Bromleyisms

Thomas Boswell wrote last week that DC fans abandoned the Orioles over Angelos’ fighting a DC team ( Nationals’ progress is making struggling Orioles easy to forget. That’s ridiculous. Of all the boneheaded, asinine, head-up-the-ass, ego-driven idiocies of the man, fighting the DC team was the least egregious — and among the few understandable moves that moron ever made.

I was a DC-area, lifelong O’s fan. I spent three years in Baltimore, and remained loyal even after moving South for six years — and even after Angelos bought the team in ’93. I came back to DC in the late 90′s and did my best to follow the team, but it was getting ugly with the stupid Palmeiro contract, the Angelos strike-busting team in ’95, the Cuban exhibition, and then into the Alomar, Sosa, Tejada, etc. idiocy.

But what did it for me and for most fans was the Davey Johnson firing and the ridiculous positioning on Mussina’s free agency — and letting him go to the Yankees. These two things alone knocked us away. Everything else was but background, supporting evidence. Angelos’ ego never showed more stubbornly than with these two, along with Ripken, the very best of Orioles of the 1990s.

Dissing DC didn’t change a thing for core fans. All it did was to convince any lingering DC area fans that money and time spent in Baltimore was even less appealing than before. Having been a 30+ game a year fan during the 80s and early 90s from both DC and Baltimore, I went to all of two games at Camden Yards in the 2000s, and haven’t been back since the Nat’s opened.

The only consolation I have regarding the O’s is that my dear Redskins have been equally abused, torn, and ruined by dum-as-dirt, ego-driven ownership, and I refuse to spend a penny on either franchise until both owners skip town, shoot themselves, or are publicly hung.