Showing posts with label Peter Angelos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Angelos. Show all posts

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Mike Flanagan: An Oriole Great When the 'Oriole Way' Still Meant Something; those days never seemed farther back in time than right now

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-md-co-flanagan-house-death-20110824,0,4675762.story

August 23, 2011 11:51 pm

Wow!
WBAL-TV is reporting this: "sources confirmed that Flanagan took his own life “despondent over what he considered a false perception from a community he loved of his role in the team’s prolonged failure


WBAL-TV video: WBAL-TV Sports Director Gerry Sandusky -a former Miami sportscaster and son of the former Dolphin assistant coach, John Sandusky- reports the tragic news:
http://www.wbaltv.com/video/28969408/detail.html

I found out this terrible news just after 11 p.m. Wednesday night and am still in a bit of a shock while I try my best to find a Baltimore-area radio station on the Internet that is actually talking about this instead of running syndicated fare, like WBAL is, running Yahoo Sports instead.
Really.
Jesus, what ARE they thinking?

This is just like what happened after the UM fired Randy Shannon, and every single Miami sports radio station kept their syndicated programming on rather than put the plug on that and put their own people on the air to let listeners talk about it.
Yes, that's the news media ethos down here in a nutshell.

I've tried finding something on MASN, DirecTV 640, but there was nothing.

Jim Palmer spoke about his friend and teammate:

See also:

I hardly know what to say other than... Mike Flanagan: An Oriole Great When the 'Oriole Way' Still Meant Something; those days never seemed farther back in time than right now.

See this photo below...

Hendricks remembered
(Sun photo by Gene Sweeney Jr. / December 29, 2005)
Orioles Executive Vice President for Baseball Operations Mike Flanagan and his wife Alex leave the memorial service for Elrod Hendricks.

The event above was YET ANOTHER disgraceful Oriole moment of SO MANY over the past dozen years, with only one then-current player showing up for Elrod Hendricks' funeral, Melvin Mora.

My friends all over the country and I were absolutely LIVID over this and yet the Oriole ballplayers then were totally f-ing oblivious to what that show of disrespect to someone who had bled for this team for over four decades meant to everyone who ever cared about the Orioles.
If I'd had a blog then, I'd have positively crucified the players, one-by-one.

And yet Peter Angelos & Sons STILL walk the earth among us... where's the fairness or silver lining in that?

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Saturday, August 6, 2011

LA Dodgers questions great & small: wither McCourt, padding of attendance; Alyssa Milano's +1 is most heartening Dodger news; McCourt = Steven Ross


Above, thru thick and thin, actress & activist Alyssa Milano remains TRUE BLUE!

Los Angles Times
Dodgers Blog
Will we ever know had badly Dodgers' attendance is down?
By Steve Dilbeck
July 29, 2011 | 9:16 am

Oh, we know it’s down. Have evidence that it’s way down.

But the published numbers don’t tell the full story; not even close.

Buoyed by a pair of 50,000-plus bobblehead crowds (for Andre Ethier and Fernando Valenzuela), the Dodgers are averaging 36,623 per game.

That’s 8,102 fewer fans than last season, and actually better than the 9,319 it was down earlier this season. The Dodgers' total attendance is off 453,694 for the season...

Read the rest of the post at:

The above is not the Ghost of Christmas Past, but rather The Ghost of the Dolphins' Future.

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FYI: Fox owned the LA Dodgers from 1998 to 2004, and also owns the the sole national broadcast rights as well as the broadcast rights to 14 MLB teams on its regional sports channels -including the Florida Marlins- most of which I watch on DirecTV.


New York Times
TV’s Supporting Role in Dodgers’ Drama
By Richard Sandomir
July 3, 2011

The fight for control of the Los Angeles Dodgers that reached United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Tuesday pits Frank McCourt, an owner desperate to keep his team, against Commissioner Bud Selig, who believes that McCourt has turned the iconic team into a financial wreck.

But away from the legal battle is the story of a long relationship between the Dodgers and Fox Sports, which underscores the rising value of sports television rights and what a media giant will do to keep them.

