It wasn’t a World Series year or even a playoff berth but the summer of 1989 brought aboard a whole generation of Baltimore Orioles fans who still remember the magic of Why Not? Author Ryan Basen relives tells Nestor his journey in his new book about his Memorial Stadium memories and finding his “why” amidst a summer of childhood baseball.
Nestor Aparicio discusses the Baltimore Orioles’ 1989 season with author Ryan Basen, who wrote a memoir titled “Death of a Childhood” about the team. Basen, a fifth grader at the time, found solace in baseball amid personal challenges, including anxiety and family issues. The Orioles, expected to lose 100 games, instead finished second in their division. Basen’s book recounts the team’s unexpected success, the personal impact of the season, and the broader cultural context of the late 1980s. Aparicio highlights the significance of the 1989 season, including the team’s rebuilding phase and the announcement of Camden Yards.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Orioles, 1989 season, Ryan Basen, memoir, childhood, baseball, anxiety disorders, family tragedy, Camden Yards, Baltimore, sports, nostalgia, Gen X, sports miracles, fan experience.
SPEAKERS
Ryan Basen, Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, positively into the crab cake season because it’s last place baseball and because I’m not really interested in Edmonton and Florida and Oklahoma City and the rest of all of this. We’re going to be doing the Maryland crab cake tour at Green mount station in Hampstead this Thursday, we will be giving away the Back to the Future scratch offs from the Maryland lottery. Also powered up by our friends at Curia wellness, our friends at Liberty pure solutions as well. And we’re going to be at fade leaves at Lexington market next Friday. Also got a new dates. We’re going to be at readers crab house later on in the month, up in Reisterstown. I’m working on a show at the Y in Randallstown at the pool for summertime. And we’re also going to be at the new Costas in Timonium. And yes, it is open, so stop in the old grandstand grill there if you’re anywhere, right near curio wellness, right near the racetrack, right near a York in Timonium or padonia. Let’s see our friends at Costas. No crabs Acosta, cintamonium, you got to go to Dundalk to get those. This guy wrote to me a couple of months ago. I’m a little remiss. I was like, that’s a long summer. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about pennant race, baseball and all that. The book is called Death of a childhood. It’s not nearly as terrible as it sounds. A memoir The 1989 Why not Baltimore Orioles? And I think timing is always everything. Ryan bassin is about to join us. He is an author here, lives down in the DC area and writing, but I don’t know that he’s a full time author, but we’re gonna about to find out. He wrote to me, said, I wrote this book. You want to have me on? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I’ll have you on. Then I went to Vegas and I came back. Then Justin Tucker, and then last place, and losing and losing and losing and runners in scoring position, losing and losing at bad pitching and and then Jim Henneman died last week, and 1989 Orioles came back in so many ways. Had Charles Steinberg on, I had Rick Vaughn on. I’ve, I mean, even Alan McCallum has brought that up as his, you know, the moment where he became an Orioles fan. Meanwhile, I’m sitting around here talking about like Bobby grits with John Eisenberg and rich Coggins and Al Bumbry, everybody comes into baseball, I guess at a different time. If you are a lifer fan, hopefully you didn’t come in this year. It’s kind of bad part of the movie. But I would say, Ryan, this 89 thing that you’ve done, it’s amazing to have you on, because when Jim Henneman passed away last week, and we had a huge thing here, and you know, everybody from Jim Palmer and Tim Curtin down to the ball boys world, I mean, I saw Freddie Tyler. I saw people there. And it the 89 things, like in the middle of all of it, because apparently you fell in love with baseball at that time. I was working at the evening some with Ken Rosenthal and Jim Henneman and I found tear sheets from the day after Phil Bradley had six RBIs at Fenway Park of me having a headline story with Mike belecki. You know, pitching from Dundalk and baseball was such a heartbeat of everything. And if you were a boy in Baltimore in 1989 and you were Alan McCallum or, I mean, Luke was four or five, but it but it was the heartbeat of our city. And it’s a pleasure to welcome you on anybody that has a passion project to a write a book. I have been so infected. Write a book about something they’re passionate about, I have been so affected, and get it to market. God bless you. So good luck with your book. Happy Father’s Day, man.
