. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like the paper only existed for 11 months in 30 days, like, literally, it lasted one year. The paper started September 1, I guess of 83 colts stink, but they just drafted schliester, and they weren’t moving anywhere. You know what? I mean, yeah, the Orioles won the World Series. There’s a wolf. Orioles won the World Series. Sports first thing, right? Yeah, I moved here in the organs, literally six weeks later, and then five months later, the Colts left town, right? I joined the paper in the middle of January, the Colts are gone, and then the paper’s gone, wow. And this is 1983 to 84 so all that happened, and 40 years later, I’ve got this crazy radio station, and we’re gonna bring all these Barry Levine, who worked at the National Inquirer, who, who ended the that was it John Edwards, or was it the Bimini guy? Gary rice, he brought down a president with National Enquirer. It was Edwards. Was Edwards, wasn’t
Mark Viviano 11:19
it? No, it was the guy, the picture of the guy on the boat, but that
Nestor Aparicio 11:23
was Gary rice, yeah, but this was John, I think it was the Edward story that he broke that Gary Hart. Gary Hart. Hart was right, right, right. There you go. Yeah, Colorado. But so these people, Ken Davis covered UConn basketball for 25 years when he left here. Bernie mickles is a legend in St Louis. Oh, my god, yeah. I mean, he’s an Anne Arundel County kid who got his first break working at this crazy little paper. John Hawkins, legendary golf writer, golf world writer, John Hawkins, all of these people were in this little crazy newspaper at the news American in this old commissary, and I’m a 15 year old kid beating it around there, trying to figure out how to make my way Keith Mills worked at the News America. Yeah, Keith was an NA guy. Vince Bagley was a sportswriter at the news American in the 50s, before he went on the television. So the news American had this with the news post. Then legendary history. We’re gonna do that. Viv, I want to talk to you guys about meeting how much it has changed. Because, I mean, no K fame for you. You’re out of the industry. But three years ago this week, one of the last times I had a press pass at a game I flew out to Vegas. You didn’t go to that game? Did you go to that game? Messed up 120 degrees outside the first game in Vegas, right? We played. Zay Jones caught the pass in overtime. The end of the game, right again, we all had mask on. There were only three reporters there. Was me, Jameson and Jeff’s, rebec were there brand new building. Sandusky saw me up at the meal. I think cadre was doing the game with him then. Or maybe it was Femi. I don’t know what about it was Femi. It was Femi. Femi. Some upstairs, they’re having the meal, and there’s nobody there because, like, you had that mask, it was crazy. And Sandusky looked up at me at the meal, and he said, this isn’t as much fun as it used to be, is it? That’s what he said to me before the game that night. Wow. And it was all of that, right? And I’m thinking to myself that I won’t forget that, like I won’t forget what you said to me in Arlington last year. I’ll let you handle that. But when my employee is being harangued about a clubhouse badge because I was with him, you saw we were seated at the kids table up in the corner away from all the rest of the media. I’m 55 years old. I’m writing a lot about that this month. Your exit right from this, Jamie’s exit from this. I don’t want to exit this. I love this, but I love being a Coco is being treated like a human being by Marcella, by doing friends. I don’t want to be mistreated by athletes or Chad Steele or Greg Bader or any of the people in that space. And remember that have made it an industry of mistreating me over decades. I
Mark Viviano 13:58
don’t like remember what I said to you that night. I I said, Forget these guys. And the reason I said that to you, Well, you said it a little more seated.
Nestor Aparicio 14:05
The reason I said that I never heard you drop an F bomb, by the way,
Mark Viviano 14:08
is because what you do and how you do it does not require that you be in their inner circle. In fact, your energy as a Dundalk kid who fights your energy and your what comes across as you is that you’re fighting if they don’t want to fight with
Nestor Aparicio 14:27
these people, dude, that’s who I don’t want to fight with anybody. I
Mark Viviano 14:31
understand you don’t want to, but I question you at night, when you go to bed, I think you know that’s who you are and what you do.
Nestor Aparicio 14:39
That is not but, yeah, I say wrongly disagree. I
Mark Viviano 14:43
say that as a compliment to you is more love than me as a human
Mike Ricigliano 14:49
I’m agreeing with mark on this, except for I agree you do have a lot of love. No,
Mark Viviano 14:53
it doesn’t make you a bad guy. I’m
Nestor Aparicio 14:55
a lover.