In the case of the Dodgers and Fox, it is a tale of mutual self-interest in which each side has taken turns at being the alpha male: the team knows it is valuable but needs money; Fox needs the team and has the cash.
Read the rest of the post at:

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Los Angeles Times
Frank McCourt has worn out his welcome
With Frank McCourt, the solution to his Dodgers dilemma is always somewhere over the rainbow. But fans aren't buying the loaves-and-fishes spiel. If he knew enough to exit quickly, he might earn some gratitude, but never forgiveness.
By Bill Dwyre, Times columnist
August 5, 2011, 2:14 p.m.

The most stunning aspect of the current Dodgers situation is not the greed of Frank McCourt, but the blind stubbornness.

Now, he is planning to sue his lawyers and projecting that, just maybe, the proceeds of that might be enough to pay off debts and get out of trouble. That's similar to his stance that, if he is just allowed to make his $1.7-billion-to-$3-billion deal with Fox, he'll be free and clear.

With McCourt, the solution is always somewhere just over the rainbow. He turned a Boston parking lot into ownership of the Dodgers and now wants us to believe he can keep them by multiplying loaves and fishes. He is a huckster's huckster, a poster boy for the buy-now-and-pay-later.
Read the rest of the column at:

Long before financially self-serving LA Dodgers owner Frank McCourt's antics finally kept devoted Dodger fans away from Dodger Stadium this year in droves, after he fired Davey Johnson as Orioles manager in the off-season after he was named AL Manager of the Year for 1997, after getting the Orioles to the '97 AL Championship Series against the Cleveland Indians, Oriole fans were loathing Peter Angelos and Co. and refusing to come to Camden Yards -my home away from home for most of the 1990's- and fork over one cent to him, preferring instead to watch all the games on cable channel HTS (Home Team Sports, now MASN) at home or sports bars.

Under current Dolphins owner Steven Ross, the Dolphins have morphed into the worst on-field aspects of the Detroit Lions and the worst off-field aspects of Frank McCourt's tenure as Dodgers owner.
Ross is an acute embarrassment to the teams most loyal fans -like me- and seems NOT to have learned a whit since becoming owner, continuing the Dolphins era of complete insignificance.

Dolphins use outside agency to chase season ticket holders
Posted by Mike Florio on August 6, 2011, 5:46 PM EDT


Touch by Alyssa Milano Miami Dolphins Women's Sleeveless Top
Orange you glad that I decided to add this one?

Although it hurts her to see her Dodgers so often used as a punchline this season, on her always amusing posterous website, one of my favorites, actress Alyssa Milano, is having the best year of all among celebrity Dodger faithful.
Check out the photo at the link, one I sent out to sports media friends within just minutes of her posting it.

#Dodgers I Love L.A. (picture)-->, from late July 2011

Like bambino-to-be, like mother...




I've written about or referenced Alyssa on the blog several times, the most popular post on her being this one form Sept. 18, 2010 titled, Proof positive that no photo of Alyssa Milano is without its magnetic CHARM. Not that we EVER doubted it!

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2012 Spring Touch collection: http://alyssa.com/?p=2569




Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Orioles woes; Boston Red Sox to get new spring home in Fort Myers -a mini Fenway?

Orioles woes; Red Sox to get new spring home in Fort Myers -a mini Fenway?
The classic cartoon Oriole of my South Florida youth, when "the Oriole Way" meant being the best.

World Series - Boog Powell, Elrod Hendricks, Brooks Robinson, Oct. 19, 1970

Baseball 1971 - Power Personified, Baltimore's Boog Powell, April 12, 1971


World Series - Frank Robinson, Oct. 18, 1971





Some Oriole souvenirs thru the years.
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Slightly expanded version of an email I sent today to the fabulous Sports Junkies, the dominant sports radio program in Washington, D.C., about the Orioles leaving Fort Lauderdale and the Red Sox making even more money my moving their spring training circus to a mini-Fenway Park in Fort Myers. I listened to them from their humble beginnings years ago to their days of dominance.

