The deep thinkers in the Orioles’ front office have now done what once seemed impossible. They’ve made themselves look as bumbling as the team they’ve put on the field in this embarrassment of a baseball summer.
On a Hall of Fame weekend at Oriole Park, which should have evoked nothing but affection for inductees Adam Jones, Joe Orsulak and broadcaster Tom Davis, the front office decided this would be the perfect time to let everybody know they’ll be charging more money next year to get into the ballpark.
This, on a weekend in which they lost two out of three games to the Oakland A’s, a team so bad that they lost 21 out of 22 games earlier this year but now have the same dismal record as the last-place O’s.
This, when the Orioles started an outfield consisting of three guys whose names — Noda, Adams and Allen — were all but unknown to fans only days ago. As was Sunday’s catcher. His name is Jackson. And yet the Orioles insist on calling such a lineup major league and charge major-league prices to watch them.
About those prices …
The Orioles will end their long-standing 13-game and 29-game ticket packages starting next spring. They’re turning them into 20-game and 40-game packages which will cost, on average, 3 percent more.
It also means the end of the popular Sunday-only 13-game package, which has always been aimed at attracting families. Never mind that, at today’s prices, it becomes tougher all the time to bring the whole family.
The Orioles currently have the 23rd best home attendance in Major League Baseball. This is another way to say the seventh worst. They had visions of going well above 2 million fans this year. They’ll be fortunate to hit 1.8 million.
For the moment, they also have one of the lowest payrolls in the game. Last winter, they failed to sign the kind of first-rate pitching demanded for a winning season. The result? Coupled with a bunch of injuries, this season has been the most disappointing in the franchise’s seven-decade history.
Next winter, maybe they’ll spend a bunch of money and land some first-rate pitching. When they do — if they do — that would have been a much better time to announce, “By the way, we’ve got to raise ticket prices a little.”
It would have made it easier to swallow, knowing we wouldn’t have another season of so much embarrassment surrounding this team.
It might even have made it seem worth it to spend money on tickets, knowing it would be a full major league team out there on the playing field.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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