What is the real future of Baltimore baseball?

As Baltimore Orioles “owner” John Angelos fights with Wes Moore and the Annapolis folks trying to give him $600 million of our free money that he won’t take, our favorite sports and civic foil Bill Cole catches up on a summer of Orioles baseball, MASN misery and the kids going back to school.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

years, people, kids, baseball, school, john, team, 25th anniversary, roofs, asset, kevin, day, broadcast, good, city, money, week, pennsylvania, brown, plague

SPEAKERS

Bill Cole, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Looking back, w n s t tests Baltimore and Baltimore positive or positively into my 26 year your W and estate tax your 32nd year on the radio long enough that I remember when this place opened back in April of 1992. We are presented by the Maryland lottery we’re gonna be at Green mount station in Hampstead this week. It’s crabcake tour. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery and our friends at winter nation but it feels like the celebration of this 25th anniversary and the 25 stories of glory with wn St. We’re going to be presenting beginning in September. This month here it’s all about baseball bilkul and I know you’ve disappeared since I don’t know if you know this but you’ve been at the beach for like a month. The Orioles are in first place and they’re really good and there’s controversy and they throw their broadcast around and all of a sudden baseball and the Orioles and their broadcasts and first place I can’t get a Ravens word in Edge Lamar who Bill cold Lamar, he he so next month he’s not this month.

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Bill Cole  01:05

So I did hear a one of my you know, friends who is a over the top baseball fan. I mean, you literally had to be like an over the top baseball fan to stay. So like there’s already something sort of wrong with them. But, you know, he has proclaimed that like if they were to win the World Series, he would probably cry for days because he like, literally in his lifetime he can’t conceivably comprehend.

Nestor Aparicio  01:34

See under 40. Yeah, yeah. Oh, see, I’ve always wondered like, if you’re 23 Why do you like this? Right? I mean, like, like, I’ve wondered that. I love it. I think about this all the time when I give it my time. Every night, my three hours. I think about Aparicio and my cousin and growing up. And I’ll tell you what, I had lunch over Kenilworth the other day. And they got a little baseball diamond right where you park it’s literally right next to candlelight. I never knew it was there was a softball diamond. And I’m thinking man, I wish I had a glove in the trunk hits my ground or you know what I mean? Like I got baseball in my blood. So when people defecate upon me, you better check the last name and understand that like I, I came at this with a glove and a bat and ball in my hand before I remember anything. So like baseball is my first love. Like I know. I don’t even know. And I guess I don’t say that out loud often enough, but I should, right? Like this whole thing was born of baseball. We didn’t have a football team here. The first five years they even throw me out or mistreat me or run me all over the planet covered football games. It was all baseball, you know. And for all of my time at the sun. I spent eight years in the newspaper business we didn’t have a team was all Ken Rosenthal West Coast are playing the White Sox tonight. They’re going to Detroit this weekend. Who’s pitching Kevin Hickey? You know, whatever people are ish. I put I don’t know if you’re 24. Because I said this on the air. I’ve owned the station 25 years as of last week. So this is our 26th Summer, if you count 9098, which was a wash out year, right? That was the awful year and went through that with John maroon last week of drugs city. They’ve only been relevant. On in June, four of the years. Five really there was the one Palmera year they fell apart and fourth July. But they’ve only been in the pennant race four times in 26 summers that now let’s say pennant race. I mean, like, at all you’ve been watching, you know,

Bill Cole  03:36

two thirds can’t two thirds of baseball teams say that. Like other than the Yankees and the Red Sox, and you know, I mean, like can’t most of Major League because it’s such a screwy system, right? And you know, there’s no salary cap and all that other kind of

Nestor Aparicio  03:56

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watch the shot. He always said to me, he would never own the orals. He said, It’s not it’s not our system. He said I can’t compete with the Yankees. It’s not fair.

