The Baltimore Orioles are facing public scorn from just about everyone, for a baffling situation regarding their television broadcaster Kevin Brown.
Though the Orioles won’t confirm or deny, Brown has reportedly been suspended since July 23 for reading some stats about the Orioles ineptitude over the years when facing the Tampa Bay Rays. Even for an ownership group that is known for being extremely sensitive, the suspension is a complete head-scratcher. Here’s what Brown said:
There are a number of bizarre elements to this story. For one, Brown appears to be trying to spin a negative trend for the Orioles in a positive direction, rather than slamming his employer. Secondly, the statistics in question came from the Orioles public relations team, and were put together by a production staff. It’s not like Brown was going rogue here.
Giants broadcaster Jon Miller knows a thing or two about this. It was widely reported that his contract was not renewed by the Orioles following the 1996 season, because owner Peter Angelos — the father of current controlling owner John Angelos — believed he was too critical.
Miller joined KNBR on Tuesday and discussed both the current situation with the Orioles and his past. First, he expressed bafflement at Brown’s suspension.
“The story about what he was getting suspended for, even if you believe that, why would he get suspended for that?” Miller said. “That’s it?”
“For me that was kind of flimsy. For those who don’t like the ownership there, they might relish saying ‘Look how petty these people are.’ Well, I haven’t heard any confirmation or verification that any of that’s true, because that statistic was printed in the Orioles press notes and then the producer of the telecast made a graphic of that information, and then apparently he was reading that off the screen because that was a graphic they had.
“Why weren’t they all suspended if it was that egregious? For me there are a lot of holes in that story.”
Miller didn’t want to dive in too deeply about his time in Baltimore, but confirmed ownership was not happy with him. He also framed the entire ordeal as a blessing in disguise because it led him to San Francisco.
“I wanted to stay there, and I never got the opportunity to stay,” Miller said. “The best thing that ever happened to me is that I didn’t stay there.”