He spent two days at Camden Yards covering Orioles playoff games and will be eagerly awaiting this Jayden Daniels vs. Lamar Jackson matchup in Baltimore on Sunday. Thom Loverro of The Washington Times tells Nestor about the suddenly deodorized burgundy and gold NFL franchise and the emergence of the Commanders’ first superstar since Dan Snyder left Landover.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders, new ownership, Dan Snyder, Josh Harris, football problems, attendance issues, Baltimore Orioles, Cal Ripken, season tickets, young demographic, playoff games, fan engagement, sports franchises, media coverage
SPEAKERS
Thom Loverro, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W N, S t te, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. It is a beautiful week around here, even though we’re not playing any baseball and we’re watching everyone else play baseball, Washington at Baltimore in football. That’s kind of a rare thing around here. I remember my dad dragging me out Monday Night Football to see you beating up Burt Jones take on Young Joe Theismann and the Washington Redskins, but that was a long, long time ago. It’s going to be Jaden Daniels and Lamar Jackson this week. This guy has covered many of the Baltimore Washington wars. As a matter of fact, he was covering the Baltimore Orioles last week from the press box. He’s a longtime columnist at the Washington Times, but was a long time scribe and colleague of mine at the Baltimore Sun. There’s a lot of that going around here. This month, Tom lavero joins us, our defending champion. You can also hear his podcast. He talks baseball and football and all sorts of sports things down in DC, we welcome him back onto the program here to preview Washington at Baltimore. Things have changed in Washington. Ownership, uniforms, names, all of that. They like, really have a quarterback and they have the better record coming in this week. You wouldn’t have been able to tell me that back in April Tom I’m
Thom Loverro 01:11
telling you, there’s no way I would have taken up, taken up that idea. I mean, I’m blown away. And it all has to do with the quarterback. It’s all because of of Jayden Daniels, he is the, he, right? He lifts all he’s the tithe that lifts all boats. He makes everyone around him better. He makes, he gives the team so much confidence. You know, it’s funny. Ernie of Coursey, the former Baltimore GM, he used to tell me that you for a quarterback. You want the kind of quarterback that when he gets on the team bus to go to the game, all the players look at him and and they think to themselves, we have a chance to win today because of him. That’s how these guys feel about Jaden Daniels now, already after five games, it’s, it’s, I’ve never seen any I’ve never, I’ve never seen a rookie quarterback play like this. Because there’s never been a rookie quarterback who’s played like this. I mean, his first four games, he was setting records for for completion percentage that that no one had ever seen before. And the most impressive thing he is so cool under pressure, he is so unflappable and so even keeled that you just think that anything’s possible. Well, Tom
Nestor Aparicio 02:31
I, you know, I see anything’s possible with the baseball team here and the football team there, and we’ve witnessed this. I mean, you’ve been at it from the beginning, and I even talked this week about my former Redskin fan friend in 1996 sort of making fun of me for having ravens notes before the Ravens were even named, when they were still sort of the browns, and the notion that this franchise could ever after the Colts and after we didn’t have football here for for 13 years, that it could supersede and become more than what the Washington football franchise was under Jack Kent Cooke and under Joe Gibbs and the 50,000 person waiting list, and you know us up here seeing their ticket sell for $200 back in the 80s for regular season games in the paper and whatnot, the demand for what used to be the Redskins and what happened to that brand, and how it comes back, I’m Watching that in the same way that I watched I don’t know, the Chicago Blackhawks reemerge these brands that are just poorly owned from top down. And you’re one of the handful of people still left in the media that really holds a light up to ownership. It feels like a lot of journalism just gone the other way. We watch the team, whatever they say we write. I don’t know you’re not that guy, and certainly the Snyder era and the Angelos era, for what it did to both of the fan bases in regard to just chasing people away. Now it has to be earned back, and I’ll get the baseball in a minute, because I know you were at the playoff games last week, but what has happened there for you as you’re not a fan? I mean, you’re not if you’re a ticket buyer, the of the Washington commanders. You’re a media member watching them. What is change that gives you some confidence that you can say to me, Hey, things have changed down here, not just the quarterback, it’s they’re good. This thing is on the road. They’re getting fixed for Washington. Well,
Thom Loverro 04:15