Mark Viviano 14:56
You’re not a I’m not saying you’re seriously. I’m a relationship. Builder
Nestor Aparicio 15:00
with anyone who’s a good human being, even a guy I’ve never had on a radio in 25 years and worked at my competitor who I couldn’t have on first you drove across town and spent three and a half hours with me today, to be with me today, and gave me a hell of a dentist recommendation. Thank you, Dr Lebo, but like that’s how much you think of me. Jack steel doesn’t think enough of me to let me do my job. It’s astonishing if Greg Bader doesn’t think enough for me to ever sit I’ve never had a conversation with Greg Bader in my life. In my life, I’ve had two conversations with Chad Steele in my life, and you interrupted one of them, and you probably don’t
Mark Viviano 15:34
remember that. You do remember, Oh, it was, it was at the the liar’s speech.
Nestor Aparicio 15:38
Did you know that? Did
Mark Viviano 15:39
you have no idea
Nestor Aparicio 15:41
you had no idea you walked into a table where he was shouting at me, threatening my career. I
Mark Viviano 15:46
know that Dick Cass was there. I
Nestor Aparicio 15:48
want to say this in front of you because I don’t have a lot of regrets in life, but if I really knew that Dick Cass was out to throw me out, and bashati was out to throw me out, and Harbaugh and Decosta would just brazenly lie to me, brazenly lie to me about my career and the way I feed my family. The minute the Chad Steele started threatening my career, I should have called all of you over you step near all of you, and said, gather around this. MFR is, is is threatening my livelihood and everything I’ve ever worked for, he’s saying I’m not one of you anymore.
Mike Ricigliano 16:24
Well, I’m gonna agree with Mark again then, because you were very feisty, right there, Nestor,
Nestor Aparicio 16:33
you’re wrong. I sat there and I looked at him and tried to be reasonable. I tried to be reasonable. I literally tried to be reasonable. What more can I say? And I said to him, when he threw me out, I’m like, What do you think I’m going to tell people after 20 years of this where Kevin Byrne knew for 20 years, everybody here knew Kevin Byrne called the former Baltimore County Executive, my former co host, and told me a year and a half before that, I was going to be targeted, I was going to be thrown out. Well, that’s all factual, and I don’t know I can prove that anywhere you want.
Mark Viviano 17:07
I’m not, I’m not just a reporter. I’m not disputing your story, but I’m only
Nestor Aparicio 17:11
but why get that treatment? And you like, why is there a caste system? Because it it really never was that way. You know, even when I was a little rat bird am radio station and you were whatever, no, but I never got treated that way by Phil Regan. I never got treated that way by Johnny Oates. I never got treated that way by Gino briaco. I haven’t been treated that way by anyone but, you know, treated that way by David Johnson.
Mark Viviano 17:36
But think about this, nobody’s been doing it longer than you. Nobody’s done it like you. And that energy that you’re talking about and that conflict that has come your way has made you the media person you are who is unlike anyone who’s ever done anything in this town. And I say, if you take that away, you’re just you’re just one of everybody else. So that energy.
Nestor Aparicio 18:02
I want to do my job. I want to ask questions. I want back and forth. I want a relationship. I want what I have with Marvin Lewis, which is next Saturday night, we’re going to go out and have a beer together. Meanwhile,
Mark Viviano 18:11
doing it, and you’re doing it extremely well, and those fights that you talk about,
Nestor Aparicio 18:18
you don’t walk the streets every day, we’re having people come up to you and say you’re illegitimate, illegitimate after 40 years of doing this, I
Mark Viviano 18:27
don’t, but the fact that you do, if you do, you’re telling me that that’s what happens. They tell you you’re illegitimate, whatever. Dude, nobody’s been doing this longer than you. You got into this business when you were 15, and I don’t get kicked out of 55 you’re not, you haven’t kicked out. But nobody, the mistreated, mistreated not been on purpose. I walked in here and I see this setup you have. I
Nestor Aparicio 18:54
listen. My declaration is I’m not gonna walk into rooms where I’m mistreated.
Mark Viviano 18:59
Ever you make your effort space, you you your voice.
Nestor Aparicio 19:03
I don’t mistreat anyone. I’m not going to be mistreated. Simple as that. That’s
Mark Viviano 19:06
okay. But listen, you’re still doing it, and you’re doing it great. And I walked in here at Coco’s and saw how you have this set up. It’s all you. You make it happen. When people come at you, you fight or deflect or whatever. But it never stops you.
Nestor Aparicio 19:22
You don’t I appreciate that, no, but that’s much more appreciate that my employee not have to decide whether he’s going to cover a playoff game or a Ravens practice. That’s not, right? These are, this isn’t about Nestor. This is about me being an FCC owner. It’s about about a media entity that has three decades of a trail being mistreated
Mark Viviano 19:43
that all fair. And I’m not saying no basis. I’m not saying you don’t certainly not for David Rubenstein, I’m looking at you from from the outside, saying, dude, whatever they’re bringing at you, you’re really good at dealing with it, because it makes you who you are. And
Nestor Aparicio 19:57
there’s but. Have no interest to
Mark Viviano 20:00
fight what he speaks but there’s nobody like you. There’s nobody close there’s a I’m a dime a dozen guy. There’s a lot of guys that went to journalism school. Do it a certain way go, you know, go through the ladder, do it. I have no I have no regrets. But this is a guy who fights.