Bill Cole  04:03

So and that, and that is, I honestly think that is like one of the endearing things of baseball is that 80% of the teams and their fans all commonly commiserate, because we all hate the Yankees, we all hate the Red Sox, because they’re always good, and we’re never good. So, you know, you can go up and down the ALR and whatever. And the majority of the teams have no chance. And that has existed for most of my lifetime, right? And then that’s probably also what makes it so special when you go on the run. Because why don’t know, there’s not a guy on our team making more than minimum wage, right? Like whatever like you’re, you’re, you’re defying the odds. So that just makes it that much more exciting. Right? But I don’t know

Nestor Aparicio  04:54

much for an owner. Well, even when things are going well. You have confidence that this can be managed when he can’t even manage his play by play broadcaster. Like he can’t even put a television network that he was gifted. I mean, this guy is going to be afraid Oh of all Fritos before, it’s all over with because he’s owners, these MLP owners are gonna come in and run his ass out on a rail, like, this isn’t gonna end well, for John Angelos. John Angelos is not taking the steam to Nashville, he’s not you know him, Well, he’ll get money, but it’s not going to end well that like he’s going to be king and be loved, and own the team 10 years from now, I do not believe that’s going to be the case.

Bill Cole  05:33

So I don’t I don’t think that he wants to be the king. You know, I don’t I don’t think that being the Civic savior is something that appeals to him. I, you know, I think that family has done a lot of good, you know, with their money in the city. So I just don’t think that’s not his he didn’t make it. You know what I mean? Like, you know, he doesn’t necessarily have that sort of DNA. But like, Isn’t that always, I guess my concern is that if you’re an owner of another club, you are very disinterested in setting a precedent that some regulatory body can strip away, force you to lose value in your asset. Because they don’t like you. Whether you you know what I mean, like you can hate John, you can dislike the way it’s happening, you can even think that it’s degrading the value of other franchises. But the idea of setting precedent that I own this asset, and I’m going to operate it, and that there’s this body that’s going to come in and tell me that I have to sell it, which by default, will devalue it, right, because I’m not like, selling on my terms. I’m selling on someone else’s terms. Like it’s sort of anti American anti capitalism, like it’s very Russian communist, the

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Nestor Aparicio  07:13

Dan Snyder saying, it’s a great example of if someone digs in. I mean, the issue in the Angelo story, and this will be the heart of the issue is how much money the family really has. Because that’s part of the issue here is that they’re cobbling you see, they’re selling properties, that the inside Word, because I wrote, but by the way, for those of you out there, I haven’t even read this out loud. I put it out on the internet. 10,000 people have read my letter to John angelos, I will read it out loud, I’ll get it on the air, I’ll get it into the audio vault, I’ll do all of that. But when I wrote it, everybody’s talking to me all of a sudden bill. So you know, the reporter Chad Steele might not think I’m a journalist. I’m a journalist this week, buddy. So everybody’s talking to me. And the first text that came my way after I put it up at 930. On Tuesday morning, by 10 o’clock, a pretty well placed person sent me a text and said, You got everything right, except one thing, he ain’t a billionaire. That’s what somebody wrote to me that they have money problems. And I think that that is a fascinating backdrop to this, that the massive money’s dried up. Now keep in mind, the brother accused them of that in the in the paperwork last year, like Dan Connolly wrote a little bit about this in his piece of sports not but the notion that phrase,

Bill Cole  08:37

I would just rephrase it not money, I believe it’s probably a liquidity problem, right? Because

Nestor Aparicio  08:43

he’s got an asset worth a billion and a half dollars drops

Bill Cole  08:46

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of assets, lots of assets, they probably have assets like

