Rants and Ravings: I'm A Free Agent Baseball Fan

The great thing about this page is it allows me to rant whenever I feel like it. To me it doesn't matter if only one person reads it. That's not the point. I just like to put stuff out there (By the way, if you are looking for my weekly NFL picks, they are right below this post. But please read this first).

So I got two things on my mind today. Let's get the first one out of the way. As I mentioned recently, I finally got a new job at the local sports station. But before I had accepted that offer, I had set up an interview at the new Triple X ESPN Radio here in D.C. I figured I might as well keep my interview since you never know what's going to happen and the building is located literally four blocks from my apartment here in Silver Spring. So it wasn't like it was an inconvenience.

For those of you that don't know, Redskins owner Dan Snyder decided a year ago that he would buy a station so he could package Redskins games and keep all the profits. So he purchased 94.3 FM, 92.7 FM and 730 AM. Then he took the Redskins games from WJFK and put them on this new Triple X station. He even managed to convince ESPN to stop syndicating to Sports Talk 980 and come on board with him. So far, so good.

The only thing is that these stations are so weak, that very few people can hear them. This is usually a problem for a radio station. As I said, I live four blocks from the Silver Spring station and I have a hard time picking it up. On top of this, all the local personalities that Snyder expected to jump from 980 to Triple X stayed put. So now Triple X is stuck with a bunch of non-local syndicated programs and the John Riggins Show. And as much as I love Riggins, he can barely get through George Michael's Redskins Report without sounding like an idiot. Let's just say, he's not very articulate. So if he struggles on a half-hour TV show where he isn't the only talking, imagine how bad his three-hour radio show is going to be.

The main reason for this station to be created was to carry the Skins games. But then Snyder went out and hired Larry Michael to manage the broadcasts of the games. The first thing Michael did was fire long-time and beloved play-by-play broadcaster Frank Herzog and replaced him with...Larry Michael! Michael is so bad, that I've actually stopped listening to the game on radio. Which means I'd rather listen to the likes of Joe Buck, Tony Siragusa and Phil Simms rather than him. Plus, Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgensen, the color commentators, clearly don't like Michael and the chemistry between the three is way off. The games are a disaster.

Anyway, I went into my interview expecting to be received in a professional manner at a place of business. What I found was a station in disarray. There are boxes everywhere. They've been at that building for a year now and it doesn't look like they've unpacked a thing. It made my college dorm room look neat and tidy. It was so bad, there wasn't even an empty room that I could be interviewed in. We kept trying to do it in people's tiny offices, but the people who worked in them kept coming in. So I had to move three times and eventually settled in the office lobby. I did the interview sitting on the same couch as the guy who was interviewing me while the secretary listened, which was kind of intimidating (The secretary, by the way, was hot. I was listing my credentials and I kept looking over to see if she was impressed. No dice). The interview I went in there for was for a full-time producer position. Apparently, that job didn't exist. Instead I was interviewed for a part-time board operator job that may or may not have been created. So much for professionalism. Then, as the interview is ending, the guy says that he's sorry he couldn't offer more, but the station wasn't organized and that it would take awhile for my application (which I didn't fill out) to be processed. Then he told me that he was considering moving to a different market. Who does this? You supposed to sell me on working at the station, then you offer me a job that doesn't exist and tell me that things are so bad at the station that you, the interviewer, are considering leaving. Well, where do I sign up. Hopefully this station fixes its many problems so the Redskins games will be a shred of what they used to be.

Now, the real reason I'm here. Football season is winding down, and before you know it, March will be here and college basketball season will be over. Then it's four months before the NFL preseason begins and I really have nothing to post here. So last week, I was thinking about what I could talk about, if only briefly, during the summer. The only logical conclusion is baseball.

Which brings me to my dilemma. Despite growing up in Washington D.C., I was raised an Oriole fan. See, I grew up in a time when there was only one football and one baseball team in this area...and that's the way it still should be. Although I rarely talk about baseball, I'm a huge baseball fan. I've been going to Orioles games since I was five and they were still at old Memorial Stadium. I broadcasted baseball the past two summers. While my passion is football, I know more about baseball then I do about any other sport.

The Orioles are so bad, and so utterly hopeless with their current ownership, that they're not worth talking about on this page. In fact, they are no longer worth following, supporting or rooting for. Like most Orioles fans, I am pissed about what owner Peter Angelos has done to this once proud team.

The latest transgression was the straw that broke the camels back. This week, the Atlanta Braves offered their young slugging first baseman Adam LaRoche and second baseman Marcus Giles for O's second baseman Brian Roberts and young pitcher Hayden Penn. On paper, this deal would have been outstanding for the Birds. Giles and Roberts are basically the same player. So the trade essentially comes down to LaRoche for Penn. THAT IS A STEAL. Penn, while still young, has shown almost nothing. His promise is so low, that he likely won't crack the Orioles starting rotation this season or next. And the Orioles have one of the worst staffs in the league. It’s not as if Cy Young is the O’s third pitcher. LaRoche, is a starting corner infielder, who had a breakout season with the Braves last year and is only going to get better. He just turned 27.

Roberts does have slightly better career numbers than Giles, but Roberts hasn't been the same since his gruesome arm injury towards the end of 2004. Plus, he's a year and half older than Giles. The Braves, desperately trying to add an arm to a rotation that's worse than Baltimore's, are willing to give the O's a solid first baseman, which the Birds don't have right now. This is a perfect deal on the field and financially.

Except Brian Roberts is one of the "faces of the franchise". Peter Angelos loves him and doesn't want to trade him. Despite his advisors telling him pull the trigger on this deal, he rejects it. He defends it by saying that he doesn't want to get rid of a "fan favorite". This defense is bullshit. I like Brian Roberts. He seems like a good guy. Doesn't cause trouble, doesn't get in trouble. Plays hard, works hard and interacts with the fans. Plus, he replaced Jerry Hairston at second and finally gave the O's an excuse to jettison his sorry ass to Chicago. And, as Angelos says, he is one of the team's most liked players.

But Roberts is one of the faces of a LOSING franchise. The Orioles haven't won anything in nine years. Before Roberts got here, they lost. With Brian Roberts, they continue to lose. If you have a chance to improve a team that regularly manages to lose 90 games a year, and that means trading one of your better players, you do it. You know what fans like more than certain players? A winning team.

As I said, this excuse is bullshit. The Orioles, while busy not trading Roberts, are actively shopping their other popular player, Miguel Tejada, to any team that will listen to an offer. And if keeping popular players/personnel is so important to Angelos, then why did he chase Davy Johnson out of town? Why did he trade B.J. Surhoff in 1999? Why did he allow Mike Mussina, Robbie Alomar and Rafael Palmerio (pre-2000 Palmerio, before the roids) to leave during the prime of their careers? These were all "franchise guys" and “fan favorites” too.

The reason is because Angelos continues to treat the Orioles as his personal plaything. He keeps who he likes, he fires who he doesn't, whether or not it's good for the team. He meddles in player affairs more than any other owner, and that includes George Steinbrenner. He doesn't have a clue what he's doing, but he keeps doing it. That's why the Orioles are a franchise going nowhere. One year the Orioles try to rebuild with youth. The next year they sign guys like Albert Belle or Marty Cordova or Jeff Conine or Kevin Millar. They trade promising prospect Denny Bautista for roid-filled Jason Grimsley. And so on and so on. Then, when the over-the-hill free agents they bring in don't work, they go back to youth until it becomes time to pay more overpriced old guys. There's no consistent plan to build this team back to a winner. What's worse is that teams like Detroit, Minnesota, Oakland, San Diego, etc… can rebuild their teams with only a fraction of the money that the Orioles have. Hell, Florida won a World Series in 1997, tore their team apart, built it back up, and won another World Series in 2003 while the Orioles were busy losing consistently. Over time, the O's finally realized that they may have to spend extra money on decent players, but no free agents want to play in Baltimore because they've been so bad for so long. The O's are now playing with confederate money.

So it has come to this. I will no longer support the Orioles in any way, shape or form as long as Peter Angelos or someone in his immediate family owns the team. I will not attend games. I will not watch games. I will not spend money on Orioles merchandise. I am officially a fan without a team. I am a free agent. As of this moment, I no longer consider myself an Oriole fan. And this isn’t just about the recent rejected trade. If that were the case this entire rant would be pretty silly. This recent Roberts/Penn fiasco is just a microcosm of Baltimore under Angelos. It got me thinking. The more I thought about it, the more I got angry. The more I thought about the Orioles, the more I realized that the organization doesn’t care about winning and doesn’t want to come up with a real plan to turn the team around. They’ll just keep fielding stopgap and patchwork teams until enough fans stay away and the team starts to lose money.

I love baseball too much to ignore it completely. I need a team to follow. The great thing about this day and age is that I can basically watch any baseball game in the country. Since I'm going to work for Comcast SportsNet, I get free cable and I can buy a subscription to MLB Gameplan for no extra charge. Now I just have to find a team. If you want me to root for your favorite team, tell me why.

Here are the teams I will not root for. The Yankees and Red Sox are at the top of the list. I will not get caught up in all that Yanks-Sox mumbo jumbo. The Mets are out too since they play in New York. I hate the city; I refuse to root for one of their teams. Ditto for the Phillies, just put Philadelphia in place of New York in the previous sentence. I don't want to seem like a bandwagon jumper, so for now, St. Louis, Detroit, Oakland, the White Sox and both Los Angeles teams are out. Any team that Barry Bonds played for is out, so sorry San Francisco and Pittsburgh. I won't root for Canadian teams, which obviously eliminates Toronto. I won't root for minor league teams, which gets rid of Kansas City and Tampa Bay. So, if my math is correct, that leaves me with 14 teams. Here are the Top 5, as of this moment:

1. Washington - the obvious front-runner. Locality is the main draw, and they're new stadium will be built eventually. The owner may actually spend money on the team when that happens. There's no better way to insult Angelos then to support the franchise that he hates the most.
2. Chicago Cubs - Lovable losers. Aren't they everyone's second favorite team? I would love to be on the bandwagon when they win a World Series. If they ever win another World Series.
3. Houston - Other than Cal Ripken, Craig Biggio is my favorite player of the last 15 years. But he is about to retire. That quirky new stadium can only hold my attention for so long.
4. Minnesota - I know they've made the playoffs a lot recently, but like the Cubs, they're always the ultimate underdogs. Players like Santana, Mauer, Morneau and Hunter are extremely likable.
5. San Diego - Like Minnesota and Houston, the Padres are currently a very good team that has never won a World Series. Plus, the mascot is cool.

I'll also consider teams like Milwaukee or Cincinnati or even Florida. I will make my decision before the beginning of spring training and decide best how to cover that team. Maybe I'll pick a new team to follow each year and do it that way. Again, if you want me to root for your favorite team, then try to convince me (cash bribes and other goods will certainly be considered). Even if it’s one of the teams I don’t plan on rooting for. If you can make a decent argument, I’ll consider any team in MLB other than the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox. I could be talked into following Tony LaRussa and the Fighting Pujols’. Or the Los Angeles Angels of Orange County/Anaheim and Disney. Or even Billy Beane and his “Have OBP, Will Travel” Oakland A’s.

Heck, maybe you can even convince me to root for the Orioles this season. I’ve clearly gotten to the point that I’m going to need more than the “they’re the hometown team” argument. As of now, I will only go back to the O's the day after Angelos and his family sell the team. Until then, I’m a free agent. Like most free agents, I’m not buying what the Orioles are selling.