Over the past two years, our pal and longtime writer and author John Eisenberg has unraveled the history of the Baltimore Orioles via his Bird Tapes on Substack and a series of new conversations with the legends of Birdland. Here, he joins Nestor to discuss the sudden unraveling of whatever Mike Elias had built and the uncertainty of new ownership with David Rubenstein as the Orioles have fired their longtime manager and sit mired in last place in the American League East.
Nestor Aparicio and John Eisenberg discussed the Baltimore Orioles’ struggles, including their last-place standing and recent losses. They reflected on the legacy of Jim Henneman, a prominent Orioles historian, and the importance of preserving team history. Eisenberg highlighted the Orioles’ failure to invest in pitching and the underperformance of young players like Adley Rutschman. He criticized recent management decisions, such as the firing of the manager and the lack of accountability. They also touched on the need for consistent winning and integrity to rebuild fan trust and support.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Orioles history, Jim Henneman, Bird Tapes, John Eisenberg, last place baseball, pitching issues, young players, ownership, media access, fan engagement, team performance, community impact, leadership, integrity, future plans.
SPEAKERS
John Eisenberg, Nestor Aparicio
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, AM, 1570 Taos in Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively into the hopefully summer months. Hopefully it’s good weather is here to stay. It is been a long, hard may for anybody that likes baseball, hard spring for anybody loves the Orioles around here, I had originally put together the crab cake tour up at Green mount station. Not just eat the delicious crab cake up there, that’s Angelina style, but to also give away Maryland scratch offs from the Maryland lottery, we had the Back to the Future scratch offs, and I thought it was gonna be like Orioles Mariners and great afternoon. And it’s just last place baseball at this point, we’re also going to be a fatalities next Friday for more last place baseball. Luke will be joining me next Friday as the angels come to town and we give away lottery tickets and talk about our friends, a curio wellness at Coppin, state and liberty pure and all of our sponsors. John Eisenberg has been my friend for a long, long time, mentor to me back in the 1980s as was the late great Jim Henneman, who we spoke a lot about last week with Rick Vaughn and Charles Steinberg. And I actually did I come at this honest Eisenberg. I’ve been trying to get him on for about a month, ever since this thing started teetering back in May. And you’ve got family and books and authorship and this and that, and bird tapes and all that. And we said, let’s do it in early June. And here we are. It just gets worse and worse. John and I know we’re talking after they swept the White Sox over the weekend, but I, I there was no middle ground of, hey, it’s teetering a little bit. It’s like the plane crash on all of this stuff. And then, you know, how are you? I mean, it’s, it’s a lot less fun for you and wick, when the team’s in last place. I know.
John Eisenberg 01:40
Yeah, that was the last for me, for a lot of people in Baltimore, right? I mean, it’s just sort of a bummer to watch. So it goes, I mean, certainly. I mean, I’ve been writing Orioles baseball. Said the since the mid 80s, I’ve seen a lot of bad seasons Nestor and so it’s not as bad as 1988 when they started, oh and 21 this is not that bad. So when you look up in there, six and 34 or whatever it was, but so it’s not like it’s the first bad season I’ve seen. It’s a surprising bad season, I will say. And we, I mean, we can unpack and exactly what led to that, if you want, but I’ll do that at the end
Nestor Aparicio 02:24
of the segment. I want to give Jim Henneman some love first, because you’re one of the few people I feel like I’m trying to think of who I didn’t see last week at Jim Henneman funeral, and who I didn’t talk to or think about or talk about, or who it didn’t come to me, everyone from you know Jim Palmer and Rob Brown’s son, Scotty and Rick Vaughn, the whole legend of the PR side, Charles Steinberg being on with me and telling stories about closing Memorial Stadium in 91 and 88 and fantastic fan, I’ve had all of those conversations on and off the air, as well as Katie Griggs and David Rubenstein and pitching, and Michael, I know we’ll do that. But the thing about the history of this team and what your project, the bird tapes, tries to get into, is when I saw Scotty Brown, I thought, Bob Brown, Bob, no one knew more about Oriole baseball than Bob Brown. He’s gone. Can’t ask him. Okay, maybe Helen Conklin. And then I thought, well, there’s Rick Vaughn. He knows a lot. And Vaughn would say, No, no, no, no, Henneman. Henneman was the ultimate Oriole historian before he passed last week. If you wanted authority on that, you would go to Jim Henneman. And then I’m thinking, all right, Vaughn, you might be next. And then I spent time with Charles Steinberg, and he’s and he gets dates like Charles Steinberg is Rain Man, Mary Lou Henner me on dates. And I started going through old tear sheets with me. And Henneman and Ken Rosenthal at the evening sun, you, of course, were at the at the morning sun. I don’t have a lot of bylines where you and I shared by lines on the news, but I have a lot with Jim Henneman. And I went back to all of this, and I left you out because you’re the outsider. He’s from Texas. He’s around here. And you have, really, over the last 40 years, amassed the people in all of this that, if I’m looking for a clarification in oral history, I’m going to Steinberg. I’m going to Rick Vaughn. I think I’m coming to you at this point, you’re trying, and it is such a rich tapestry of history. And when we lose the Jim Henneman, we lose an encyclopedia, we lose a whole volume, right?
