The Charm City Choke: Why It Sucks to Be from Baltimore

And now we can’t even rub our success in the faces of Browns fans, as they vie for a playoff spot with a former Raven at the helm. 

Week after week, head coach Brian Billick informs us that Kyle Boller "gives us the best chance to win," but even when he did in Week 14, idiotic time-outs and defensive ineptitude ruined the best chance that any team had to upend the Pats. 

Then, after getting demolished by the Colts, the team that walked out on our city and broke our hearts, we lose to the only team we are sure we can beat.  The Dolphins celebrate their first win of the season as the Ravens' franchise-record eight consecutive losses leave them at the bottom of a division many predicted they could win.

All the while we’re looking to next year—until we realize that Billick will be back, and that Heisman winner Troy Smith, who has been surprisingly good in late, unwinnable games, is likely to be Boller’s backup yet again, thanks to the one year extension we gave him.

As we watch our beloved birds fly south, fans in Baltimore are left with no one else to root for, except in lacrosse. We have no NBA team, no NHL team and the closest top rated college program is in College Park, a full 40 minutes south of the jewel of the Chesapeake. 

The Orioles, once the team that united the mid-Atlantic, now watch generations of fans who grew up in Memorial Stadium toss the orange and black for red, white and blue and a team with no history. These are the same fans that root for the Wizards, a team that also used to call Baltimore home.

Certainly there are other cities that have it rough right now, but idiot owners and failures such as the Colts, the Stallions, the Blast, and the Bandits have tainted our history, leaving us little faith that things will ever get better. 

We still get ‘Unitas’ tattoos, waiting for a QB to renew our hope in the position. We still wear #8 jerseys, because we have yet to be convinced that anyone will ever care about our town and our team the way Ripken did. We wear throwback Bullets jerseys, because hey—at least no one can make fun of you for liking a team that no longer exists.  

We channel surf, watching one disappointing season melt into another, and the only salvation we have is that there's one more new season of "The Wire."

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