Nestor Aparicio  08:49

Charles center that they don’t know what to do with, right, like literally, same problem, all of Manhattan has, we have a big building, and ain’t worth what it used to be worth. We don’t know what to do with it. People aren’t coming back to work. But for the for the baseball team. And just the main focus is this bill. And I would just say this as a citizen, the fact that this this issue with Kevin Brown, it’s going to linger on they’re gonna go to the West Coast, we’re going to forget about it. They’re gonna chant, you know, free Kevin Brown for a day or two and it’s fine. I guess he’ll come back and do his job. Pretend this never happened, I guess Palmer and mucked up and McDonough all of them who didn’t stand up for their partner at all. And everybody’s you can’t stand up Y’all good fired. I’m like, well, then you’re all being complicit in something that’s shitty. I mean, that’s awful. That that that everybody knows everybody’s in on it. But, but there are broadcast that and they can’t broadcast. So the weirdness of all of that gets taken over by the fact that the team’s really good. They’re gonna be really good. They’re gonna play next month, they’re gonna play into October even though Batista blew the game the other night, like, they’re the relevance of baseball and the fact that people are Talking about it. And the fact that Westmore needs to get at least done. And John’s getting pressured to some point now because of his own stupidity. I mean, nobody was talking like John Angelo’s three days ago, like, and this went on, he hid this for almost three weeks, this kid was suspended and run off for almost three weeks before it leaked out. So he almost had an airtight ship to throw his primary broadcaster off the air for a month. And have nobody even noticed it. Because they’re winning so many baseball games, but now, people are calling me and we’re peeling back the onion because Bill, the bigger question is, who’s running the place? Where’s the money coming from the sign? rutschman? Where’s the money? I’ve talked about this the last three weeks. I talked about it with Mike Rosenfeld last week. But like, at some point, there needs to be money to support the franchise to your point that they’re not Tampa Bay, there have to be sponsors, there have to be skyboxes, there has to be revenue, they have to be asked us in the seats, they have to sell ads, they and they’re not good at most of that and haven’t been and haven’t been very good, long enough to sell any of that to create that revenue. So that this becomes sustainable, sustainable. To your point, you want to go back to being awful again and have awful baseball players. The only way you do that is to make exceptional decisions with the money. And at least the lights are on again. At least we’re talking about it. And there’s some civic pressure. I mean, yeah, 50,000 people chanting free Kevin Brown inside the stadium on the broadcast that was being ignored by the broadcasters, but broadcast it on TBS. And people are, dare I say, woke?

Bill Cole  11:43

So I, you know, sometimes I get this, I guess I tend to be a conspiratorial type of

Nestor Aparicio  11:51

I know that. Probably, oh,

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Bill Cole  11:55

my question is like, Okay, if you smell smoke, there’s fire. Right? I, my assumption is that, when you’re a really bad baseball team you’re misbehaving is generally not noticed. Nobody notices like nobody cares. It doesn’t really matter. You do whatever you want. Nobody, there’s no consequences. Nobody’s coming to the games anyway. Like, it’s just us. None of it matters. And my assumption is, John Angeles has, like time as being intimately involved, has always sort of been under that veil. And then it’s when you go to the national spotlight, where all of a sudden, and you can hate this about reporters, you can do like what, but they will find reasons that you know, to create stories to because there’s interest. And some of those might be real, some of them might be overblown, some of them not, you know, like, like, this one about Kevin Brown seems fairly straightforward, right? Like, you know, John’s not gonna like talk about it, because that would just be the sort of straightforward way of handling it is

Nestor Aparicio  13:09

when the news comes out about how batshit it is how crazy it is. Then you then say like, I, I, I’ve talked to a lot of people since this story broke, and I wrote a letter to John Angeles, it is awake and it is woke all sorts of people to talk to me. And somebody said to me, and I want to ask you this because you’re an executive type around your bill koliko roofing. If nobody else can figure out John Angelo’s and he’s that sort of spot, you know, that sort of weird. House, Mike Elias getting along with him. You know what I mean? Like Mike, like Mike Elias is, is tied to him at this point. He’s fixed the thing on the field, they dealt for the pitcher from St. Louis last week, Flaherty and that that is what it is, then take on a lot of money or anything like that wasn’t a dramatic move was a good move. And I think it’s a move that better. From a baseball perspective, they’re a better team today than they were when they didn’t have him. So I’m in on all of that. But I’m just saying, is Mike Elias happy in this relationship? Or would Michaelides really be rather run in the cups, or, you know, are dealing with someone that’s not the owner, son, who’s putting his fingers into the broadcast, we just can’t help himself, but to do dumb stuff, because this is really dumb. I mean, aside from all of this, and not signing the lease, that might not not be dumb if he really wants to move the team to Nashville, if he really thinks he’s gonna get $300 million more than Steve Ashanti. If he really thinks he’s gonna get the parity clause taken out. If he really thinks he’s gonna build a skyscraper on top of a tunnel that sits underneath of you could speak to that you’re a roofer. They can’t build a 30 storey tower in parking lot. B. They can’t the land won’t support it. So Oh, there’s all sorts of issues as to how John’s going to get his piece in this lease. And word is from the state, he closed the sign on the lease and nobody’s negotiating anything, and nobody can get John on the phone. And what John wants is unreasonable, like his old man. And he speaks to His lawyers. And his lawyers are like when you give me 900 million instead of 600 million and give me squatters rights over the football team, then I’ll sign a lease. And so then there’s no lease we’ll work year to year,