John Eisenberg 04:32
8No question about it. I mean, Jim, I got to Baltimore my first season. Orioles season was 1985 Jim Himan was on the Oriole beat. And listen, I’d come from Texas. I wasn’t around the Texas Rangers that much. I really, I’m just coming to Baltimore. I thought I’m coming to royalty, baseball royalty, because that’s really what they’d been for a quarter century. Little did I know I’m coming to witness pretty much the class. Of their dynasty over the next three or four years. But anyway, Hinman was there, and so I’m at Spring Training. I’m on the road, you know, just so, just a wonderful guy. I mean, barbecue, yeah, I did go to spring training barbecue in Florida. I didn’t, I
Nestor Aparicio 05:15
didn’t know there was such a thing. And now I’ve been asking everyone in the after because I was a kid. I mean, I wasn’t at Spring training in that era, but I started going to 9293 you know, like, but I didn’t know of the legend of the barbecue.
John Eisenberg 05:27
Yeah, he would host a barbecue at this little rented place that he had and and everybody came, and he’d sit at the grill and do real I mean, he would grill for like, four hours, you know, he’s over there sweating and, you know, drinking beer, and it was a great barbecue, and people just hung out and talked, and the players were there, the managers, I mean, I mean, it was pretty it was just different than there wasn’t the the sort of the wall between maybe the team and the media wasn’t, it wasn’t so tall And it wasn’t so firm, and you could hang out at a barbecue with Frank Robinson, and everybody knew everybody, and got along. It was a lot more family. I’m not saying, I mean, we covered the team, we reported, we ripped them when we had to, but it was just, it was just more of a it was a smaller environment. That’s one thing, as I’m doing these bird tapes, one thing that because I witnessed it, I came along in time to see, I don’t think people really understand that the Orioles themselves, the front office was tiny, for it was a small family business. You mentioned Helen Conklin. You know these are names. People don’t know these names, but Bob Brown, they may, may have known, but there’s
Nestor Aparicio 06:37
like 20 hold that office in Helen. Hello, hey, yeah, there’s
8John Eisenberg 06:41
like 20 people in the front office. It was a little family business, especially when hofburger, Jerry hoffberger on the team, and then a little bit after that, and then they started, Edward Bennett Williams bought it, and things were run out of DC. And they started drawing more people, and they needed marketing people, and it started to grow, but it was really, really small. And Henneman certainly was there for all of it. And he sort of embodied that era, I thought. And yeah, you could talk to him, ask him about anything. And he actually wrote a piece for me for the bird tapes not that long ago. It was probably six, six months ago I put up an interview. I that the bird tapes I’m publishing all these old interviews I had from when I wrote an oral history of the team 25 years ago, and I had an interview with Walter yaos. Uh, Walter yaos, who’s the baseball legend, was a scout. He ran the Johnny’s and Leone’s, the amateur team. Everybody it was anybody played for Walter yaos, and he was a scout, and Jim Henneman had played for him. So I’m putting up this interview with Walter yaos, which is really a name out of Oriole history, and Hinman had played for him and knew him. So I said, Jim, can you write a piece about Walter? Tell the people about Walter? He said, Sure. So he wrote me a nice piece about Walter yaos, and I put it up. Got a lot of response. It was great. We were talking about doing some other pieces when, you know, I think his health took a turn for the worse, and it’s just unfortunate, really sad. And with him goes, you are right, goes, just a republic. Brooks Robinson once told me he copy edit that he copy edited that book. I wrote 500 pages of oral history, oral history because he said, he told me. He said, You know, I’ve been with the team since 1955 I think I’d know just about everybody who’s ever played for the Orioles. He told me that in 2000 and which was quite a statement to make. And Henneman certainly covered just about everybody who ever played for the Orioles or knew them. So he’s not far off in that realm of just knowing and knowing everybody, by the way, Jim
Nestor Aparicio 08:42
Palmer would be the next line of demarcation to did it happen or did it not? Jim Palmer has known and touched everyone since 1963 64 Absolutely. That’s an incredible and it’s never been more than than, than a risk away for ever, right? He’s always been on the broadcast. Always been like from all of it, I mean, and, you know, I I sort of gulp when I think about all of this, because, like that part, and I talked to Brett Hollander about this at length of Jim Henneman Street, that part slipping away a little bit with the generation of your boy, wick and my kid, Barry, my kid’s 40 now, Luke and is 40. And we talk about, will this stuff matter? If it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean, and I and I know bird tapes, all of this is built into what Mr. Rubenstein bought. This is what you purchased. You purchased this history. You need to bring it to life better than what the hell this has been. But, well, there is this thing that created all of this that needs to be not just told, but supported and lived through a little bit, because that’s what makes it different than the Tampa rays or the Sacramento A’s this week. So.
