We always find it rather comical that the Orioles and Angelos family nitpicks with Major League Baseball about the City Connect jerseys. In the modern era, everything the franchise does attempts to “reconnect” with the Baltimore fan base that it spent years alienating and subjugating by pampering to Washington baseball fans with the lack of the hometown city name on the road jerseys. Our radio station, hosts and listeners spent the first decade of our existence as the hometown sports radio station trying to explain to Peter Angelos why “BALTIMORE” across the crests of the visiting grays was not just a marketing ploy or a sales pitch, but a way of life for the home team.
It took MLB and Bud Selig putting a team in Washington, D.C. against the will of Angelos to change all of that back in 2008. The Orioles went nearly forty years without wanting to claim “Baltimore” when they played on the road. Sure it seems stupid and absurd – just as it did then.
Here’s the video of the day in 2008 when they dressed Jim Palmer up and made a big deal about selling some new swag at the now shuddered Gallery downtown across from the Inner Harbor where the Birds did a “fashion show” release of finally doing the right thing by the city and citizens and local fans who build the franchise.
Something magic happened…