Ryan Basen 03:18
Thank you. Yeah. Really appreciate that. Give
Nestor Aparicio 03:21
me the lowdown, man, like, what’s your what’s your story? Man, I’m Aparicio. What do you want to know about
Ryan Basen 03:29
8me? Let me tell a little bit about myself first. And kind of how, you know, I came into this this season, really, and how, you know, as you mentioned, really fell in love with that. It was team, really, with baseball. You know, I was a fifth grader when the season started. It was a season that I’m sure many of your listeners realize. Remember that they were expected to lose 100 games again for a second. You’re a
Nestor Aparicio 03:50
fifth grader. Did you? Did you go to fantastic fans night in 88 or no? No,
Ryan Basen 03:55
no. I was growing up. Yeah. I was growing up in Rockville, the DC suburbs, so it was a bit of a hall to get to Memorial Stadium, different
Nestor Aparicio 04:01
to getting on the bus in Dundalk for me. I mean, we all had a different pathway, right? I gotcha. So they came to you on, like, television, right? Like home team sports kind of thing, right? Yeah, exactly.
8Ryan Basen 04:10
Home Team sports. And then DC 20 carried the road game. So we didn’t even get all 162 games that year. You know, it was, I think home team sports maybe had most of the home games, and like DC 20, maybe carry, I’m guessing here, but maybe half the rude games
Nestor Aparicio 04:26
that was typical baseball in the late 80s. Yeah, yeah. And you come into this and they had won the World Series when you were a puppy, and then they lost all these games. And now 89 happens. And this is not on tipping your story is the story of everyone your age I know in Baltimore who’s now, um, you know, as gray as I am at this point, for all of us sitting around, waiting around from 83 Yeah, but once you get the bug, right? I mean, Alan McCallum always says to moves, 89 for him, 89 for him. Little younger than me, and that’s, that’s not, and didn’t grow up in a house where my father was infected with baseball. My last name was Aparicio. How? Did you come into it in rockville? Was your dad, family, your mom, neighbor? How does a kid find baseball in Rockville, Maryland, when there were no nationals or senators, right?
Ryan Basen 05:09
Yeah, I mean, I found baseball just playing baseball, starting out around 8687 you know, just playing in, you know, in youth leagues with friends, and that’s what I started following. So 86 season is the first MLB season that I followed. And I followed the Orioles and the Mets. For some reason, we had just gotten a cable package, and we had wwor, which had a bunch of Mets games. And of course, it was the 86 Mets, so you’re glued to that. But the same time the oath, if you remember, were pretty good that year. They still had Murray and Cal and Fred.
Nestor Aparicio 05:39
8That was the Lee Lacey Don Ossie Fred Lynn era moniker.
Ryan Basen 05:44
And they were, I think, two and a half games out in mid August. And so, you know, we were following two pennant races, two division races, with the Mets, and then, you know, they’re pretty much a clinch by July. So it became easier to watch the O’s then, and then they just collapsed. It was Earl Weaver’s comeback season, and also his last season. And I think they, I’m pretty sure my math is right there. I think they went 14 and 42 to close the season. So that was it. You know, it wasn’t
Nestor Aparicio 06:10
good. And, you know, I worked at the paper every night, at that time, at the evening sun, and I did the scoreboard page. I’m the one that had to put the statistics in every night when they were losing those baseball games. Is the first year that I was at the newspaper. So, I mean, I remember all of this. I remember every J Tibbs and Phil Bradley and all that. So 89 comes, and you had yourself a summer that you’re writing about four decades later.