Bill Cole  15:31

there’s a there’s a very fine line between visionary progressive civic leaders, and batshit crazy greedy Major League Baseball team owners. It’s a very fine line, meaning that if he would have behaved better for the last 15 years, and the team had, yeah, you forget the wins and losses. Now I

Nestor Aparicio  16:01

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have a friend here, right? But but he sits in that Skybox with no one around him,

Bill Cole  16:07

if they had the reputation that the Ravens have about in the community and, you know, like, I mean, reality or not, doesn’t matter. The Ravens have managed their brand, to where this is a Purple city with, you know, deep roots in the community. And, you know, I mean, they they go out of their way to enhance that brand, if the Orioles had that brand. And he came at this in a way to try and win the hearts and minds of the people. He’s like, he’s like Bob Kraft creating a city where they built the you know what I mean? Like Like there was nothing out there and now it’s like this, you know, suburb Metropolis outside of Boston or whatever.

Nestor Aparicio  16:54

This isn’t about him torturing Kevin Brown. This is about him torturing all of them. This is about Rob long coming on after the team blew the game. In a key situation in front of a free Kevin Brown crowd. Rob long comes home with an Oriole had an Oriole bird smiling after the game and has to be completely upbeat. Because if he’s too if he’s not upbeat enough after they lost John’s watching, they’re broadcasting for him for his pleasure for the king. And they can’t even I couldn’t work like that. No way I could that Sporting News Radio for two years. No way. I could sit here every day and do this worried about somebody tapping me on the shoulder saying I don’t like the stars on your drug city shirt. Make him circles. Like I like I can’t I can’t do that. And that’s what they put on the air every night for four hours. And now that we know Kevin Brown has been treated like that. We know the whole thing. Bill I haven’t I’ve told him. I listen. I told the story of San Francisco radio I want to because I want to tell you because I haven’t said it on the air yet. This is whatever they want. This is a real story. Okay. So Sunday morning. I woke up in beautiful ceilings Grove, Pennsylvania. You know where that is? I do not. You go to Harrisburg and you follow the river North about an hour but you don’t get all the way to Scranton or Williamsport. Right. So I went up to see Pat Benatar and Neil Geraldo. The spider, rock out in this line vineyard up in Sunbury home of wise markets. I went to the original wise markets and we have the same logo. It’s like this red thing going on in this old supermarket. It’s been there since 1950. Right. So I’m up in Sunbury, I wake up, get a coffee to get down the road that day Harrisburg, grab a little lunch with some friends in New York, and then the game is on. So I’m in the car for an hour listening from your back down into the city. And Jorge Mateo. And so I’m listening to the broadcast and it’s Melanie Newman, who’s awful, in general, She’s awful. But Brett Hollander and Jeff Arnold. It was Jeff Arnold, I believe during the game that day. So either way, Jorge Mateo comes up, and there’s nobody on base and he hits the ball up in the air, and the ball bounces around and oh my god, he’s a third base, a triple. I’m like a triple. And they don’t mention anything about the play other than it’s a triple my wife’s driving, I’m at like parked in. I look on my phone. I’m on Twitter because we’re listening to the game. My feet are up the windows are open. And I looked down and everybody’s killing the tail on Twitter, killing it. Shaking it watching the ball, carry the bat, the first base, all of these things that it should have been an inside the park home run. But he completely jacked it. If you go watch it in the postgame you apologized for it in Spanish, that should have been running, you know, whatever. Right. And on the radio broadcast, it was Just to triple. So now I’m trusting Melanie Newman and Jeff Arnold, Bret Hart, and I can’t blame them Rob long, any of them. They work for a goon. I mean, they work for a buffoon good. And they’re not allowed to criticize anything about their players, anything. So when an error is made, it was just this official score must have screwed that up. I like It’s insane how off the rails this gets when I’m listening to 98 Rock and I’m listening to the broadcast of the game, and the broadcaster’s are terrified to say what they’re seeing on the field. I mean, the bill that really happened on Sunday, and I had no awareness of Kevin Brown, I just said to my wife, these broadcasters suck, you know, it’s all happy happy, happy if you listen to Melanie Newman on the radio, everything’s the greatest awesome I mean, if you get a fish Soros for all of those superlatives that are there Mr. stock gets the source and Dundalk high and the SATs, that everything should this the greatest cheeseburger the greatest? Oh my god, we gotta you gotta get this crab cake. You got it? Okay. I mean, sell it all you want. But there goes your credibility, you know, and that’s something that was never for sale for me, which is why you sponsor me, because this mic, it’s, it’s my truth. You may not agree with it, but it’s my truth. You know, it’s, it’s not somebody putting me up to bullshit you? Because that’s not what I do. It’s not who I am. And I’m offended by it. In any walk of life. Okay,