John Eisenberg 09:59
Totally true. And that’s what I always when I was working at the ravens, and I would sit in on these meetings, and I would, I would tell them, this is sort of marketing. I would say, Listen, as great as you’re doing on the field, as much as you want to be more popular than, say, the Washington commanders or or the Eagles, or something like that. You got about your recent history is great, but you’re missing about 60 years that they had before that. And they have more history. They just have more and it’s an incredible history all these teams have, and that that’s that is what separates them. It makes them individuals. It’s what makes it special. And so, yeah, I mean, I’m certainly the one you’re preaching to the choir. I think it’s all really important. What’s what happens with the Orioles in any season is part of a continuum. It is not just things that started with the rebuild in 2019 you know? So we’ve seen a lot of this stuff before, and so I think the history is what makes it special. I agree. And David Rubenstein, he knows that. I mean, he City College class of 66 and he’s an Oriole fan. And so he knows that, whether that trickles down to everybody, we’ll see, and they’ve done a little better job lately. Late in the Angelos era, they started doing a little bit better about bringing in some of the guys in spring training, which, to me, is a must. You’ve got this great history. I used to see it at Dodger town and LA, you know the in Vero Beach, Florida, back in the day the Dodgers were there to Sandy Koufax in a golf cart, or at the Yankees spring training. I mean, good God, you know, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, you know, it’s just incredible. So the Orioles have that, and they need to, and they’ve, they’ve been bringing them around a little bit more, and then
Nestor Aparicio 11:52
8behind home plate, right? So, like, yeah, that helps. Look, man, I mean, we go down the river. Name me an owner. If I would have told you a year ago that the owners first moves to make a bobble head of himself and give it out, I would say that’s not a good sign. You know? I would say that the firing the manager on a Saturday and not showing up until Milwaukee on Tuesday, that’s not leadership. Whatever says this is not leadership, whatever. I am gravely concerned, in a general sense, about whether these people know what they’re doing and how long their curve is going to be to figure it out. And I am gravely impatient as a 56 year old guy, and this team hasn’t won in 42 years, not just about just about human stuff, about how I’ve been treated, but how other people are being treated. And I’ve learned a lot about that, and this is just not a good circumstance right now, and it needs to be cleaned up in a lot of ways. And the pitching side of it, and the money side of it, and the leadership side of it, and who’s buying the the the groceries, and who the man they have, an interim manager, just all of this smacks of somebody better get in front of this, and I’ll tell you why in a minute, but it has to do with business and things I’m hearing on the street from Birdland members that have finally given them some money and said I’m willing to come back, because it doesn’t say Angelo’s on it anymore, and this has been their experience thus far, and it’s not good. Well,
John Eisenberg 13:22
I’m okay with baseball decisions, some of them not working out. You have to, you have to accept that people in charge are not always going to make the right decision. That is baseball. So I give them a little bit of longer leash on that. And certainly give the ownership longer leash they you know, it’s been, what, a little over a year, but the 42 years you mentioned, people are impatient, people are angry, certainly this year is has, there’s been some malpractice, and that is a problem, because there are things here that could be a winning situation. You’ve got the good young players. You’re developing them. Things are not working out great. And, yeah, I understand why people are angry and frustrated, and people in my family are, you know, just as normal as anyone else kind of pissed. So start
Nestor Aparicio 14:24
with this, then bring me John Eisenberg, columnist, bring me wick your boy. Bring me the dinner table. Bring me what you know about media and baseball. I mean, it’s very, very easy, if you and I want to play the mark, fine, PR, director role and say, had a lot of injuries, just been a lot of injury had a lot of bad luck, right? A lot of bad luck. And then I would point to ruchman, and I would point to the pitching decisions, and I would point to the decisions of drafting, not pitchers, and saying, Well, what is your strategy now? Burns is hurt out in Arizona again? Yeah, I’m not even on that train, because if he doesn’t want to be here, I don’t want to pay him $200 million Yeah, but there, there is a philosophical part of this for me, where there’s also, if I’m Rubenstein, I didn’t hire Elias. Elias has now fired the manager and scapegoat it’s sort of the manager at a bad time.