Ryan Basen 06:33
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can’t talk about 89 without talking about 88 because, remember, they lost 21 games throughout the season, and they decided to finally rebuild, and so they get rid of Murray and Lynn Bucha, all these veterans, and they start this 89 season with all these rookies. And, you know, basically cast offs guys like Finn Hewitt, who played most of the season in the minors, hadn’t even played like anywhere professionally. So they have not an MLB in 88 they throw Jeff Ballard out there again open that maybe this will be the year that he clicks. And they were just not expected to do anything. So it became this really romantic story. You know, even in April, there were 500 and I remember coming back from a little league game with a coach who’s like, but the Orioles are in first place. You know, they were like, six and six, but it was like remarkable that they weren’t Oh 12, and we started following them, you know, watching them, and they had a lot of really good young players, you know, Mike deveroub, Brady Anderson, Steve Finley, just in the outfield alone. Billy Ripken was probably his third or fourth year. Then Craig Worthington is a rookie. Mickey titleton was a cast off from Oakland, and all these guys just kind of came together. And as late as, like, I want to say, June title, since leading the league in home runs, and then when he goes down with an injury in mid August, I think he was leading all catchers in RBIs, and maybe homers as well. But it was just this. You had these guys that came out of nowhere, guys we had never heard of. And you know, even at 1011, years old. You know, I knew, I understood enough is the fourth season I’d watch baseball and become obsessed with it. And so I understood enough that, like, this isn’t supposed to happen, like you’re not supposed to have a team, especially in that time you’re not when there, there wasn’t, I guess there was free agency, but it wasn’t, you know, a situation we have teams that can really turn around in one year. Like, in fact, at to that point, no team in the history of baseball had ever come from last place one season to winning the division or league the following season would happen in 91 but this is 89 part of
8Nestor Aparicio 08:34
it was, you know, the deals with Brady Anderson and bodker and Finley and just, you know, all of those young guys that kind of came together at that time. And the weirdest part was that, you know, that Eddie wasn’t a part of it, right? So, like, you know, that was the juxtaposition, from a media standpoint, 1989 is auditioned by subtraction and all that. And certainly didn’t bode well for Eddie, that they were competitive after he left. But, you know, Eddie came back at his fifth, 500th year. And, you know, it’s so honored. I was a kid that was an Eddie Eddie Memorial Stadium guy, and 79 you know, all of that era, but the 89 thing was fresh. Also, Hall of Fame manager Cal senior had been fired the year before. Cal Junior still playing on the team, you know, Billy’s into the mix at that point as well. So yeah, and you know, the other part of that was fantastic fans and and you should go listen to the Charles Steinberg and the and the Rick Vaughn pieces from last week, as you know, true historians of the team, as they are fantastic fans, like I attended that I was 20 years old at the time, working at the paper, and my dad went to that game with me. The Rangers game in 88 they announced a new stadium. So 89 also had, they were clearing dirt and putting a shovel in the ground, starting Camden Yards. And, you know, it was all it had been argued in 86 and 87 really about like whether port Covington, you know, was going to be where the stadium. Was going to be, or whether they were going to build on the memorial stadiums. There was always a question about this. Once this got done and we were keeping the baseball team, this is coming from a broken kid who lost the Colts at 15, right? In 84 right? So once 88 team stinks, 89 you wake up. First things first. We had hammer jack, so that’s good. Now it’s tomorrow, one, um, but, but really, Camden Yards was going to get built, and the fact that the team was staying and the Colts were gone, and football was probably never coming. I mean, I, you know, nobody here ever thought football was coming until it came, because, like, it was all Bucha and but I’ll say this the hope of this stadium as the backdrop, and you’re a kid, but as an adult to think, all right, we’re keeping the team. I don’t know what this stadium in this warehouse thing downtown is going to be. It was kind of a nebulous kind of thing until we all got into it and saw what it was going to be. And Janet Marie had brought forth. But 89 also had that part of we’ve saved the franchise. Frank has come back, and you know, Jim Palmer will tell you Frank and so, but Brooks was Frank was the reason that that they won in 66 and my cousin, like the whole deal, right? But now you got Frank running the team. You got all this young talent, I wouldn’t say, dissimilar to what the last two years have been. But nobody looked at Brady Anderson or Finley the way they look at gunner Henderson or Jackson holiday or ruchman like they’re going to the Hall of Fame. Nobody thought her chilling was going to the Hall of Fame, and he isn’t, but he probably should keep his mouth shut. But you know what? It’s all over with now, but, um, but, but that talent that they had there, you know, it got him through one year and into the stadium. And, I mean, look the oral Z tell you, since you were a kid that they sputtered and sputtered, and they’ve had horrific ownership. They had a beautiful stadium. They’ve had assets like Cal Ripken, and they’ve had ass hats like Albert Bell, you know what I mean. So they’ve had it all but 89 to seed you. You’re still watching every game that this, the theme in your book is, has changed your life, right? It put you on a pathway, right? Yeah.