Bill Cole  21:36

great. What are you gonna do about like, like, it’s their asset, they can run it however they want. The only place where it gets a little bit interesting for me, is when the city state gives them hundreds of millions of dollars. I believe that creates some level of responsibility to the larger public that you don’t just get to behave as any private business would behave. You mean,

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Nestor Aparicio  22:09

like throwing out legitimate media members? And well, that I don’t think

Bill Cole  22:13

that I mean, there are there are laws that govern the country, right? Like, there’s a lot of, you know, human resource related stuff. So you still can’t just like treat people, you know, in a way that is not consistent with the laws of the country. Right. So they don’t they’re not well, though, I was gonna say they’re not above the law, but they technically are, because they have any trust status, and they’re allowed to be a monopoly. And there’s a lot of other problems that that creates, but

Nestor Aparicio  22:43

not to mention the tax breaks.

Bill Cole  22:45

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But you’re right. I mean, I mean, look, we can complain about it all you want. The fact is that 15,000 People were screaming, free Kevin Brown from inside the stadium after they paid for the ticket, watching the team, play on the field, drink in the beers and eat not dogs. You can scream, whatever you want. If I’m from John Angelo’s like, I don’t care, come on in, scream whatever you want. Like that’s just their approach. That’s just their I mean, bad good. Yeah, I

Nestor Aparicio  23:19

just what they believe all that matters is winning field. And that’s probably right, based on based on

Bill Cole  23:24

who you think believes that? John Angeles? No, he doesn’t. If you believe that they wouldn’t suck forever, right?

Nestor Aparicio  23:32

They tried hard to not suck. That’s the word. That’s the other part of this. They will try and

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Bill Cole  23:37

they don’t wins and losses are an irrelevant statistic. It is a business that generates a profit or some other financial benefit in some other way. That they, that that’s how they’re managing cook. You asked me earlier about

Nestor Aparicio  23:57

appreciating asset right? He’s got an asset his father bought 440 million, it’s worth 2 billion now. So just on the face of it, there’s that

Bill Cole  24:05

I think Mike Elias puts his head down goes to work every day and does the best he can. Yeah knows that. There’s a better nicer job in his future somewhere. Like Kevin Brown those that too, right? That’s, that’s good enough to keep them going. Because here he is

Nestor Aparicio  24:21

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coal roofing and Gordian energy. He fixes things including my roof and I’m very, very appreciative. I still gotta pay the bill, by the way, they sent me that you can find them at a coal roofing and you’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. Look, you want to talk about this baseball thing? You’re you haven’t completely you’re not into that yet. What what what have you been doing? I mean,

Bill Cole  24:41

I don’t I don’t get into this because he it’s a futile discussion. The the ownership of professional sports teams can do whatever they want. They always do whatever they want. And there’s nothing that any of us can do about it. You either choose to I’m

Nestor Aparicio  25:00

sure the game or not in a

Bill Cole  25:02

way that you want, right you, right? You cheer for your team and however it is that you want. So other than that, I mean, it is what it is. I don’t know. I don’t know, I’ve been working. We’re doing a lot of a lot of solar projects, a lot of excitement around all that. It’s been pretty good. Summertime, we’re obviously doing a lot of roofs and, you know, for all the schools trying to get them ready for the kids to go back. And I can’t really believe that it’s like almost mid August. That’s not cool.

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Nestor Aparicio  25:30

Well, my 25th anniversary was last week, and we did it in Thursday. Sorry, did drug city but I wanted my truck city shirt to make you jealous, because everybody that comes to drugs? Yeah, it’s great. Sure. So I had Johnny Oh, on Friday, he was talking about, you know, opening all the important stuff. And I’m sitting here talking about a broadcaster, but you know, being thrown out of a first place team, and we’re all into it. But this is

Bill Cole  25:54

what was the most interesting thing Johnny talked about.