Of course they podcast, how do you suppose I listen to them now?http://www.junkiesradio.com/audio.shtml
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The past few weeks I've taken notice of all the folks on Florida's West Coast who've been ripping the general idea of the Orioles moving there, here- http://search.news-press.com/sp?aff=1172&keywords=Orioles&skin=100 and at other places, saying that the O's are clearly a second-tier team who'll draw less (enthusiastic) fans who'll spend less money in the area during spring training than their accent-heavy NE cousins from Massachusetts.
As if simply being a loyal Orioles fan was not enough of a burden itself!

But now, it looks like the Red Sox will be getting new digs in Fort Myers, especially one modeled on Fenway Park -ka-ching!!
It's a case of the rich getting richer, a veritable license to print $$$$
Meanwhile, the Orioles...

All of these months later, to my mind, there has yet to be a definitive story in local South Florida media about how Broward County, the City of Ft. Lauderdale and local Congressional representatives were all asleep at the wheel, and completely botched the Ft. Lauderdale Stadium situation with the Orioles, thru excessive procrastination and lack of attention to detail.
La plus ca change...

As someone who has followed this from the beginning, the Broward County Commission has yet to demand public answers from their own employees involved in the deal, much less from Greater Ft. Lauderdale CVB head Nicki Grossman, a former Broward County Commissioner, who was the local person who spearheaded (bulldozed?) the agreement which has collapsed.
The only good part of it collapsing is that tax dollars that will NOT be going to help subsidize Peter Angelos,
pere et fils & Company's future profits/inheritance.

And if you read the details below, you'll see that the Red Sox reportedly will pay a half-million dollars a year in rent at the new facility, while based on past published reports locally, the O's have been paying a paltry $120,000 a year.

As you guys will recall me mentioning in past emails over the years while up in Arlington County and then down here, I'm a lifetime Oriole fan who grew-up in South Florida going to at least 6-8
O's spring training games every year at Miami Stadium in the early-mid '70's as a kid with my friends and family during the team's glory days.

I listened to their ballgames on WGBS AM-710 (pre-Radio Mambi) while Chuck Thompson provided the play-by-play accounts of those great players and teams, whose roster I knew backwards and forwards.
I'd even catch a bus after school from the 163rd Street Shopping Center to go out to the then-Biscayne College to watch the O's minor leagers that John Steadman might've mention in a newspaper column. Then I went to about 20-25 games a year at Camden Yards when I lived in the D.C. area for 15 years.

Since moving back to South Florida, I've watched their games on MASN via DirecTV when I can, loved their spring training programming on weekends, even while the Marlins were, typically, so clueless in their marketing that not ONE single Marlin spring training game was televised into South Florida, while I could catch a couple of games of other teams every March weekend on the various regional Fox Sports Network channels.
Thus, if I were to see the Marlins at all, it'd be on the Cardinal's TV network.

So, all that said, I've long lamented the fact that once the Yankees, Braves and Expos fled the South Florida area, the Orioles were at a decided competitive dis-advantage because of being so far away from other teams' spring training bases and stadiums, and NOT having their minor leaguers actually on-site, they spend more time traveling around the state on buses than any other MLB team in FL during spring training.
Though its clearly lack of talent not sluggishness that accounts for the O's woes once the season actually starts!

Though I've personally liked the proximity of seeing them play every spring since I moved back to the area in late 2003, I was against the 2006 Orioles deal IF it meant destroying the City of Fort Lauderdale's Lockhart Stadium, to my mind, the single best amateur sports facility down here, where I grew-up going to Ft. Lauderdale Strikers NASL games when those were always fun and exciting, esp. against the Tampa Bay Rowdies, which were legendary fun among my circle of friends.

The record is pretty clear the city, county and Congressman Ron Klein didn't exactly do their proper due diligence and keep their attention properly focused on the FAA's legitimate concerns about the true valuation of the land, so it wasn't a sweetheart deal that short-changed
taxpayers.

It seems to me based on what I already do know that there's still quite a lot of information that has never seen the light of day on this matter, which gets to -shocker!- how generally poor the local news coverage on this subject has been here, other than Sarah Talalay's work at the Sun-Sentinel http://blogs.trb.com/sports/custom/business/blog/ local news coverage being the central point of my letter (and subsequent blog post) yesterday to the Herald's ombudsman.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/decreasing-value-of-miami-herald.html
And Talalay can't do everyone else's job PLUS her own, you know?