John Eisenberg 15:12
The manager was only playing with the players he had. I mean, potato center field. You know, all the things manager than I for in April is still going to be there in July. I mean, the manager with, with the manager went sort of a era of intense platooning, which I think has has changed a little bit. And so he but he was like, I thought, I thought he got a raw deal, to be honest with you, and he on the list of things that have gone wrong with this season. He’s about number six in the power rankings, and it’s getting, it’s getting pretty small percentage at that point. So that did not solve the problem at all. So it’s too bad he’s not here. You know, I don’t think they’re going to be any worse than they were early in the season. I think they’re going to get a little bit better as some of these guys come back. But no, no, no. The first thing, I mean, to me, the number one thing you want to talk about, the most important things that went wrong, certainly the failure to invest in pitching, in the way that pitching was. I mean, look what’s happened in the last few games. Yes, they’ve the last 10 days. Say they started winning some games. Maybe they’re not playing the best teams in the league with the White Sox, but they’re starting to win some games. Why? Because the pictures are, go. Dean Kramer goes into the seventh inning and, you know, nine after night. Here they Charlie Morton back from the dead. You know, a pretty good major league pitcher for a lot of his career, too old at 41 to be getting $15 million but he can pitch. He can pitch a, you know, six and two thirds inning. So they get decent pitching, you start to win. So they definitely underfunded the pitching. They didn’t, aside from just signing a free agent, didn’t go out and say Trey for somebody like the Red Sox did. I mean, they’re, they’re way underfunded, way underfunded in the pitching. And they, they certainly just sold the rest of the team short that way. That would be my number one problem. What’s your number two problem? Uh, Number Two problem is the young players in particular Richmond, not, not panning out. I mean, I mean, you, you, you have built your team around him, and it looks like, I mean, Gunner Henderson, no problems there. Maybe he’s not, shouldn’t be the shortstop. We’ll see. He’s pretty good. I mean, gunner is not a problem. Gunner is is good. All right, I really don’t have a problem with him. Maybe he needs a little coaching here and there on some things, but he’s a really nice young player. He’s going to be great. Adley Richmond, just for what has it been a year now, he’s hitting 205, or whatever, with no power. What is going on there? I mean, at this point, it’s very easy to say they took the wrong guy, you know, Richmond over Bobby Witt Jr. That’s a no brainer at this point. And that’s not to say that Richmond, who’s been an all star, and he catches a good game, and he does as a good catcher, not that he throws out that many people anymore, but he does bring you know, there’s nothing like having that some ballast to your your whole thing with having a really good, all star catcher, but he needs to be way better than he is, way better. And so that’s a problem. When you you’ve got your number, you got a one one, as they say, and he’s not playing like a one one, that’s a big deal. And then there’s a million other decisions that were made. I hate, you know, you don’t get me going. I hated the trade deadline last year. I hated that he gave up some young players for, you know, sort of journeyman relievers like Soto. You know, I can barely watch when he comes in the game and I feel like, yeah, he’s throws hard, doesn’t know where it’s going. I don’t really trust him. Why did they give up Danny coulomb, who wanted to stay here and keep CNL Perez, I mean, you know, there’s a there’s a lot of decisions that were made for various reasons. These are smart people, but, you know, I don’t like all I don’t, I didn’t like a lot of them. And so as a result, you wind up with sort of a pitching disaster, sort of climbing their way out of it a little bit now, but the deal is done. They’re 14 games under 500 and and you know, it’s a wasted season when gunner Henderson is 24 years old and is already, what, 400 hits by age 24 it’s quite a list of people that have done that. So you hate to waste these season when these guys are young. John Eisenberg
8Nestor Aparicio 19:20
is our guest. He is the author of all things bird tapes, amongst other books on quarterbacks and racehorses and record books and all sorts of things that he’s done, books, notebook right now, right just bird tapes right now.
John Eisenberg 19:34
Just bird tapes right now. And having a lot of fun with it, and getting getting a nice response, got a nice community going and some new interviews being put up. I put up. Scott McGregor this week. Had a great discussion with him. You talk about Orioles history, and he dove deep into explaining how in the world he became winning a winning pitcher in the first place when he’s got an 87 mile an hour fastball. Well, sounds like, you know, completely bizarre in today’s baseball. You could never do it, but he was great. I’ve got an interview coming with Janet Marie Smith, which was really good. I had an all time interview with Bob gritch, just an all time interview when he talked about his early days in baseball and and at the end of it, I said, you know, you were a nice player. You’re a really good storyteller. And he just started laughing, because he told some great stories about just becoming a professional baseball player in the first place, and how raw he was, and coming through with Don Baylor, just a great storyteller. So we’re rolling at the bird tapes. There’s, there’s plenty going on. I had
Nestor Aparicio 20:42
the senses on last month, and I felt the same way. I felt like probably the best conversation I’ve had all year. And I, and I had never really had him on, you know, at length, at any point, these in depth conversations. And John, I would even say, for like Mike Elias, and going through the trauma he’s going through right now. You came here in 85 so I guess it’s Hank Peters at that time, then Roland HeMan. And we can go through the litany of Sid thrifts and Pat gillicks And what was expected of them with the media and things that you would learn about, that you could write a book about later in life, and have bird tapes and all that. It feels like this part of it, the where the world is of sports and media, the unchronicled part, and the I didn’t say that, he said that. And lower legged, we got Mullins. Now we don’t know what’s even wrong. Like, it’s like hockey injuries. Now everything’s on on the down low and to be kept away from the gamblers. And like all that goes into all of this, the history, part of it is so grand, because I don’t know that the current is going to hold the weight in that way, or there’s going to be this sort of anecdotal storytelling about baseball, the way that Bob grits told it to you.