Nestor Aparicio  25:57

Well, I tried to get the lines fixed on Joppa road. I think we were you know, involved in that. You know, I think it’s it was he’s a teacher, right? So it lent itself to he’s fixed to all my schools. He’s in Dundalk, we fix Colgate, but getting Delaney getting these other schools to where Dundalk is now because if I tell you what, you go to Dundalk High School, and you see the school physically, and you go to Colgate Elementary where my my son lives where I went to school where my son went to school, my mother went to school. And you see what a new school represents in a community. I mean, even my son’s like, I’m not leaving here, we got a brand new school, this the value of the homes are going to be where it is because you can you know, a family can always come in here and have a kid that’s or three kids that can walk to school, two blocks away in a relatively safe neighborhood in the county, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think he he talked a lot about schools and going back to school. And keeping in mind, and I think for and you know, this, I should say keeping in mind you have kids, this has been a wacky couple of years to have kids, you and I were on the zum zum. All during the plague wearing masks for two and a half years, whatever it was, we’re finally getting some sense of normalcy. And by the way, my son and his wife both on the on the couch with COVID last week, knocked out for a week. So this COVID thing, it’s been three and a half years, knock on wood, my wife and I are still like walking the earth and I’m elbow, bumping people and doing all that. But I think for school and going back to school, for kids who weren’t allowed and homeschool. I mean, every kid that’s in the 10th grade right now, it’s kind of a little screwed up because they spent sixth, seventh and eighth grade on a zoom call having school, every kid in the country in the world really had that happen. I think this sense of normalcy, and like the kids are going back to school and everybody had a good time at the beach and the baseball teams good the football, like it’s starting to feel like normal a little bit. And the school part and normal is the most important thing because like, I think that that is the blip. And all of this forget interest rates and Trump and Biden and whatever. 1015 years from now, what’s the outcome of a plague? The outcome is we have a generation of people we’re trying to get prepared, so that they take care of my ass when I’m eating, putting later on, and, and sending them back to school and having something that’s normal again. I think that that was probably you asked about Johnny Yo, I think kids going back to school is probably the biggest thing. Yeah,

Bill Cole  28:29

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look there, the school conversation is pretty wide ranging what I mean if you go into a school that has not been renovated or rebuilt, and then if you think about the length of usefulness of a school in 50 plus years, right, like how much changes in 50 years. So the stark difference between a school built in the last five years, and a school that was built 50 years ago. I mean, it’s you just can’t even comprehend it. Now, I say that. But at the same time, it’s actually not that different. Like our the way we choose to teach kids and all that, like it hasn’t really changed. And I think I don’t envy teachers. One bit. I think they have the most difficult job in the whole entire world. We went from a Henry Ford assembly line memorize process of schooling, to now you have Google. So like, what am I really teaching you? And like? I don’t think they figure that out. I think that’s still and that now, before we even got a chance to figure that out. Well, now we have AI and it’s writing our papers for us. The calculator came

Nestor Aparicio  29:43

along when I was of that age, right? Like in the 70s. I had to figure out math by the time my kid came along in the 90s. They had a calculator to just do it. And then kids can’t do it. They don’t know how to do long division like whatever. But I mean I had

Bill Cole  29:57

calculators too but they still made you Do it like you weren’t allowed to have the calculator, which seems kind of stupid because it isn’t like calculators are now gonna

Nestor Aparicio  30:07

deal now that don’t know, north, south, east and west. I mean, I had a 35 year old employer didn’t know which way north was because he just never had to learn. And like I and I don’t under like to them Google Maps is the way they’re, it’s not Oh, York, Pennsylvania is that way and DC is that way. And oh, we go that way. I’m gonna go to Hagerstown and maybe that’s the way to the Bay Bridge, and that’s east, and the sun comes up every day, I actually ran into a girl. It’s a funny story ever. I ran to a girl in Manhattan. And I came up with subways before, I think I told you. So in the era when an app was like four years ago, maybe it was during the plague before the plague, it came up. Very, very pretty girl at the top, and she was in her 20s. And I thought, well, maybe I look good today. You know, she says to me, Hey, do you know which ways West am I’m going. And I looked up and I saw the sun. I’m like, well, the sun sets in the west. So it’s that way. She’s like, really, I didn’t know that. Like, she literally didn’t know that. And I thought, you look normal limited ago, you look like somebody I go on a date with or I’d be happy to have as my daughter. You look educated. I mean, she, but she just didn’t know. And I’m thinking to myself, and you wonder why I think it’s a big deal to Johnny. Oh, send the kids back to school?

