Why Colin Cowherd Is Right about Orioles Fans

There’s two things that I’ve learned about Colin Cowherd in listening to his show for the past couple of months. He’s not going to give you an opinion based on emotion, and he’s likely to say it in a way that will cause you to react to him emotionally.

That’s what makes him the king of sports talk radio.

That said, I think he’s kind of right about Baltimore Orioles fans and their treatment of Mark Teixeira in yesterday’s Opening Day mauling of the New York Yankees. He called out the fans in essence for booing a guy who made a great decision in not coming to a morose franchise, run by a largely inept owner for a streak of 12 years.

You can’t knock him for speaking the truth on that. We are booing a guy who made a decision we all would make in similar fashion. We all would take the money, the Manhattan penthouse, and the chance to play for one of the greatest franchises in all of professional sports.

We likely wouldn’t make overtures to our hometown team and raise expectations like Teixeira did and continues to do, but we’d all take the money. We’d be stupid not to.

Boo him for misleading you. Boo him for making public a false desire to be home and rebuild a team. But don’t boo him for being as sensible as you are.

The Orioles are a completely self-destructive franchise, and it starts from the top. My favorite anecdote about the Orioles’ ownership came from a guy who worked directly with Peter Angelos in a few years ago in public relations. “Think about Peter Angelos’ law practice,” he said. “Hundreds of attorneys—not one partner.”

That mentality of knowing all and never bowing to any other sense but his own has positioned the Orioles in a terrible place of not paying money and not getting great players excited to come to Charm City.

And it has been a long time since the Orioles had any relevance in Major League Baseball outside of having the most people named in the Mitchell Report. Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak, while a permanent halo around Baltimore sports fandom, was years ago. A winning record seems about as laughable as it does distant, and don’t get me started on how Camden Yards is now a defacto home game for any visiting club of note.

So he’s right on all of those accounts, and he said it in such a matter-of-factly, smug way, that all of the emotions washed up. Years of failed ownership and years of under-achievement has spawned this—an outcry against the court jester.

Now, Cowherd was wrong on his account of the Orioles having no past or future. The past is well-documented, and the present seems to be in pretty good shape when three pitchers and the top minor league catcher will likely be called up.

But while he was wrong about the facts of the Orioles franchise, he was right to get Orioles fans riled up about his comments.

And when you can be wrong and still be right for your appeal, you’ve got it made. That’s what makes us listen, call in, write in, and everything else that boosts his ratings.

I respect Cowherd. As a virgin in the radio business, I’d love to get to a place that he has, where he has the kind of platform and influence that creates this kind of furor.

He may be dead wrong in our hearts, but in our minds he’s as right as rain on this one. As O’s fans, we’d be better suited to take this one upside the head and keep the focus on not believing that our annual meltdown is imminent.

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