I mean, the people in their ownership group, some of my known like, like Mark I and others. Josh Harris is the main owner. He’s not beloved in Philadelphia, where he’s the owner of the 70 Sixers, but he’s a DC guy. Grew up in DC, and I think he understands how to run a sports franchise. You see here in Washington, fans were not dealing with just the typical problems that come up with running a sports team. They were dealing with the off the field dysfunction that Dan Snyder brought to the entire organization, and it affected everything they did now, right now, I always say that right now, Washington fans just have to deal with football problems you can. On a football team really poorly, okay, but they had to deal with that, plus all the off the field dysfunction. They had to deal with the idea that, you know, it didn’t matter, like if Mike Shanahan came to coach here, as long as Dan Snyder was the owner, nobody was going to have success. There was a hopelessness that permeated, I called it the aura of self destruction that hung over this franchise, and that’s changed with new ownership. There. There’s a real belief, and I think fairly so, that if they screw up, they’ll screw up like a normal football team would not like some outlandish, cartoonish, you know, soap opera, like the the Washington football team was for for so many years. It’s funny, because the the main argument that Baltimore and Washington sports fans used to have was, who had the worst owner, Peter Angelus or Dan Snyder? But the other thing with, with what’s, what’s, what’s going to be interesting to wash is, you know, Josh Harris paid $6 billion for a football team, who for for whose name the fans hate? I mean, that’s a bad way to start. I mean, you pay $6 billion for the product and people hate the name of the product? Yeah, I
Nestor Aparicio 06:21
think I’m a smart guy. And if I you would have given me 6 billion and had me buy the team, I’d be like, I don’t even know where to begin to deodorize something that was so awful for so long. And I feel that way about the baseball team. We’ll get to that in the empty seats in the outfield last week, when you were here for that. But we’re trying to figure that out on the baseball side. To say, how do you rebuild it? And I would say Tom, in the modern parlance, and maybe the commanders aren’t that because there, there’s so much money that falls in the NFL tree that when you see empty seats that real, there’s a poppy seeds. In regard to revenue for the team, $50 ticket, $100 ticket here and there. Even the hot dogs and the beer in the parking it’s nice to have that revenue. I don’t feel like Mr. Harris needs that revenue in order to be able to afford Jaden Daniels. I do feel like on the baseball side, the thing is broken here in a way that that fans are going to have to be ATMs in one way or another, whether it’s buying the the subscription for television, buying swag, buying tickets being a part of it, the revenue creation for baseball so much different than football. I think football could be fixed quicker in that way, because the money falls off the tree you can afford the players now it’s just about like, how do we patch up the stadium? How do we give people value when they show up? And how do we make them care again? And the football that’s winning, if you win and they’re winning right now, I have a feeling you have sold out games at the end of the year if they’re 10 and
Thom Loverro 07:47
two. Oh yeah. I think if they’re 10 and two. You see, this is the test, though, with with the football team here in Washington that that the baseball team doesn’t have the problem with. There’s a real division about the name. Okay? A lot of fans hate that hate the name commanders. And part of it was because the old regime rolled it out like they were opening up a 711 they did a terrible job unveiling the new name because they did a terrible job, you know, with with everything. So they people hated the name commanders, right from the start.
Nestor Aparicio 08:19
There’s a sticker Stan Snyder picked it. Right? Literally, right? Well, yeah, supposedly. Okay. Well, you said they hate it, but why do they? I mean, I don’t. I think it’s goofy too, but I I hate it because Dan Snyder picked and I don’t even like the franchise. You know what? I mean, it just feels like you’re going to go new, do something new
Thom Loverro 08:35
again. They hate it in part, because it was such, there was such a poor job of of unveiling it. They also hate it in parklands. It’s a big segment and a fan base that that still holds on the Redskins. It’s a strong faction of fans out there that may not ever come back because the team’s not named Redskins anymore, and that’ll be interesting to watch if the team is successful throughout the rest of the year, what attendance is, if they do have sold out seats, because they were three in one going into Sunday’s game, there was a lot of excitement, but the attendance was only 59,000 they had empty seats. It was not a sellout, okay? And again, they’ve lost some fans through not not just the name, but through two decades of dysfunction that aren’t coming back. And I don’t know how they capture that.