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Bill Cole  31:27

No, I don’t. So the kid education stuff is something that will take, you know, a long time to unpack Right? Like, let’s see how useful these kids are when they become adults and all that and I yeah, I’m, I’m worried and nervous. But kids are also resilient. So who knows? The other thing that we have to get our arms around is that, like, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in our world that that the change got accelerated. So like Doom, for instance, right? Like, that was not existed probably 10 years before the plague, right? But nobody

Nestor Aparicio  32:08

do our codes are the other one. Friendly. QR codes were like the metric system, they were dead. And now I can’t order a friggin taco when I go out without a QR code. Right.

Bill Cole  32:19

I also think even if you know, this, this probably follows some level of socio economic demographics. But like, people were buying from Amazon, and they were getting things delivered. And then in the plague, it went from like, you know, half of us doing that to like, 95% of us doing that. And then sure, maybe that numbers come back down now because you can go to stores and everything.

Nestor Aparicio  32:50

8

Deion Sanders loved that they call it prime. I see him I’m gonna ask him that.

Bill Cole  32:59

That’s funny. By the way, have

Nestor Aparicio  33:00

you inspired me? Can I can I give you a little inspiration? Shout out. Sure. Because I’m not enough. He’s not coming on because he’s not public like that. And and I’ll have Greg Landry from Towson transfers. The three of you I met with you about six weeks ago. Today, my 25th anniversary is coming up. What am I famous for other than be me. And all of you gave me some ideas. And then you got me looking through like 25 years worth of pictures, stuff, stories, all that we are going to present courtesy of our new friends at curio, we have a new sponsor, our 25th anniversary, we’re going to do 25 stories of glory. So we’re gonna do the top 25 Things wn st is done. And you know what I’ve sort of, I got a list of about 35 things. I’m trying to pare it down to just get I mean, obviously, dude, I did free the birds. We did the walk the New Orleans, March, we add whiskey Joe’s like, there are some things we’ve done that.

Bill Cole  33:58

Yeah, that’s wanting to write like road

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Nestor Aparicio  34:01

trips. We’ve had, you know, like, all sorts of memories. But we’ve had so many wacky things, all the barn shows all the purple signs and the orange signs and like, Crap we’ve done. And I thought to myself, I’m looking through pictures. And I’m like, I took Deion Sanders in the party hill station, in a mink and a $10,000 mink coat. And he sat down for two and a half hours and told his life story on my ama show with Kordell. Stewart. And I’m thinking that might not even make the top 25 Brian Phillips, winning head coach become our partner here. That’s got to be in the top five, right? Sure. Sure. So I’m trying to figure out what all these moments are. But then all of these wacky things come to us. Like we’re in New York, Pennsylvania. We ran a puck Buster Hershey 15 years ago. And it was like this benign thing and we had a full boss. We had 45 People in the boss and we’re going up on a Tuesday night to see the Hershey bears play whomever and it was like the night that you got the free Hershey Park ticket for the next summer, right? So is the big night where everybody goes home with a free Hershey Park Admission to go back to the park. So for 50 bucks, 45 bucks, you get all my boss, you get a whole night and then they give you a free ticket to come back to the park. Right. So pretty good deal. We get on the bus, there’s an accident like it, I don’t know King Street, George Street, Queen Street, Main Street in New York, Pennsylvania, and the bus is trapped. Everybody’s trapped, nobody can get off. We sat there, it was a fatality It was awful. medivac the whole thing. We wind up getting to the hockey game, just as the third period started. In Hershey. The bears were unbelievable. The guy that worked for the bears gave everybody Pucks and sticks and shirts and like and gave him a free ticket to come back and see the bears play if they wanted to come back and drive up on the road. So everyone it was it was great. When I’m thinking these are these memorable. That’s not a top 25 moment. But it’s allowed me to really take stock, you had your 100th anniversary, my friends at the Maryland lottery had their 50th, which kind of inspired me, I told John Martin, that when I was thinking about the 20s, I actually have a new logo I’m going to be putting up next week, as part of all the stuff we’re doing with our 25th anniversary. You know, I appreciate you and I appreciate everybody that was such a part of this. But even you had a story about being an intern for Bob at your 25 years ago. Right.