Ryan Basen 12:07
I mean, there’s a lot going on, you know, outside of baseball for me at the time. So, I mean, I was just started adolescence, essentially during the beginning of the season, you know, I had, I was a pretty happy, free spirited kid, and then all of a sudden, these anxiety disorders just kind of hit me, and I had no idea, and I had no idea what was going on so and in addition to that, we had some family tragedy, you know, my grandmother got diagnosed with terminal cancer. My mom suddenly is not around as much. And then finishing elementary school, they had redrawn the school boundaries. So the same kids that I’ve been going to school with from, you know, K to five, all of a sudden, we’re getting pulled in different directions. And I was, my parents made the decision send me to a different school, starting with middle school, and that started with September of 89 but it was always kind of haunting me, the specter of going to a new school and being pulled away from friends, you know, while all this other stuff is going on with family and, like, inside my head. And so the O’s that season really became a refuge for me, you know, as as so much was going on, it was an escape, you know, not just going to the few games that I went to, but also, just like you said, you know, watching despite every game that I could and diving into this, this miracle, you know, they really presented for me one last miracle. Pull back to, you know, I was alive for the Miracle on Ice, but I was two years old, and so obviously no recollection of that had been told about, you know, other sports miracles, and you know, the Miracle Mets, which, you know, unfortunately at the expense of the O’s. But I had never seen anything like that. You know, just to me, it was all just kind of history. And to be experiencing it myself and to see this with my own eyes, this, it really was a miracle, like they were everybody was picking to finish last or close to last, and they’re, all of a sudden, at the All Star break, they’re like, seven and a half games up. And we’re starting to believe that this, this is going to happen, like there was a down year for the rest of the ales. Remember, this is there’s seven teams in a division where
Nestor Aparicio 13:56
you’re going, but all I can think about is me sitting with my girlfriend, Wendy, over cheat cheese, eating salsa, and watching them lose the last game to Toronto. And every time I bring Greg Olson on, or I see Dave Johnson, I do all I can do to not bring it up. You know, it’s funny, like, you know, I, you know, all these years later, it’s like, you know, I lived through 83 and 79 I mean, Charles Steinberg was bragging about 79 the other day, and I’m thinking 79 was the greatest summer of my life. Like that, if I were to write the romantic book, I was 10. I was between sixth grade and seventh grade. My dad, I went to every game in 79 I mean, I went to 31 games in a row in 1979 before they lost, they were 31 and Oh, at games I went to at home before they lost, Steve trout pitched a six inch, shot out. I’m still trying to chase him around with Rick tellinger. I’m going to get him on for Steve trout writes like kids books now. It’s crazy, right? So all of these years later, this, you know, greatly affected you, and clearly you turned out all right. Did baseball save your soul? Ryan basin,
Ryan Basen 14:59
8um. I don’t even say my soul, but it definitely helped it more than anything. It kind of put off having to deal with all the crap that was going on, you know, my life outside of baseball, you know, not just following the O’s that year, but also, I think
Nestor Aparicio 15:13
baseball is escapism. I don’t think there’s any question about that, and I think I’ve seen that two years ago, when I went out there in the clinch era and saw people, literally, older folks. These are the people I really want. I mean, I had Clancy on. I said, these are the I wanted to win for you. I mean, I was 15. They won the World Series. I was with my dad. My dad’s dead. My kid doesn’t care. You know, I like, you know, I had my moment. You know, I’ve had two Super Bowls, I’ve written books. I mean, I’ve had all my moments with sports. But I want everybody else to have their moment. You haven’t had yours. Luke Jones has an ad is so I’m in there kind of punching for all you young guys. You know, as I get a little older, and want that for the city. But the escapism part, I can’t begin to tell you how I’ve seen it with my own eyes, to go out to Camden Yards and see people on a clinch night sitting all alone with their radio and their score book out in left field, not one person, not two, not five, lots of people who just clearly sit at home and the Orioles are a companion to them in the way their animal is, you know, in in literally people who are alone baseball. Maybe it’s that am radio thing. And I’ve owned an am radio station for three decades. My dad would have the little white thing in his ear listening to chuck and Bill and taking the transistor radio to bed with you at night. You’re a different kid. You had it on TV, all right. I mean, you’re ot sports. But