Nestor Aparicio 20:22
I’ll just say this your advice to me that night when my employee, I’ve never seen Luke more hurt. He was treated as though he had been discriminated against, like literally his they’re gonna take my clubhouse badge in Texas away John Blake’s in front of me. He’s known me since I was 15 and worked for the Orioles years ago. I Orioles years ago, knows it’s wrong. No, you knew it was wrong, and you were the only one in the Baltimore media. None of the kids that worked for the band or the sun, I smell to them like they don’t even know, you know, they won’t even come near me. You came up and you said to me that night, you pointed at the dugout, and you said, F those people if they’re gonna treat you this way. It’s wrong. You said in the same way. You just said it to me, but you said it privately, and for that night forward, I like, literally, you move me in a different direction to say I’m I. I’m not gonna be treated this way again. I’m not again. I’m not gonna have my employee, someone I care a lot about, someone I help provide for his family. I’m not gonna have him treat
Mark Viviano 21:22
I get, I get that part of it. But let me say this, the reason I said that to you, and I would say this to you if it was about a girl, if there was a girl who you just wanted to be with, and you know, it’s like, I want to be with that girl. She doesn’t like me, I would say bad judgment. I would say Nestor Aparicio. This
Nestor Aparicio 21:41
is my job, dude, I
Mark Viviano 21:42
understand you’re still doing your job. In fact, you’re using that energy, that fight, to be the guy that’s different from every I know you don’t want to fight, but you know what the fight keeps finding you, and you know what you’re okay. Look at you. You’re okay, still fogging up the glass, you’re doing good.
Nestor Aparicio 22:03
Can I get your crab cake to go 11 ounce big wife
Mike Ricigliano 22:06
psychiatry and your retirement? No, I agree with you.
Mark Viviano 22:12
I agree. If everything was smooth sailing, I wouldn’t know who you are. No,
Mike Ricigliano 22:17
I agree totally.
Nestor Aparicio 22:19
I wish Bill DeWitt had bought the team, and you and I were just colleagues in that way, and we had three flags downtown, and the Orioles were the Red Sox. And you know what I mean? I wish that that had been the journey of my life all of these years, right, right? And but I’ve had a good gig. Everything’s going make a difference. No, I don’t. That does not be lie. What’s right and wrong, that that’s fine. I don’t sit here rant about this all day ever. And anyway, I said I talk about all sorts of things, but we’re gonna get on this issue what’s right and wrong, and the hero worship and the sycophant part of that sports thing, and the part where they get a billion to and the part where they say Baltimore on it, and it has very little to do with Baltimore, right challenging that comes to me from John Stedman and Bob Paston and herb Bell grad, and you getting the story of us stealing the team and US pining away to never have a team, right for all of that that I have so much respect for it and it coming here, and you mentioned the models. Mean, David Modell, I say this about him all the time. David Modell never, ever, ever lied to me, ever. I can’t think of many people in my life that professionally, that didn’t have to tell a white lie, didn’t have to fib to me.
Mark Viviano 23:32
We all get them right, but
Nestor Aparicio 23:36
that’s part to have a guy who was at that did what he did and the way he did it, and whatever his people think of him, I think so much more of him because he was an honest person, like you’re an honest person. You know what I mean? I try to be, but, you know, and you admit that F bomb in Texas, I
Mark Viviano 23:52
did, but, and I’ll be I did. I couldn’t
Nestor Aparicio 23:56
believe it. Yeah, that’s why it had such an effect on me. Received. But
Mark Viviano 23:59
let me say this too. Let me say this too. As much as I understand your story and your fight, I’m not embarrassed to say I get along with both organizations just fine. In fact, I have very good friends there, and I like and appreciate some of the people you don’t like. We can have a different experience. We can have. Somebody can treat you a certain way, treat me a certain way, whatever it is. But if I see you and I know your story, somebody
Nestor Aparicio 24:29
chairman, you try to end your career and end your business, I’d have your ass. I’d have your back. I’d have all of your backs. I
Mark Viviano 24:35
appreciate that.