Bill Cole  36:19

But that Yeah, but that I would say that’s not necessarily my favorite stories. My I mean, what what I will never allow anyone to disparage whatsoever is you created a common connection point to the people of this city. Anytime we went somewhere else. So whether we were like on your trip where you know, so you created opportunities for people to do that, which are lifetime memories for them and their family and their kids. And, you know, whoever went on those journeys with you, those are wonderful memories that you you enabled to occur, right. But when we went to a city, most notably Tampa and New Orleans, right, like, you were the common, you know, lighthouse in the storm that said, All you maniac, Purple People come here. And they did, and we got to enjoy one another. And we got to show our civic pride in a much, much, much more meaningful way than we would have been able to do otherwise. So those are, you know, the gap between one and two for me down to like, whatever that third memory is. The third memory for me is going to definitely be the barn because like I was in college, and I would have I had like a Monday night class. And we would we would

Nestor Aparicio  37:56

we would skip out that class like a little bit early. Nestor got there tonight.

Bill Cole  37:59

8

Right? We wouldn’t just go to the barn and we would sit there and you know, that was it was just, you know, part of the fabric of life back then. So those are wonderful memories, man. Like, nobody can take any of that stuff away.

Nestor Aparicio  38:13

So well. I’m gonna try to at least bring back the Deion Sanders thing like the barn shows my God I had rod Woodson Shannon Sharpe, Lawrence Taylor Ray Lewis. You know, Trent Dilfer just go down the list of goose I mean, the goose events were their own thing I had. I had Jim horrible at the bar, not John Harbaugh at the bar. So, yeah, I mean, Brian, Billy, how about when when Billick and modell brought the trophy over and we marched the trophy out onto Harford road. And we had cars honking and traffic David’s holding the trophy up out in traffic

Bill Cole  38:52

I don’t know in a, an overly stuffy you know, professional, extremely controlled environment.

Nestor Aparicio  39:03

I don’t know about that I’m throwing out

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Bill Cole  39:06

right that’s what I mean that that kind of grassroots stuff is really what brings meaning to all of it for everybody and you know, all the what do they call them like the neighborhood groups that ravens flocks are? roosts Yeah, there Yeah, the roofs all that. That’s all the stuff that brings the meaning to it. You know what I mean? So, I don’t know. You don’t you done good.

Nestor Aparicio  39:31

Who makes the magic happen of Oracle baseball, they’ll call you make the magic of Oracle baseball happen. They’ll call us here. He’s called roofing Gordian energy. Tell them what you do on roofs and how you do it. And this whole newfangled solar thing that I see everywhere, I was up Pennsylvania on some side roads, back roads, doing some things. Solar is here. You know, you’re, you’re doing you’re doing the Lord’s work, as they say.

Bill Cole  39:52

We did a really nice project up in York, Pennsylvania for a really wonderful family who’s got a big warehouse. Since then they have like, opened their warehouse up to all these different little vendors and sole proprietors and they come in and they have like a farmers market type of deal. But anyway, you know, yeah, I would say that we are trying to assess people’s roof situations so that we can help them not have to worry about their commercial. Your guy

Nestor Aparicio  40:21

8

came out and told me I it’s time for me. So like, I got to talk to you. It’s been 39 years on my roof, right, like so like, right, so.

Bill Cole  40:30

Oh, no roofs are definitely this is sort of counter. But that’s just who we are. Like, if it works, don’t mess with it. Like that is definitely how Roos are like the minute you start poking around like

Nestor Aparicio  40:43

no leaky No, pokey. Right, right. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, exactly. I hope to see you a little more often than once a month and certainly, you have inspired me on our 25th anniversary to despite all this Kevin Brown nonsense chats, the whole nonsense and the teams themselves and the crabcake tour my 25th anniversary and all of that, that head up. And you know, it’s going to be a very, very exciting sports calendar into the fall. And I think it’s gonna I’m looking forward to kids going back to school and looking forward to wearing a sweater. I’m looking forward to to rolling my sleeves up and having some normalcy again. Come September. About that. I’m worth it. Let’s do it. All right, I’m Nestor. We’re wn St. am 5070, Towson Baltimore. And we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive in our 26th year now.