Nestor Aparicio 09:33
We can break that into baseball in a minute, but I do want to talk about Jayden Daniels and like, what that has meant over five weeks. Man, we’re talking about a really small sample size to build hope, but you saw Adley rutschman Come up here two years ago, and that sort of changed things for for the Orioles and obviously Lamar Jackson has changed things for the ravens, for Jane Daniels and for Dan Quinn and Tom before I had you one of that Dave Preston on some other DC folks here this week. I actually went and, like, looked on the commander’s website and thought, Who are their coaches? Who are their front office people? What are they getting right? What are they getting wrong? If I’ve known Dan Quinn a long time, and then I looked, he’s like lots of former coaches, Anthony Lynn, different head coaches on that staff, Cliff Kingsbury, running the offense. And I’m thinking, they really, they have a football operation there, and there’s nobody meddling anymore, right? So that’s not happening anymore, so they can get down and play football. I think Dan Quinn’s a little bit coaching looks like this quarterback gives them an ability to do things that that the Ravens have been able to do, in regard to going on fourth down, in regard to RPO, and indeed, regarded just an unflappable leader, if he feels to me, yeah.
Thom Loverro 10:39
I mean Dan Quinn, from all counts, is a guy that most players like playing for. You know, I didn’t know how good of a heck. He took the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl, and then they lost that historic Super Bowl lead at 26 or 24 point lead. But the last time we saw him in Dallas, his cowboys defense gave up as when he was a defensive coordinator, gave up like 40 points. So I wasn’t completely sold on Dan Quinn I am now and the coaching staff, and the fact that it happened so quickly is really remarkable, because I didn’t think this team would do much this year, because everything was new. More than half the players on the roster were new. The whole coaching staff was new. And it takes time for that to gel. You know, you’re throwing a bunch of people together to try to be successful, and most of the time it it takes a while for that to get on track, for all that to come together. This this group came together very quickly. You got to give Quinn credit, credit for that as as the head coach, keeping them together with the right message, and you’re right, they put together an impressive coaching staff that that is, is very professional on the sidelines.
Nestor Aparicio 11:58
Tom laveros, here, he is the longtime columnist at the Washington Times, much like myself, he tends to hold ownership accountable and writes letters to people like Ted Lee owns us in ways that I don’t see. I want to get on the baseball with you, because, well, you know the game will be played this week and but you were up here last week, and we’re Facebook friends, and I see your work all the time, and I see your your letters to various people, and I see your missives about all sorts of things. I didn’t see the aftermath of your Baltimore coverage. I should say your longtime Baltimore Sun reporter, you’re around here in Camden Yards was built and colleagues with Steadman and all the guys that you know were a part of the Oriole tradition in the Cal Ripken senior in Oriole way you’re familiar with all that. What did you make of playoff baseball last week, not just the fact that they got one hitting it, you know, like on the field. I’m trying to figure out how this franchise plays a playoff game again next year and doesn’t have empty seats for 10 bucks.