John Eisenberg 21:58
8Well, that could be, that could be, yeah, every there’s no question, everything. There’s a lot fewer minor leagues now, and because, you know, they weren’t profitable, and these teams don’t want it, didn’t want to pay for so many minor league teams. And his minor league stories, minor league stories, are great. And, yeah, the storytelling is great. But of course, what makes it all great is that you know how it all ended, they won. They won. And people like, like, that stuff. And so, yeah, if you’re just every you got, you gotta have a little of that. You can’t just be, you know, seven games, somewhere between seven games under 507 games over 500 at some point, you gotta give them some high, high water marks, and so that it makes the losing more tolerable. So yeah, the fact that all those guys from the late 70s and early 80s, it’s really important that they finally won that World Series in 83 because that brought made it all tolerable. The fact that they blew it in 79 and had these great all these stories with Earl, who wasn’t even there for them to win the World Series in 83 but the fact that they did makes it all makes all that storytelling, it just raises it like four notches, and it’s what it’s what gives it weight.
Nestor Aparicio 23:13
Pimped the one interview you did that I am I’d love to have Bob rich on the show. Maybe I will at one point. I’ve already pit my dissent says, and I do oral history the way you do it, but not as intensely as you do it, and written books on it and all that. I’m having John Miller, the other John Miller on on, not the one that kept calling the the A’s Oakland last week to piss everybody off, but John Miller that wrote the book on Earl Weaver. I’m having him on this week to tell all of these old stories and stuff. But you have Fred Lynn on man like Fred Lynn to me, like you mentioned, guys that are in the Hall of good or very good, if gunner Henderson turns out to be as good as Fred Lynn, it’s pretty good, you know. But not Hall of Fame good, but I don’t know, but Fred Lynn to me, that that was the one I was jealous because I love Fred Lynn.
John Eisenberg 23:57
Well, I had him on because I felt like that era of Oriole baseball. Those years are very easily forgotten. 85 he was here. 85 through 88 it’s only the years when they fell apart. They he watched it fall apart, and yet he was a really nice ball player, a really nice baseball player for a long time, the Hall of very good I think injuries undermined his career a little bit. He ran into walls every month. Just a great baseball player, even here at age 35 look up the metrics, he’s 35 years old, and he’s played a great center field. I was
Nestor Aparicio 24:35
so excited when they got him, because I just love Fred Lynn. You know, I ran into him once in life. I was at his I was at his I was at a Super Bowl, like in Houston, and he was there pimping something for some like, I ran into him. I looked up like, that’s Fred Lynn, and I went up, said hello to him. He said, Hey, call me. Come on. I’ve never bothered him, but I’m gonna, like, I really need to get him on because, like, Red Sox, my cousin, the whole thing, 7374 75 he was a part. Like all of that. And Dewey Evans, and, you know, he’s an interesting guy in that he was in Boston early, kind of like Ripken, had a chance to win in 75 and then spent chasing it right went to California. They were really good, but not good enough. Same thing. Came back here, and by the time he got here, what was here wasn’t anymore. And then it, you know, we’ve been through these eras where somebody like me and watching the historian of a Jim Henneman, we lose him last week, and I see all these faces and places, and I start talking about Memorial Stadium. And all these eras, this 42 year period that when I met Mr. Rubenstein at the Beth to fellow congregation last November, I said, those 10,000 empty seats at the playoff game, I said, That’s trauma here, Mr. Rubenstein, there’s been a lot of trauma here. You know one thing you and I’ve talked about, man, we’ve done like, 30 minutes here, like loving life and smiling, even the teams that let we haven’t said Angelo’s. We haven’t said anything about those 30 years in any of that period that sort of darkened this thing. I really, I’m, I’ve had some tough mental health in recent times about this baseball team because of, literally, I mean, it’s not even laughable. It’s sort of like, do I want to do this anymore? What am I doing this for? For these people who come in from out of town, and they’re billionaires, and I’ve been here witnessing all of it, and they don’t even want to sit in a room and hear what’s happened. They don’t care what’s happened to me or you or anything or anybody, or whether it’s Terry Crowley or Mike bordick or Vijay surhoff or Brooks or, you know, any of that they don’t care about. Any of that. They need to sell tickets, sell memberships. They need the team to be better. They think they need corporate this and corporate that they’re getting $600 million of free money, and they’re drinking from the fire hose. And they thought they were going to do all of this around the winning team, and now they’ve got the bad news bears, and they got all this money coming in, and they it just doesn’t smack of competence for me, John, and you know what else, after spending time with a