Ryan Basen 16:31
you know, the funny thing is, like we I listen to a lot of end of games on the radio because I had to go to bed. You know, the games then most of them even locally, started at 730 and so April, May even into June, and certainly September, it’s the school year. And so, you know, I’m going to bed in like, the seventh inning that, you know, once in a while I was able to stay up like the the game that Tim Hutt won on a home run, and, you know, the bottom of the ninth, the two outs in September against Cleveland. But for the most part, I’m going to bed in the seventh inning. But I had a little clock radio, you know, right next to my pillow, up there on little headstand. And so I used to put the games on. I think it was probably John Miller. I mean, I couldn’t. Oh,
Nestor Aparicio 17:09
yeah. Totally John Miller, Joe Angel, right then, yeah, sure,
8Ryan Basen 17:14
yeah. And so listening to those guys, so I consume plenty of that season on the radio, especially some of the ends of these big games. But it was combination of that
Nestor Aparicio 17:24
Olson with the curve balls in Oakland, yeah, all night long, I was at the paper that night. We were listening to the game on the radio. I mean, you know, like I have, I worked at the paper on deadline, putting the box scores into the paper. So the Orioles were, you know, every part of my life, and Ken Rosenthal and Jim Henneman were at the game in Chicago, at the game in Oakland at four in the morning when their Radio Shack, you know, trs, it stood for trash. Trs, 80. Trash 80 would break down, and the couplers wouldn’t, wouldn’t work, and I’d have to take dictation with the phone up on my ear down at Gower Street while I’m watching my car get broken into out on Guilford, you know. So Ryan basin is here. He has a book on the 89 Orioles. The Why not 89 or the book is death of a childhood. So I you know, we got to have a happier title than that. It is Father’s Day. Somebody why they’re gonna buy the book and why they’re gonna enjoy it,
Ryan Basen 18:18
Ryan, I think if you remember that season, you know, you really enjoy it, because the book is essentially half about that season. It’s about, you know, in detail, and how the team was assembled, how they were expected to do nothing, how they came together, made this incredible run and carries you all the way through the season, up until the last weekend. You know, as you referenced that, that weekend in Toronto, where they had the chance to become the first team in Major League history, and over 100 years of baseball to go from worst to first of the season. I think also, even if you’re not into baseball, or if you have, you know, similar interests as I did, or similar experience, rather, I should say was that, you know, is if you’re around my age, I think any Gen Xer would appreciate this, because growing up, you know, with baseball in the late 80s. It was a very different time, you know, and things changed immediately in 1990 with some of the media deals and the lockout and such and so going back to revisit, you know, a different time in in Baltimore, in DC, you know, with the Orioles, with MLB, and also we stuff that was going on outside of baseball with me, you know, as I mentioned, you know, dealing with some anxiety disorders that just kind of hit me out of nowhere, and not having really any idea what’s going on, and not feeling like I could talk to anybody about this. This is always the part that everybody loves to hear. But it was, you know, as a Gen X boy, it wasn’t necessarily allowed, felt like to talk about these kinds of things. And I know there, I’m sure there were 1000s of other kids that also had to repress these feelings. So I talk about what it was like to to live through that as these, you know, as I mentioned before, I was very free spirited kid, and all of a sudden to have these disorders and have these like weird thoughts and suddenly not want to be recognized in public, even by my little league coach when I made a great play. You know. The game, it was just strange to go through that. So I think people who went through similar experiences can really can empathize with that. And I think anybody who has kids now, who are, you know, dealing with anxiety, can draw some lessons from this, as far as, like, what science to look for, how to recognize this, and you know, how to help kids that are going through similar situations. You doing
Speaker 1 20:19
8well now, yeah, I’m doing okay, listen,
Nestor Aparicio 20:22
dude, if you want to get out of the anxiety business here, especially if it comes to you, naturally, don’t watch the Orioles right now. I mean, like, you know, this has been so you’re still, you’re still stuck in the soap opera. You’re still wishing an open
Ryan Basen 20:35
Yeah, I mean, I made the transition, you know, growing up in DC, when the NATs moved here.