Thom Loverro 12:53
Yeah, it was not a good look, particularly Game Two, where attendance was announced at 38,000 for game two. You know, again, you’ve got decades of disrepair. Now, I’ve had this argument with a lot of people from Baltimore, and you know, a lot of Oreos fans hold the Nationals presence accountable for the Orioles demise at the box office that’s way over inflated the Orioles. And I wrote a column about this about a year ago because I talked to the people who were in the front office at the time. And this goes back to Larry Latino, the late great Larry Latino. They inflated the number of fans, percentage coming from Washington to to Orioles games dramatically. They said it was 25% it was less than 10% okay, the reality was so the the Washington impact, to me, was never as big as the presence of the Baltimore Ravens. The arrival of the Ravens coincided with the demise of the Orioles at the same time they arrived here in 96 by 98 the Orioles were starting on a 14 year losing streak while you had a football team that was going to the Super Bowl in four years after they got here. And you tell me if I’m wrong, because you know Baltimore as well as anybody, and I don’t mean to take liberties by judging the fan base, but I know it fairly well too. I think that’s a fan base that has to make a decision about investing their money in Raven season tickets or Orioles tickets. I don’t think it’s a, it’s it’s a, it’s a rich enough fan base that they can support both equally, and
Nestor Aparicio 14:42
that would be for the businesses as well. Yes, if you spend 600 grand buying Orioles advertising, yes, you’re not doing it with the Ravens. And if you find value in 80 dates, and you your company likes baseball and you have that vibe, the football thing is a different animal. For entertainment, for price. Thing for Sundays, only eight of them, 10 of them, whatever it would be. Yeah, I agree all heartily with that. And I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that the finances of it got very out of whack, where the Orioles were worthless. And this is where I would talk about last week. And if Mr. Rubenstein were here, and I wrote him a 9000 you know, word missive last week about the trauma. I said the first thing I led with when his guy came up to me is, I’m like, there’s been a lot of trauma here. You are aware, and you are aware that I was traumatized. I’ve had my professional standing taken away for 20 years after he empty the stadium and didn’t pay his bill with me personally. And then people came to me like I was the complaint department here for 20 years. People called and I was the complaint department because they wouldn’t take their own complaints. And during that period of time, and I talked to Luke about this last week, they had those ollies bargain nights where the tickets were five bucks, three bucks, you know, really cheap, six. But whatever it was, it was 20 years ago. I was on the air, and on those nights when they couldn’t draw anybody to come down for five bucks, I said to myself, it’s no longer a price point thing, because in the 90s, time it was price point um, Canton yards was sold out. You had to find a scalper to get a ticket for seven or eight years, from 92 to 9899 Albert Bell, even if you wanted it. The Orioles were sold out, and moonlight madness on december 21 picked clean. There were no tickets. There were 35,000 season tickets and 15,000 partials. And everybody needed to get in because they wanted to get their playoff tickets. They wanted to get their All Star game tickets. Well, I don’t if the cell is I’m gonna have playoff tickets, and playoff tickets are $10 Tom I went to dinner last Tuesday night after the first loss, and I was in Catonsville, Beaumont, and it was that I picked my wife up the airport. She was flying back. We went over to Beaumont about 738 o’clock, and as we sat at the bar, people kept coming in from the game. It was after they lost the first game, and everybody was pissed. And you know what they were pissed about? They paid 125 bucks on their season ticket form for a playoff ticket, and those tickets were being given away for 10 bucks, and nobody sat in them later in the day. So that part where you know people sitting on a plane or paying two different prices, or sitting at the concert, paying two different prices for Oriole fans knowing that they paid 100 to go to a game and that the same ticket was $10 later because it went unsold, they feel like they they bought a shitty stock, honestly. And I think the price point for all of this over all of these years to your point has been, I’ve got $1 Am I giving it to Meriwether post? Am I giving it to a concert? Am I giving it to charity? Am I giving it to Towson University or Loyola? Where am I going with my money? And the Orioles never had value. The hard part for me is those games last week had incredible value. Their playoff games, you’re squeezing, you know, 12 years of nothingness, and then last year, and people didn’t want to go for 10 bucks, and then the excuses are, well, it’s in the middle of the day, and the kids are in school and the weather wasn’t. Tickets were 10 bucks for a playoff game. The brand is sick. The Orioles brand is sick. Tom I believe that.
Thom Loverro 18:14
Well, you know, you’re you’re right. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why, why those seats were empty. The years of decay and dysfunction, certainly, I think, are the major contributor. But you know, sports teams are facing some challenges these days, because, you know, season ticket bases for everybody are down. People don’t buy season tickets like they used to and season tickets were the foundation for sports franchises. That’s how they really did business. You have a young demographic now that decides two days or a day before the game whether they’re going or not. Okay, so they’re and they’re trying to get this young demographic, and the Ravens are too with all kinds of promotions and stuff trying to get these people into the stadium, you have a young demographic that I found, quite honestly, don’t sit down and watch a full sporting event anymore. They watch highlights, they watch red zone, they watch clips. I don’t know. I don’t know too many young people that sit down and watch three hours of an NFL football game anymore, let alone a baseball game,
Nestor Aparicio 19:26
or care to understand that at the level that we did or the level we tried to explain it over the course of our lifetime. It’s that important to them.