lot of people at Jim Henneman funeral last week or still in, none of them have any confidence either. And I’m talking about from Manford down. I’m talking about, what’s your TV deal? What’s your streaming deal? How are you getting people out the whole sport, all of it, two teams in this market now, with the Washington, Baltimore, just a lot of things that, yeah, we get romantic about and all that. But this needs to be rectified with a lot of energy. And, you know, sold me on that Rick Vaughn. Rick Vaughn said to me last week, this is a lot of work making the Baltimore Orioles what they were in the 70s and 80s. It took a lot of passionate, real work, and I ain’t seeing that being gone right now. John, on or off the field, really, with the community, with sort of, other than trying to give out bobble heads and buy authenticity, I’ve been I’m thumbs down on the new ownership. And I’ll tell I’ll tell him to his face, I’ll tell any of them based on lots of things, I’m thumbs down because I don’t see good ideas. I don’t see new things happening. And I’m tired of being wistful about the past and buying orange jerseys and thinking about 1971 you know what I mean?
8John Eisenberg 28:20
Well, what needs to change for sure, what needs to change for for it all starts with the product that you have to sell. They have to get more pitching. They have to stop getting picked off third base. They have to, you know, start developing players who come up here and play. I mean, you just have to have a winning team. Yeah, they had 101 wins couple years ago. It was a really young team. And, you know, they could have gone farther that year that they didn’t. That happens in baseball one of these years. It needs to be them. And they just need to have, you got to spend more money than you are on pit you got about, you know, you got to have veteran players. I think the basic mistake that has been made here is relying too much. It’s great to develop young players, identify them and develop them. You have to have some veterans, and you have to pay for quality veterans on your team. That’s why the Texas Rangers won a couple of years ago. It’s just amazing that veteran pitchers who stepped in instead of the young guys that you hope do all right after 101 win season and so yeah, they got Gordon burns for one season. You have to find that you can’t just settle on 23 year old guys that you hope are good. Pay some money for this, extend some of your guys, easier said than done with Scott Boris as your client. But you know what? Show an ounce show an ounce of faith, you know, show the people you know we have extended you know, players we’re building for the future with these guys and. There’s been none of that, those, those, those are the things that upset me. And once you have that, and it’s a multi layered thing we’re talking about here, but yeah, it has to be, it has to be better. Whatever their decision making is being based on, it’s blown up in their faces, and it does call into question, what are we doing here? And so I don’t know what that’ll mean going forward, but I do believe there’s talent in this pipeline, and you have to, you have to, you have to put some veterans around it too. You have to pay some money to have a good baseball team. You can’t. That’s the lesson that was learned. I think you know when, when, when, Anthony Santander walks. Okay, here’s one example. Okay, he was, you know, they they could have signed him. I sort of was okay with him not signing him, just because, just because I thought, well, he’s never going to be better than he was last year. He’s not a high average guy, wonderful in the clubhouse, great guy. Everybody loves the story. But I mean, you’re going to pay $100 million for him, I think you’re going to regret it after a year or two. However, you know what they’re missing on very underrated thing, the protection he gave these young guys in the lineup night after night with 44 home runs. And they thought they could replicate it. They didn’t. So the Blue Jays and they haven’t, yeah, so they miss him. But okay, you didn’t bring him back. The guy you did bring in is hurt all the time. You knew he was going to be hurt all the time. Tyler O’Neill, so bring in someone who’s actually going to be on the flip and field, and so that that was a key mistake, and they are missing that. And you just keep relying on these young players, you’re asking too much of them. Put some veterans around them, and look at the guys who are coming through, Ryan O’Hearn, Ramon Urias, you know, these, these are not the homegrown guys. They’re 30 year old major league players who know how to play baseball. And so you need more of those guys, maybe a higher caliber even than those guys. And you might have something around, you know, give gunner some help. John
Nestor Aparicio 31:57
