The Baltimore Orioles and their regional sports activities community, the comprehensively shitty Mid-Atlantic Sports activities Community (MASN), apparently suspended in style tv play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown for a wonderfully innocuous assertion of truth made throughout a broadcast on July 23. The suspension, which was first reported by Baltimore sports activities blogger and podcaster Matt Jergensen after which verified by a number of shops, is punishment for Brown studying info from sport notes supplied by the workforce’s personal public relations workers expressly for the aim of informing media protection.
The Orioles are superb. Within the time since they had been final any good—arguably 2016, extra realistically 2014—a brand new entrance workplace regime steered the workforce about as aggressively as attainable into and thru a situation of abject worthlessness, together with a four-year stretch beginning in 2018 when the Orioles misplaced greater than two-thirds of their video games. For sure, if you suck shit on that scale, you’re going to compile some dropping information in opposition to some division foes. From 2020 by means of the tip of the 2022 season, for instance, the Orioles misplaced 21 of 24 video games performed on the gloomy domed hellhole residence of the Tampa Bay Rays. However this can be a new period of Orioles baseball: Getting into their July 23 highway sport in opposition to the Rays, the 2023 Orioles had received three of their first 5 in St. Petersburg. Brown’s crime, for which he was indefinitely suspended, was to notice this current change in fortune:
Brown vanished from Orioles tv broadcasts following this sport. He labored the next sequence in Philadelphia doing play-by-play on the workforce’s radio broadcast, which led to hypothesis amongst followers that the Orioles had been rotating him round in numerous roles because of his versatility. Not so: In response to a number of experiences, the Orioles solely gave the suspended Brown these short-term radio duties as a result of they’d suspended one more broadcaster, reportedly for violating a brand new coverage that requires broadcasters to put on solely team-branded polos when on-air. In response to a report from the Baltimore Banner, on-air commentators are required to buy these Orioles polos. Amazingly, in accordance with Brittany Ghiroli of The Athletic, the workforce’s objection to Brown’s pregame feedback on July 23 is that they made the workforce “sound low cost.”
The Orioles and sleazy failson controlling proprietor John Angelos haven’t but publicly owned as much as Brown’s suspension, however they’re actually consuming loads of shit for it. On Monday evening, broadcasters round MLB went in on the choice. SNY Mets play-by-play commentator Gary Cohen minimize into the fourth inning to say that Orioles administration had “draped [themselves] in humiliation,” and known as the suspension “a horrendous choice” by the workforce. NESN Crimson Sox play-by-play man Dave O’Brien known as the scenario “a fiasco” and “an absolute joke” in the course of the eighth inning of what was on the time a tied ballgame in Boston. Jason Benetti, White Sox play-by-play announcer for NBC Sports activities Chicago, cracked a joke in the course of the second inning of a house sport in opposition to the Yankees concerning the Orioles suspending him for noting the guests’ 2023 report in opposition to AL East-leading Baltimore. Yankees play-by-play man Michael Kay of New York’s YES Community ripped the Orioles throughout a studio present Monday evening, and identified that the knowledge Brown shared in his pregame monologue was additionally highlighted in a MASN-produced graphic that ran in the course of the broadcast. Yankees radio announcer John Sterling known as Brown’s suspension “among the many nuttiest” issues he is witnessed in half a century within the broadcasting enterprise. The information made all of it the best way to a Tuesday morning information roundup on CNN. Clearly this has labored out amazingly for no matter Orioles cretin determined it’s actionable skilled dereliction for a franchise-employed broadcaster to congratulate his workforce for enhancing upon previous efficiency.
The Angelos household has one thing of a observe report of mistreating beloved Orioles broadcasters. In 1996 Peter Angelos infamously minimize free longtime radio and tv play-by-play announcer Jon Miller as a result of he believed Miller wasn’t constructive sufficient in his commentary, following a 12-year stretch when the Orioles made the playoffs not one single time. John Angelos, who formally took over stewardship of the Orioles in 2020, has already established himself as hostile to all however probably the most fawning protection of his workforce: In January he scolded a reporter for asking him to put out a imaginative and prescient for a workforce that his hand-picked entrance workplace had guided immediately into the league’s rest room; in March, when pressed to comply with by means of on a promise to publicly share his workforce’s financials, he used sleazy misdirection to color the Baltimore Solar—a day by day newspaper that has lined the town for greater than 180 years—as an outdoor agitator.
The Orioles confirmed Monday evening that Brown will “quickly” rejoin their dwell broadcasts. However the message has been despatched: For those who be aware aloud that the workforce is healthier now than it was earlier than, or dare to put on an article of clothes that’s not a team-branded polo shirt paid for out of your personal pocket whereas collaborating in a radio broadcast, the Orioles is not going to hesitate to unload a recent cart of manure on their already wildly beshitted status. Let that be a lesson!