I still have all the docs, drawing and renderings of the proposed Orioles facility in FTL that the Orioles gave Broward County, stored-up on my computer.
At some point after the World Series and Election Day is over, I'll finally post them all on my blogs for everyone to see, and comment on some of the other factors at play here that I believe have led to this coming spring training down here being a real disaster.

While up at the stadium this past spring, where I'd have the proposed stadium drawings and specs handy, I spoke to lots of Oriole fans who made the trip south -some of whom were regular listeners of yours!- who said almost without exception, that they would NOT come down here again, even if the Orioles did play at FTL in March to finish out their contract, which is what they're currently planning on doing.
And that was seven months ago...

Part of me actually wishes the city and county would send the Orioles a letter saying don't bother coming down, there's a mysterious structural defect at the stadium that threatens public safety that can't possibly be fixed in time, so why don't they just plan on headin' out to the Cactus League in Arizona somewhere and play at some junior college facility while Vero Beach fixes up Dodgertown to their oh-so exacting specs.
I'd really, really love that.

Trust me, like all the other many botched things in South Florida involving local government, there are plenty of (ir)responsible parties at fault here, many of whom have thus far escaped their deserved proper scrutiny.
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http://www.news-press.com/article/20081028/SPORTS/810280398/1075

October 28, 2008
Lee County commissioners approve Red Sox agreementAgreement calls for 30-year deal, Fenway Park replica
By Glenn Miller
• View the Lee County-Red Sox draft agreement
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SARASOTA - Balking at the $70 million price of building a new spring training stadium for the Boston Red Sox, some city and county commissioners say the Baltimore Orioles are a much cheaper alternative.
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
VERO'S BASEBALL TALKS MAY WRAP UP SOON
Ed Bierschenk, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers
September 21, 2008

Negotiations with the team to replace the Los Angeles Dodgers may be nearing a conclusion - possibly this week.

But officials are still skittish about naming the team, which sources said is the Baltimore Orioles , in fear of upsetting them, so they won't verify they are dealing with the Orioles for the former spring training home of the Dodgers.

The Orioles have held spring training at Fort Lauderdale Stadium for 13 years.

But the team's future in Fort Lauderdale was put in doubt after the Federal Aviation Administration denied the city's request to be exempt from a $1.3 million annual payment for the upkeep of Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in order to keep hosting spring training at the adjacent stadium.

Vero Beach City Councilman Bill Fish, other City Council members and Indian River County commissioners all signed confidentiality deals that have prevented them from relating details of the negotiations, which involve both the stadium and the adjacent land once occupied by Dodgertown Golf Course.

Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird said he hopes something can be finalized next week, but City Manager Jim Gabbard wasn't willing to go that far.

"Hopefully, we will have some good news in the not-too-distant future. We are working hard to get a deal as quickly as possible," said Gabbard, who declined to comment on a report that the city sent its latest proposal to the team.
The Orioles declined to comment.

City and county officials held a lengthy meeting with team officials in late July.

Earlier that month, Baird said he and the team had gone through three draft agreements outlining plans for Dodgertown.

Sources said the plans for the complex could include a youth baseball academy for the former golf course site.
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In case anyone is curious, as may be noticeable up at the top in my letter, though I'm a very big sports fan, here and at parent blog South Beach Hoosier I've often lamented the fact that
despite the amount of tax money involved, how often financial numbers offered up by folks like Nicki Grossman of the Greater Ft. Lauderdale CVB as proof of the financial impact on the area of hosting events, like the Super Bowl, BCS Championship or the Orioles staying in Ft. Lauderdale for spring training were/are never put up to anything even resembling basic fact-checking scrutiny, much less, oh, forensic accounting. The local media just reports them as facts.
South Florida sports legend Hank Goldberg often spoke about this subject on his much-missed WQAM show as well, but the numbers proferred by the Orioles in relation to their 2006 deal, and passed off as legit estimates, were especially curious and over-the-top to my way of thinking.
Previous blog posts of mine mentioning the Orioles in some manner include:
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 Nick Saban the Interloper
Some of my favorite blogs and links include the following: