Bent Corner

The smell of wine and cheap perfume.

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Sun thinks I want to see child actress crotch shots

 

I went to the website of The Baltimore Sun this morning to read about how the Orioles lost to the New York Yankees last night. I pay $7.96 a month for the privilege of unfettered access to their website without limitation. As I was finishing the article explaining how the Orioles lost in the 10th inning to the Yankees, I noticed a weird photo at the bottom of the article.

The Baltimore Sun

It’s a sponsored link that shows Marcia Brady (played by Maureen McCormick) from The Brady Bunch with her short skirt bunched up. If one looks hard enough, one can almost sort of see her underwear.

I do not want to see crotch shots of child actresses

Why is The Baltimore Sun showing this to me? I have absolutely no desire to see a crotch shot of a child actress from the 70s. Is this what they think about one of their own subscribers, that I would want to see this? What kind of creep do they think I am.

There’s a reason print journalism is a dying. It’s because of things like this. The Baltimore Sun has no respect for their readers, nor themselves. I’m sometimes approached by advertisers who want to pay me to include links to their products. I would never include a link like this, no matter how much money I was offered as payment. I don’t even want to know where the link goes to. Does this mean I have more ethics than The Baltimore Sun?

I would seem I do. How sad is that?

The Baltimore Orioles transformation to a minor league team is now complete

It’s August 1st which means the Major League Baseball (MLB) trade deadline has come and gone. The Baltimore Orioles got out their trade hammer and let it swing with reckless abandon.

The Orioles acquired a lot of minor league talent. Too bad their farm system is terrible. They would have a better farm system if they employed actual farmers to develop their prospects.

An actual farmer should be put in charge of the Orioles farm system.

Real farmers. The guys who grow potatoes and complain their government subsidies aren’t higher.

The problem with the Orioles is ownership

The Baltimore Orioles switch to a AA minor league team is complete - Bent Corner
Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

Unfortunately, the Orioles couldn’t trade their owner Peter Angelos or his two sons, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Not only would there be no takers, evidently MLB doesn’t allow trading away ownership. That’s too bad.

Angelos bought the Orioles on August 2, 1993. From 1994 to today, the Orioles have enjoyed a win-loss record of 1,861 -2,064. That works out to a .901 winning percentage. In that same time span, the Orioles have had 17 losing seasons. That’s 17 out of 25 seasons.

Ticket prices should be based on a team’s winning percentage

This season has been extremely brutal. Out of 107 games, the Orioles have only won 32 games. That’s ridiculous. MLB should have rules in place for situations like this. If a team fails to have a winning percentage above a certain number, the team is prohibited from charging MLB prices for tickets. A better idea would be to have all teams base their ticket prices on their winning percentage. There would be a set price for tickets established by MLB and then every ten games, the price would change based on the team’s winning percentage. Teams with a winning percentage above one would be able to charge more, teams with a winning percentage below one would be forced to charge less.

MLB standard ticket price x winning percentage = corrected ticket price

Right now with a winning percentage of only .299, the Orioles are still pricing tickets what they would if they were one of the best teams in the league. That’s immoral.

The Baltimore Orioles are the Washington Generals of MLB

The Baltimore Orioles switch to a AA minor league team is complete - Bent Corner
The Harlem Globetrotters only opponent, the Washington Generals.

Currently, the only reason to go to an Orioles game is if you’re a fan of the opposing team. It’s one of the reasons they price tickets against the Red Sox and the Yankees higher than they do for the White Sox or Mets. There are fans of the Red Sox and Yankees up and down the mid-Atlantic region. These fans are willing to pay more to see their favorite team play the Orioles, especially when the Orioles are terrible. Fans of other teams usually see their team win against the Orioles. Angelos is able to capitalize on this and add even more money to his already inflated bank account.

Peter Angelos has a lot of money. I have it on good authority when Angelos is home, he sits upon a giant pile of gold, much like the dragon from The Hobbit. Win or lose, the Orioles allow him to add to his giant pile of gold.

That needs to change.

Manny Machado on the precipice of going to the Dodgers

It appears Manny Machado will be wearing Dodgers blue, at least until the end of the season. The Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Dodgers are close to working out a trade that would send the 2018 Orioles’ lone All-Star to the Dodgers for the rest of the season. Machado becomes a free-agent in 2019 meaning he will be the starting shortstop for the 2019 New York Yankees.

I am a fan of both the Dodgers and the Orioles

I’ve been afraid of this trade for a while now. There are two teams I support, the Dodgers and the Orioles. I support the Dodgers because they’re the team of my youth. I grew up in Los Angeles County and even though I haven’t lived there since I joined the Air Force in 1984, I still have nothing but love for the Dodgers. My other team is the Baltimore Orioles. I’ve lived here in Maryland since getting out of the Air Force in 1994 and I’ve watched them on TV and gone to Orioles games since then.

I do not like Manny Machado

I’ve been afraid of this trade because I knew the Dodgers needed a shortstop and because I do not like Manny Machado. I’ll be glad when he’s no longer with the Orioles, but I don’t like the idea of him being with the Dodgers.

My dislike for Machado was a gradual thing that took years to build up into the crescendo of contempt that it is today. First, there was the time he got pissy and threw a bat at Oakland Athletics’ fielders during a game. Machado acted like an asshat the entire series with Oakland, but it was the throwing of the bat that earned him a 5-game suspension. As far as I was concerned, he was on my own personal double-secret probation for that public display of dickishness.

Manny Machado turned his back on his country

The final straw was when he chose to play for the Dominican Republic instead of Team USA in the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Machado is an American. He’s as American as I am. How he could choose to forsake his own country and play for another country is disgusting.

Manny Machado on the precipice of going to the Dodgers - Bent Corner
American Manny Machado chose to play for another country in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

With that disloyal, un-American decision, Manny Machado became dead to me. You can cheat on your girlfriend, cheat on your taxes, or even cheat at Magic: The Gathering, but you can never, ever cheat on our country. That’s what Machado did, he cheated on his country.

I guess this is why you should never root for two different baseball teams. It’s not like I chose to have two favorite teams, it just happened.