Thom Loverro 19:33
So I don’t, I don’t know how they deal with that challenge. So so you have an industry that’s dealing with spectator issues to begin with, and then, so you can’t afford to be a bad organization and deal with that. And the Orioles were a bad organization for, let’s face it, for, for 25 years with, with, with, you know, points of success in between. Look, I think. David Rubenstein has put together a good group. I’m real curious as to what Cal ripkens role is going to be moving forward with this group, if anything looks figureheaded
Nestor Aparicio 20:12
to me. You know, I haven’t talked to Cal. Haven’t run into him. I don’t think Cal wants to go to work 60 hours a week running a baseball team. I mean, if he did, he would. I mean, so other than that, he’s in commercials, and they put a behind home plate, and I haven’t, I don’t know of any decision making. Again, I’m still banned. Tom I mean, last week they allowed Luke in, didn’t allow me in, so we have new owners, and I’m still banned in. The evangelist is dead. So I am asking those questions, like, are you people going to be on the up and up? I mean, like, when’s the when does this really change? And are you going to do what the old people did, what you see the empty seats and say, well, that’s a pretty shade of forest green, and the kids were at school, and we were small market, and that’s the part that’s going to piss me off the most, is the minute they say, Well, you know, because I can see Rubenstein slipperiness, I’ve watched his act. Oh, we’re a small market team. We are that that is Peter’s legacy, is turning the Baltimore Orioles into the Pittsburgh Pirates that that that really is the legacy of this. And
Thom Loverro 21:12
he did it while he had a network that was printing money for him in the process. Of course, it was, you know, it, I mean, he did it with a network that was supposed to put him on par with the Orioles and the Yankees.
Nestor Aparicio 21:25
Well, the poison pill of the deal, he had to give the Nationals and the Orioles the same amount of money that he and he was in control the money. I mean, come on, you’re putting the fox in front of the hen house there. Now, I mean that that’s why the nationals were tourniquetted. That’s why the Orioles were tourniquetted financially, and at the end of the day, I know your feelings of John Angelos and Lou Angelo’s and we read through the legal documents two summers ago, and I watched Kevin Brown get put in the kids room last year, and I saw the Governor of Maryland get lied to this time last year. So all of this stuff’s really this isn’t old Peter Angelo’s free the bird stuff. This is stuff that was going on in the last calendar year before he flipped the team. The Angelo’s boys are they had a walk off Grand Slam. They got 1,000,000,008 they’re gone. And now he paid 1,000,000,008 you mentioned the 6 billion that that the Harris paid for the football team that gets caught passed on to the consumer there. There’s no money. Train for baseball. It’s a local, regional operation. It’s still making money off of its regional cable television, but not anymore, and I don’t think they have a model right now. Tom and that’s where I am with Rubenstein. If I sit down, I’m like, What do you know about baseball’s business model? Because whatever it used to be, it can’t be again. And one of you is gonna have to figure out away. The hardest part for me with baseball is it doesn’t come to people anymore. It’s not on broadcast. It’s not in front of you anymore. They don’t buy billboards around town. Their players don’t live here. There’s no Brooks in the community or Boog or any of that anymore. And they go away on October the second or third last week. What are they going to do the next six months to make sure next year is not the same as last year. And that’s where I want to see something different from them. And you talked about Larry lakino And Janet Marie and Marty Conway, all those people, Rick Vaughn, all these people, back in the day, they went to work right away. There was moonlight madness. There were caravans in the off season. There were signings. And the industry doesn’t sign players anymore early because of money. So I don’t know when they’re going to make news or be relevant in the minds of other than the 30,000 people that love the Orioles.
Thom Loverro 23:28
Well, the nationals have the same problem. They have an ownership that gets it that that if it wasn’t for General Manager Mike Rizzo, the Washington Nationals would be a disaster. Uh, would never have gone through the championship year that they had and the multiple playoff appearances they had, the learners i I’ve urged them multiple times publicly, you know, to take advantage of when the football team was bad during the football season and put on events, you know, try to grab a little piece of the attention in November and December, when people are pissed off about the football team, and do something with the baseball team, any kind of promotional events. And then that never happened. Never happened. Like, well, the nationals have
Nestor Aparicio 24:17
something the Orioles don’t have. They had a World Series. You know what? I mean, they didn’t get the parade because of the plague and all that. But, like, they had a World Series, and they should be crowing about that. I mean, as an Oriole fan, I still look and say they won before we did well.