Eisenberg is here. He is still doing the bird tapes out of sub stacks, still adding and getting guys like Fred Lynn on that I’m gonna go listen to now. And you sold me on the bobby grits thing. I’m sold on how it’s not out yet, not from shortstop the second. All right, you’re reeling me in. That’s good. That’s good. Um, well, yeah, of course, you’ve been reeling me in for four decades now. Um, Elias, I am like, I’ll buy into all of this. And you know, even I’ve told the story, my buddy finally gave them money, after 30 years of not really wanting to give it to angelos, and gave them a couple grand on the Birdland account, now regrets it, because, like, the full price tickets teams in last place, they’re not going to get his money again. And I think from a business concern, that’s my business concern, is that they had one chance to make a first impression with lots of people, and it hasn’t been great making his own bobblehead mistake. Go listen to the Rick Vaughn piece. He’ll tell you why. I’ll let professionals tell you why. You know people that ran sports for 40 years tell you why it’s a bad site, why and and the fact that it ever got done tells me that there’s no grown ups in there to tell them why it’s a bad idea. I know that firsthand from the way I’ve been treated as a professional. They’re treating me the same way Angelos did. That’s not good enough. It’s below the fold. It below the bar of anything I or anybody around me should accept that being said from the outside. If I’m just witnessing this and I’m not a media member that is pretending not to be a media member. Saturday morning Preakness morning, they fire the manager at home game on Preakness Saturday, the media is already fractured. There’s going to be a couple of baseball people in the dugout. It’s Preakness day. Bal can’t be there. They’re married to the race like you do that in the general manager and the owner and everybody hides on Saturday and Sunday, they go off to Milwaukee, they hold a press conference in the dugout. Now this isn’t I’ll get to mark Andrews. In a minute, we’ll get to Harbaugh and Tucker and Tyler loop and like all of that, in a minute too. I don’t know what’s happened. Maybe it’s this orange Shitler running the country and what accountability and what honesty is and what integrity is, and what a lifetime of trying to build that kind of trust and not lying to people, whether you’re a politician, school teacher, journalist, whatever business owner, whatever you are, stand in front of whatever you are, because whatever that is, that’s what you are, and that has nothing to do with your baseball acumen, your drafting ability, your ability to sign pictures. That has to do with like what your parents taught you and and how you react as a leader of people and hiding like that, that, to me, done, that tells me all I need to know, just in a general sense, that these people don’t have their shiz together. John,
John Eisenberg 34:54
yeah, yeah. Well, I used to say always, you know, Rick Sutcliffe came in here in 1992 and. Taught Mike Musina how to be a pro, and that was stand at your locker Win, lose or draw. Oh, you know, after a good performance or bad performance. I used to learn a lot from people that would stand there after a loss, and that’s the same sort of thing. Just be accountable. It’s not that hard. It really isn’t that hard. But definitely things have changed, and you know, anything too, right? Well, no, what it is, more than anything. I mean, a lot of these teams now, you know, a lot of the media stuff is driven from a podium. It’s a lot more carefully guarded than it was, and access is, you know, the media itself is fractured, and so, you know, they’re able to govern who does or doesn’t get to ask questions more, and they’re careful with that, and can, and can use that sometimes, and, and so, yeah, it’s just, you they don’t hear as many tough questions as they used to or and it’s, and that’s not, I’m talking about a non podium setting. It just doesn’t happen as much anymore. And that’s just the way the media has gone. The way professional sports is it’s not just the Baltimore Orioles, it’s across all sports. The just is not as much access as as there was in my heyday as a sports writer, and so that’s sad. There’s no going back. And a lot of these guys have their own YouTube channels, and they’re putting out their own media, and there’s just no winning that war and so that stuff, and so they’re not used to those stuff, you know? They said, well, we just don’t have to answer those questions. So I think that’s where it stems from. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 36:32
8when you have an empty stadium and you’re asking people for money, and you’re in last place, and you fire your manager and you hide for three and a half days. I mean, I don’t John, that’s just below the bar. It is. No, that’s an organizational failure to the fan base, to to your own state. You’ve you’ve lowered your own standards, and you’re in last place, and you’re new to town, and you’re trying to get people who’ve already been treated like trash for 30 years to get back in and row the boat and believe in what you’re doing. I this is why I’m I, you know, you laughed at the mental health part of this. It’s just sort of like I don’t I’m not leading the walk out. I’m not anti Rubenstein. I’m not anti you’re pro Angelo’s. I’m I’m pro Baltimore. I’m pro like, what do you stand for? And what are we what are we going to stand for in regard to giving you top dollar and trying to support the $50 million player habits of of gunner Henderson and making the two $20 million you know, habits of this and and treating every fan like an ATM machine with streaming, with logo stuff, just all of it I’m in. But what’s your responsibility? What? Where’s the Bill of Rights? What do you owe the fans, other than old Bucha videos and $17 beers.