Nestor Aparicio 24:35
I told all of you in 2000 and said, Could you come to my house for coffee in 2006 before free the birds? Were you one of the people that came to my house? Okay, yeah, a lot, a lot of people did, because I told a lot of media people what I was doing, you know, how to free the birds. And just said, Hey, man, like teams in last place for 10 years, the football teams, like, are we gonna let the baseball team do this? As the media I watched, I watched the Colts leave, I watched Bob Earth say, yell. Little at Gordon beard, you’re a bad man yelling at Stedman a man play. He blamed the media for the team leaving. I was here. I wasn’t a kid. I was a kid at the paper. The other with these guys. The other
Mike Ricigliano 25:11
thing that Mark didn’t say, that I want to say about you, Nestor, is that a lot of us, most of us probably in the media over the years, are not from Baltimore, like you’re from Baltimore, the Baltimore comes out in you all the time when you’re on the radio. So, I mean, I’m sure there are a few guys involved, but a lot of people, I can think of all that new that’s all sports. First half was out of town. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And I think a lot of the people in probably TV media, John
Nestor Aparicio 25:40
Eisenberg and Ken Rosenthal, we go through the list, you said, the list vulnerable voices, car so all the venerable
Mike Ricigliano 25:45
voices, you know, well, I
Nestor Aparicio 25:49
don’t, I don’t need you kissing my butt. I want to kiss VIBs your retirement. What you’re doing, charitable, good work, right? I mean, what do you
Mark Viviano 25:56
do? Well, it’s a continuation of some of the stuff that we’ve been doing st Casimir church in Canton collects food for helping up mission and beans and bread every Tuesday morning, we make up lunches, because this came back from during the pandemic, when they closed down the sit down for people to come in. So when the parishioners said, Let’s make lunches, they can hand out. And that is still going on, we’ve made over 250,000 lunches over the past, what four years, whatever it’s been, and it allowed me an understanding and an inroads into helping up mission and what they do for the men, I’ve been down there. We collect a coach for them for years, unbelievable. And I’ve had an opportunity to meet Mike Rollo, who runs the spiritual side of that, and speak to the guys down there. They’re incredible men. They’re our brothers and sisters. They are downtrodden, they have been addicted, they’ve been homeless, but they’ve walked through those doors to change. I’ve
Nestor Aparicio 26:46
looked into those men’s eyes down there. It’s amazing. So here’s what I’m going to do, take a quick break because we’re seeing and I are going to hang out. We’re going to talk about the orals, win the World Series, and the Ravens went in the Super Bowl and all that. Because you got to go. I mean, you got little coach, you got to go. I want to get you out of here because I’ve been thrown out of the league, but literally, I did 27 Super Bowls on radio. Run right? This is my business. You laugh about it. It’s not effing funny. I’m not at all. I’m not so setting up at Super Bowls and doing what I do, and fun sponsors this that all that’s all gone because Chad Steele called the league and said he’s not legitimate. It literally. So after all these all these PR people call me during the week, said, You want to put on this hall of famer that I’m not there that week, I’ve taken on for Maryland food bank for Carmen del guetho. So last year, instead of doing Super Bowl week, we’re doing a cup of soup or Bowl week. So we did it here at Cocos for eight hours live. We do five days. I want you to come back that week. The Ravens will be into Super Bowl. That week, you’ll still be retired. I want you to come back that week and we’ll bring helping up well, because that’s the time of the year, six weeks after Christmas that all the good goodwill, Christmas coat food drives, that all goes away, and then the pantries get empty in February, and it’s the coldest time of the year, and so do all charity that week, everything. So whatever you’re doing that week, whatever you’re doing three charity, whatever it is, bring them all to me. Let’s tell the story that we do that.
Mark Viviano 28:11
I know you’re a good man. I never said otherwise, he’s a good man. We’re saying Great to see you, brother. Meet your lovely wife.
Mike Ricigliano 28:19
Yes. Stop by in our neighborhood anytime I love it. Yeah,
Mark Viviano 28:24
I told Marcel I’m coming back. This crab case will blow
Nestor Aparicio 28:26
your mind too. So yet, if you’re
Mike Ricigliano 28:27
back, call Terry and I will come meet you guys. Awesome. Free lottery
Nestor Aparicio 28:30
ticket, $10,000 to mark Viviana right there, courtesy of lottery. We are doing this every day. I’m gonna be eating oysters every day. Today’s the first day we’re Cocos. We’re gonna be at gertrudes. We’re gonna be at the pepper mill, even though I’m not old enough. They I think they’ll let me in. They let me in a hammer Jacks when I wasn’t old enough. Maybe they’ll let me into the pepper mill. We’re back for more at Cocos. We’re six. My co hosts. We’re gonna eat oysters. Marcella is gonna tell stories about her crab cakes, and we’re gonna celebrate beautiful Laravel, which is where we are. Back for more at Baltimore positive. Right after this, you.
