History of The Baltimore Orioles - "Free The Birds"

"Free The Birds"

2006 also marked the Orioles ninth straight losing season, causing much of the Baltimore fan base to become disgruntled with the team's ownership.

Fan bitterness was not limited to the team's poor performance on the field. With Washington finally getting a baseball team of its own, many longtime Baltimore fans became disturbed over the ownership's continued refusal to put the word "Baltimore" back on the Orioles road jerseys, as well as their refusal to refer to the team as the "Baltimore Orioles." A grass-roots movement called "Free the Birds" was organized by local sports talk radio station WNST-1570, spearheaded by its owner "Nasty" Nestor Aparicio. The nephew of former Oriole shortstop and Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio, "Nasty" Nestor had been an outspoken critic of Angelos for a number of years.

For weeks, WNST aggressively promoted an unprecedented protest rally that was to take place on September 21, during a mid-week afternoon game against the Detroit Tigers at Camden Yards. The protest was not so much aimed towards the team itself, as it was the club's owner, Peter Angelos. Approximately 1,000 fans participated in the protest rally, and sat together in the left field sections of the stadium's upper deck. There were conflicting news reports over the actual number of participants. Some news organizations had it at "hundreds." Aparicio maintains that it was in the thousands.

During the fourth inning of the game, at exactly 5:08 p.m., Aparicio led a "walkout", with the protest fans leaving the game in unison. The precise time of departure, 5:08, was significant in that "5" stood for Brooks Robinson's number and "8" for the number worn by Cal Ripken Jr. Many of the protesters wore black T-shirts that read "Free the Birds", a phrase that was chanted loudly through the walkout.

"We have a chance to make a memorable civic statement about how we, as fans, are fed up with the embarrassment that the Orioles have become," Aparicio said after the walkout. Peter Angelos had a different take on the rally. "Whoever joins that protest has no comprehension of what it costs to run a baseball team," Angelos said. Referring to Aparicio, Angelos added, "he is a very unimportant person who has delusions of grandeur."

News of the protest was covered nationally, appearing on sites such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Fox Sports, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS Sportsline, USA Today, and The Sporting News.

In the weeks following the rally, Aparicio created a website in honor of the rally, and declared to his listeners that he would form a union in protest of Angelos and his ownership of the franchise. Aparicio likened it to what "many in the asbestos lawsuits did a number of years ago" (a knock on the litigation that led to Angelos' success as a trial attorney). "And what could Peter Angelos possibly say to disparage the same kind of union that made him a wealthy man", said Aparicio after launching his website.