John Eisenberg 38:03
Yeah, yeah. Well, what you have to what you need to give them is consistent winning to start with. Start, as I said it before start right there. You know, I would settle
Nestor Aparicio 38:14
for consistent integrity. This is where you me and Luke gets always, because Luke always comes back to teams got to be better. And I hear that, I think that’s obvious. The people have to be better. Treat everybody better, welcome everybody. Just, dude, how about this? How about this? Just as something that happened a minute ago, that’s just kind of outrageous to me. They sent the text at nine in the morning and say they’re moving the game time from 630 to 430 right? I mean, I don’t, I don’t even know. Like, apparently, that’s cool, and some people showed up, and you can exchange the tickets and but what if you built your night around a sitter? What if you had a real job? What if there’s no doubt plan the whole family? What if you had to pick your like you’re trying to make a memory? Like, I’m not saying they should take a rain out. I’m not even making a case for the thunderstorm that did Friday night, whatever I’m just saying, moving the game time up seven hours before the game, and expecting people to move. And I was astonished that as many people were there, was there, let alone their own employees, and the people selling popcorn just, it’s just it has no emotional intelligence at all, none. And I’m not, look dude. I’m a dude. I’m 56 years old. You live in an Archie Bunker’s done dog I I’m I wasn’t born on emotional intelligence, but I was born on some like, what’s right and what’s wrong on an integrity level. And I don’t feel I’m not smelling anything that smells like these people have any sense of any of that when they’re moving game times the morning of the game. I’ve just never heard of such a thing. John,
John Eisenberg 39:42
actually, that one, and I think has been done, actually, was done back in, way back in the day in baseball, before they expected so many people to come to games, they would change the game times, you know, radar, yeah. Who knows what it’s based on. Anyway. Too much information. Yeah. But, but actually, they would do that kind of stuff, but they stopped doing it when TV got involved and and they couldn’t change it. But now they own their own stations and all this stuff. They can do it so but, yeah, I mean, there is no doubt that there’s a lot that needs to be done, but I will contend that if you show that you know what you’re doing on the field, it gets a lot easier to do what you do off the field. But what if you can’t? Well, I don’t believe that they
8Nestor Aparicio 40:30
know the rest of it. You can get right to me, and I’ve said that that’s what pista Angelos often got me thrown out 23 years ago. Like you don’t have to win to get me there, just make sure the hot dogs are good and the beer is reasonable, and the access is good, and everybody’s free, you know, like those are baseline for any business. My food’s good, but my toilets are dirty. No, that’s not good enough. It should it’s not good enough anywhere else. And and I John, you and I are locked in. I’m an Aparicio. They think they’ve got me forever. No matter how they treat me, they’re going to get my you know, once we start winning, you’ll come back. That was always the ethos of the Angelo’s family. You’ll be begging us for playoff tickets. You know, you’ll be left out if you don’t get in now. And I don’t know that these people can sell anybody on any of that. I think they need to, need to sell their people on the integrity and on the community and what they’re doing, and they haven’t done that so far, and when their general managers firing the manager and hiding, I mean, they always make the bobble heads of himself that this is why I’m not trying to be negative Nestor today, because they’re in last place. I’m trying to look at it full focus, as a column, as an outsider coming in and saying, What are you doing? What are they doing? Well, what are they doing? Well,
John Eisenberg 41:45
if they still, if there was still a newspaper here, and I still had 700 words to spend, it wouldn’t have been pretty on that three and a half day. Wait, no question about it, there
Nestor Aparicio 41:55
you go, football, anything you got any parting shot on the Tucker thing, or the Ravens thing, or just any because five minutes on that like,
John Eisenberg 42:03
8yeah, that’s good. Save that one for next time that next time they orchestrated that to go away and it will go away right away. It’s already gone away. And, yeah, it’s gone away. So we can talk about it next time. You know
Nestor Aparicio 42:17
what I’m going to do, John, I’m going to have you back on when we get the results of the investigation from the National Football League. Okay, all right, bird taste. What do you have got one stretch coming
John Eisenberg 42:29
later this summer, I’m put out once a week, usually an interview with an Oriole legend or somebody that was associated with the team. I’m also writing original stuff. I did a thing on the history of the Oriole bird and the debut of the Oriole bird in 1954 it totally blew up, I have to say, really, really big post. So just oral history, really at bird tapes.substack.com, and having a good time with it. Build up a very nice community there, and we’re just keep rolling. I’m
Nestor Aparicio 42:58
going to put you in of all time. Historian, anytime I have an Oriole question, I do have this. Did you see the Louis Aparicio RFK Stadium batboy picture? Does that mean anything to you? No, no, okay. Oh, it does. It doesn’t mean any do you have a minute or do you really have to go? Because, like, I have to go, you have to go. Yeah. Do me a favor, go to my Facebook and find the picture of Louis Aparicio in 1963 at RFK Stadium, and note the Bat Boy. Jim Henneman,
8John Eisenberg 43:30
oh, okay, I will check it out. That’s great. John Eisenberg
Nestor Aparicio 43:34
can be checked out at the bird tapes at sub stack. I’m Nestor. We’re W, N, S T, stay with us. How?