Nestor Aparicio 20:40
Oh, you’re one of those. Are you all right? Nice having you on the show. Good, good. How was that parade a couple years ago? It was enjoyable. I can’t bear trots on for an hour this week. So you can we, we can share the caps love, at least for that, you know. But most of us up here don’t really want much to do with most of you down there, especially when it comes to the football team that we now share. I say that’s Maryland’s other football team now that they’re good. But you know, I mean, we’re Baltimore through and through it. It’s always interesting to me. And this goes back to the capital center in the 80s and whatnot, where I would bump into a guy like you at a capital center thing, and you’d have on, like, a Redskin hat and an Orioles shirt. I’m like, Yeah, dude, pick one. You know what? I mean? Like, don’t you know we don’t. Well, that was our team. I mean, I know, I know it was always weird, and now you have your own team, and now we have an empty stadium and an empty soul.
8Ryan Basen 21:27
Well, you don’t have an empty stadium when the team is good and
Nestor Aparicio 21:32
the team’s not good, right now, yeah,
Ryan Basen 21:34
I know it was the last couple years. It’s might just be a hiccup. There was something
Nestor Aparicio 21:37
8about the 10,000 empty seats at the playoff game last year that really stirred my soul. Oh yeah. It really disturbed me, in a way for like, my dad took me out in 74 for the playoffs against the Oakland A’s. They were the first team I ever hated. And even then, you know the stadium, you know, like you can look at the pictures, the stadium wasn’t full for playoff games in that era. But 7983 9697 what Camden Yards did for people in your area. I mean, I’m not, you know, there’s no question that, that traffic from buoy Laurel, PG County, Silver Spring, Rockville, even Northern Virginia, the tech sector in Reston and Dulles corridor, like all of that, they powered the Orioles at Camden yard. Larry King, will, you know, George Will. I mean, just the, just all of that, the Orioles store and all of that stuff, it worked. It recruited a whole generation of you, and then got the NATs, right? You go to more nats games and Orioles games, is that
Speaker 1 22:31
truth? Yes, it’s true. God, no, you know
Nestor Aparicio 22:37
because you wrote a book I’m going to channel Peter today for you know, you you youngins. It took the NATs over the years. Peter Angelo sat with me over a couple of high balls over at the barn, the one time in his life he had the courage to actually sit and answer some questions. He was aided by alcohol that night. He said, well, think there should be a team in DC. Let me tell you why it’s going to be like the Bay Area if there’s two teams elbow cancel each other out, and either one of them will be any good. And I’m thinking, Yeah, especially if you take all the cable TV money and suppress it and put in your pockets and your kids. So you know. So I know the truth, and I’ve written the truth. Ryan basin is written the truth. He has a book on the 89 Orioles, as well as growing up in some hard times. And obviously I love it. I love a redemption story, even if your redemption is through the NATs and they’re winning a World Series and having to trade the Orioles in death of a childhood is the memory memoir of a one year in the life of a pre teen, a time when oncoming puberty, family illness, a frightening new battle with anxiety disorders and impending school switch and a changing relationship with his closest confidant, his mom, threatens to change him from a happy, free spirited kid into a fraught early adolescent. It almost sounds like a kid’s book, but this is not a kid’s book, right? Not at all. No, it is definitely not a kid Yeah, not a kid’s book, yeah, yeah. But it could recommend. It could be right? I mean, it
Ryan Basen 23:53
got preteens. Teenagers could definitely read it and learn something from it and appreciate it. There’s a fair amount of profanity and some derogatory terms, and there being, you know, a boy in 1989 I
8Nestor Aparicio 24:04
read the truth. We saw that with our Weaver too. Yeah, yeah. I
Ryan Basen 24:07
mean, and that’s kids could read that book, right?
