An Absurd Suspension Has Turned a Baseball Announcer Into an Accidental Martyr
This is the worst of modern sports management at work
On Monday morning, it was neither depressing nor embarrassing to be a fan of the Baltimore Orioles. The young, feisty team was coming off a weekend sweep of the New York Mets that left them with the best record in the American League, 70–42, three games ahead of the second-place Tampa Bay Rays. Everyone from 22-year-old budding superstar infielder Gunnar Henderson to 33-year-old backup catcher James McCann was hitting; the agonizingly erratic rookie pitcher Shintaro Fujinami, picked up as a midseason reclamation project from the terrible Oakland A’s, had pounded the corners of the strike zone with a fastball that reached 102 mph.
Then came the news that the team had secretly suspended one of its broadcasters, Kevin Brown, as punishment for remarks he had made on the air before a game against the Rays. Even as the story marched its way up the scale of verifiability and prestige—advancing from a claim from a local sports blogger on Twitter to a report on Awful Announcing to a story in the Athletic, picking up detail as it went—it remained almost unbelievable. What Brown had said, reportedly bringing down the ire of Orioles acting owner John Angelos, was this, in a segment with fellow announcer Ben McDonald:
[Orioles manager] Brandon Hyde has felt that this has been maybe the toughest ballpark to play in. But the Orioles have a chance to do something special today. They’ve already clinched at least a split in the series, winning two of the first three. And they could pick up a series win behind Tyler Wells today.
Orioles back to when our now-colleague Brad Brach picked up a win in the series finale June 25, 2017, the last time the Orioles won a series here in St. Pete. They’ve already gone 3–2 at the Trop this year after winning 3 of 18 the previous three years combined. It is a stark difference, Ben, and it is not a bad Rays team. It’s not like all of a sudden the Rays became slouches in the American League East. They’ve led this division every day but now two, and the Orioles once again are back alone in first place.
