The More Things Change...

The more they stay MADDENINGLY the same. A recent Sun article revealing a new policy that the Orioles have installed states that no, that is NO, member of Orioles management will answer call-in questions on any station other than the new flagship station of 105.7 WHFS, and apparently JFK 1300.

The blogo-net-o-sphere is RIPE with discussion, as it should be. Anthony over at The Oriole Post chimes in with the "1984" reference. Kudos for literature. And Mike over at Oriole Magic comes in with yet another eloquent tirade against Orioles ownership. My opinion on the matter? Put simply it is just another black smudge on the PR face an organization that DOESN'T NEED ANYMORE! For the first time in a long time people are starting to look at this Orioles team with renewed vigor and interest. Guys like Gammons and Crasnick are picking us for possible surprise contenders, Schmuck is writing deceptively positive pieces even Tom Boswell, who crawled on the Nationals bandwagon so fast he skinned his knee-caps, had some nice things to say in a recent article.

THEN THIS GARBAGE COMES OUT!

Though I find it interesting that this gets released on WBAL, the recently spurned former flagship station, who also broke the OTHER speculative article that the Orioles were leaving to escape criticism. Maybe I just like playing devil's advocate but I find it odd that the two most damning PR stories get broke by the same station that the Orioles left in the dust. This after Steve Davis (who was kind of a douche in my opinion before) had about a dozen Orioles players, managers and coaches on his show the last week or so. Could WBAL's sour grapes be behind some of this bad PR? Possible. Could this policy have been around, just never really talked about or directly enforced? Perhaps. It doesn't change the fact that the cat is out of the bag now and it just looks bad.

How many times can the organization do this to themselves? And don't get me wrong, this is not that big of a deal. But when placed in the context of years of poor PR decisions and overall disconnection with the fans it just doesn't help the team's cause.


It gets old, having to talk about this stuff. I wanted this post to be about Daniel Cabrera (The first in a series on my rotation predictions, it will come later this week) but NO, timing and my desire to keep this thing relevant dictates I waste precious bandwidth on this drek.

Bottom line, this policy is bad news for the Orioles. Although if it was never released I doubt anyone would have known the difference because I can think of at least half a dozen times an Oriole manager/ FO person has been on sports radio (I listen to NST) and they NEVER took calls before. The host asked the questions, and they were good questions, but I can honestly not remember the last time I heard and Oriole management type person take callers' questions on any station other than the flagship, if at all.


If WBAL is right and this is a "new policy" created for the Orioles to have further control over their airwaves, then shame on the Orioles. If the Orioles are right and this is sour grapes from BAL, then shame on them.

Either way - this crap is tiring and bothersome and I wish to move on to brighter topics.






The first batch of shirts are in the mail, thank you for your patience and you will receive them all in a 1-2 days. Except my one lonely guy out there in Boston. Seriously brother, wear that to a Birds/Boston game, take a picture, send it too me. One lonely O's fan surrounded by Red Sox nation - makes my skin crawl. They are STILL AVAILABLE FOR ORDER! I have a 24 total shirts here in various sizes ready to ship to you! Place an order now, you should get your shirt within 7-10 days!

Trust me they look and feel great!

More serious baseball stuff tomorrow.