Nestor Aparicio 24:11
Well, hey, man, Happy Father’s Day. Good to you. Good luck with the book. I’m glad you came on shared some of your memories. I always forget about all you guys that, like the Orioles, that weren’t from around you know, that were more DC oriented, and I guess that’s leveled out at this point. I mean, any of your Oriole fans in that area still Oriole one that’s two or no, yeah. I mean, the nets have been set such a rich the nets have given all of you a real reason to go down to the ballpark and be involved, not recently, but that you know that that franchise fulfilled its potential much more so than our stadium is fulfilled. It’s over 30 years, in my opinion. Yeah, I think you’re
Ryan Basen 24:48
8right. I mean, when you get guys like Strasburg and Harper and Rendon, and then you add to that with Scherzer and the team they had, you know, I think they in the playoffs five times in eight years, and finally did win a championship. So he had a
Nestor Aparicio 25:00
couple of those really terrible heartbreaks, right? Like, I was on a Ravens bus coming back from maybe, like, Pittsburgh or someplace, or maybe it was a hockey bus. Now, it was a Pittsburgh, it was a longer trip where they imploded that night against the Cardinals. And like, everybody was watching on the bus at that game. I’m like, I mean, you guys were, you were going to work. I mean, like it was in, it was on when we got on the bus, which, like, we’re all Orio fans. Were like, oh man, you know, it’s like the Redskins winning the Super Bowl. And, you know, like, we just don’t want it, you know what? I mean, like, right? But I don’t know, I to be really honest, I Jim Irsay is death last week. I’ve done all this stuff about giving up the sword with the Indianapolis thing, which I did years ago. It just made me a better human. I got, I got, I mean, hating Dan Snyder is one thing, because I met him once, but, but, like, and, you know, for whatever the ownership is down there, delivered a championship, whatever. I mean, I’ve had my issues with the Leones people and whatnot. But, like, I don’t root against the wizards. They do poor enough without me, I don’t run against Ovechkin. He was always fine with me when he’s not hanging out with Putin and the Nationals thing, I have never had it in my soul to hate them, and maybe it was just because Peter was such a jerk and just the general sense, like, let those people have a good they built their own thing down there. They did it without any money, because Peter was completely tourniquet the whole thing. I mean, everything the Orioles did was to screw the NATs, and the NATs got a World Series out of it, which I think, like, good, good for all of you, you and Phil wood and everyone else who ever loved the senators. You know what I mean? For me,
Ryan Basen 26:32
yeah, and I kind of get what you’re where you’re coming from, you know, I because, as a fan of the Washington football team, you know, throughout the whole Snyder era, like I watched a lot of friends jump ship. You know, I need to tell them like you’re not welcome back when the bandwagon gets good again. No,
Nestor Aparicio 26:47
that’s bullshit. No, no, no, no, no, wait, no, no. You go in a restaurant, you get a bad meal, and the owner comes over, Wags finger in your face, and you leave. You don’t owe that. You don’t owe them any I push back on that after 35 years of that fanboy talk, I just do. I mean, I just do. I mean, I’ve dealt with these people who are behind pearly gates and Country Club people and billionaires. I look man, I helped get the stadiums built. I sat here and begged and said, sports is important. It’s important. It’s important. It’s important if the people that own it treat it the way it should be treated. That has not happened with our baseball franchise, and it’s not currently happening with the football franchise, see Tucker. So like, I, I’m, I’m, I come at it a little different than that. You know, they owe you. You don’t owe them, yeah,
8Ryan Basen 27:28
no, and that’s, it’s true, but it’s interesting, too, that so many people who were fans of the they were the Redskins, then, you know, jumped ship and became Ravens fans, or even, in some cases, started rooting for, you know, whatever. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 27:43
it’s easy to be a commander’s fan now they got a quarter. I mean, you know, there’s a reason to come back. And if you want to come back now, and you didn’t give Dan Snyder the hair off your platoon, good for you, go, go back. Wave your burgundy and goal, you know, the the R word and all that. I mean, y’all got to figure that out, because that, you know, like, yeah, get a name and pick a color scheme and go get them. You know what I mean? Go, go. Adam, you know? But, but is that it’s good for the region, when the sports teams are good. I will never make that argument. I like that. It’s good for conversation. Ryan, I got a role. Man, I’m on a time clock here, but I appreciate you. Good luck with your book for you know, and anybody that finishes a book, tip of the cap to you to get it done and hit that last page and and come back and visit again soon. All right, yeah, yeah. Definitely will appreciate Oriole series. And we’ll, we’ll kick up dust. Yeah, sounds great. We’ll talk about television rights and things like that. I’m Nestor. We are W, N, S, T AM, 1570 tasks in Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore positive.