Thom Loverro 24:30
And one thing I’ll say is that they never got to reap the benefits of that of that World Series. They never got to cash in on the corporate sponsorship. They never got to cash in on the on the jump at the box office, because the next year was covid, the stadium was shut down. You know, there were, there was, there was no, there was no year long celebration following the World Series other
Nestor Aparicio 24:57
generational players run around playing for your Phillies. Yeah. Right? Like, literally at this point, yeah. Well,
Thom Loverro 25:02
that’s what happens, that that’s that, that. I mean, yeah, there. I always say there’s an expiration date on all these young players that come through here in Washington.
Nestor Aparicio 25:10
Well, we’re going to find that out with Gunner, Henderson rushman, and if he’s any good, or even holiday, I mean, Manny Machado run around for the Padres. And I’m thinking to myself, well, that was our guy, and we couldn’t afford him, and that’s the baseball thing, and I’m really worried. In my market, with that many empty seats, and me doing what I’m doing, and me not really seeing any change here, they’re still treating me the same garbage that Angelo’s did. So on a personal level, they’re not getting my money. They’re not getting my mic. They’re not getting me to open my mic and say things have changed. Because, to my eyes, that things haven’t changed, they might have gotten worse. There was nobody in the upper deck last week in the Alpha like I, I was blown away. I I’m pissed about it. Tom as a citizen, I’m pissed, but they’ve earned it. I mean, I didn’t go give him 10 bucks. My wife’s like, why didn’t you go down there? Tickets for 10 bucks? 12 bucks. I’m like, games on TV. I don’t owe him any you know, we haven’t done anything for me. Anything for me. What do I owe these? What do I owe Mr. Rubens? I need to throw me a hat. Um, and I, I’m worried about what they’re going to be doing, what Katie Griggs is going to find, she’s going to find that this is a small market. She’s going to find when she’s going around looking for $800 million checks for sponsors, no such thing exists here for the Orioles? Yeah,
Thom Loverro 26:22
she may, she may do that, and it’s a massive tax, not nearly as massive, I think, as the one with the football team. Because, I mean, unlike the football team, you know, the Orioles were handed a $600 million check to fix up their stadium, the football team. It plays in the worst football stadium, maybe the worst stadium period in America, okay? And they just put 75 to $100 million into it to fix it up. Meanwhile, they’re trying to get a new stadium, and they’re running into roadblocks in DC, Virginia’s out of it. It was never a serious contender. And I think they’re going to wind up building the stadium right next to the old one in Landover. I think that’s where the new stadium is going to be. But, you know, but, but in the meantime, they’re stuck in the worst stadium in the NFL. So you’ve got a product where people hate the name, you’ve got a stadium the way you play, that’s the worst in the league. Okay, those are two huge things to have to overcome. And I don’t think they expected the football team to be this good, this quick. So that was going to be three but it looks like that may be taken care of for now.
Nestor Aparicio 27:37
Well, if they pack the place down there, don’t have the sewage coming out anymore. Hopefully the $75 million fix that. Uh, Tom lavero is one of my all time favorites. Uh, he is a columnist for the Washington Times. Also, you do your podcast, give a little uh, podcast there with Kevin Sheehan,
Thom Loverro 27:50
right? Yeah, I do the Kevin Sheehan Show podcast. It’s, it’s five times a week. I’m on Tuesdays and Thursdays as co host,
Nestor Aparicio 27:57
alright, curveball cigars. One day I’m going to come down to that back room with you. I walk by it when I go to the Warner theater, and we’re going to like, I don’t smoke cigars, but I’m going to watch you smoke one and watch everybody else smoke one. I’m going to have a proper Martini. How
Thom Loverro 28:12
about that? Sounds good buddy? Sounds
Nestor Aparicio 28:13
like a dirty martini in DC. Dirty DC coming up here to do us dirty this week. Jalen Daniels, great quarterback, Lamar Jackson, great quarterback. It’s the number one game on TV this week. We’re getting big time announcers and all that stuff. And Tom, I appreciate you. Washington Times, go find Tom lavero out there. I am Nestor. We are wnst, 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Not often we get to talk about Washington and Baltimore. So we’re doing it. You.
