The Runback: Welcome to My Nightmare
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News and Politics
She's Back: Barbara Goldberg Goldman Returns from Democratic Siberia: After Goldman questioned the electability of Black Candidates, Ben Jealous said he had never heard similar remarks about Black GOP candidates.
Endorsements Don't Work Through The Transitive Property: Julie Giordano Tries to Tie Herself to Trump
Schifanelli Should Study The Goldwater Rule AND Stop Playing Shrink: Have to wonder where the bottom is for the Cox Campaign as they continue pathologically to insult anyone who does not fall into lock-step with them.
The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree: Who’s the ignorant one here?
Dan Cox Continues to Lie and Mislead: Dan Cox is ill-informed. He manipulates the truth. Cox would have us all cut off our nose to spite our face, in order to reject anything that he assigns to conspiracy against “freedom”.
Sports
The Savannah Bananas are Hot Garbage: Some bill it as "the future of baseball." It's actually an affront to sports
The Monday Thought
If there is one thing that, more than anything, drives me crazy it’s a lack of prior proper planning. When you are in the process of doing something, and you know that a milestone is approaching, you owe it to yourself and to your constituents be adequately prepared to meet that milestone when the time comes.
Well, welcome to my nightmare.
Now the Orioles game itself was not the nightmare. When you get roughly 20,000 fans per game, you’re kind of used to that.
But Sunday was Orioles Little League Day Orioles Youth Baseball and Softball Day. Thousands (and I mean thousands) of youth baseball and softball players under the age of 18 congregated today to march around the file. A complete sea of humanity that more than lapped the warning track at Camden Yards.
And of course, one of my kids was in the parade.
Now ostensibly, the time for parade participants to congregate for the parade (which started at 12:15 pm) was at 11:30 am. That was all well and good except for the complete and total lack of organization by the Orioles on the outside of the ballpark.
The teams were grouping together in the Home Plate Plaza area right outside of Gate D. That was fine. The problem was that the sidewalk between home plate and the Warehouse was a crush of humanity as regular game attendees, parents trying to get their kids to their teams, parents queueing up to get into the game AND at least one team standing in the middle of the sidewalk created total gridlock. People had to funnel down to a trickle of people moving at best two-wide, as if the flow of human traffic was emulating a commercial for a prostate drug.
Imagine yourself in a sea of 10,000 people, nearly high noon, heat index nearing 100, and your kid is five minutes late to mustering with her team.
There’s my nightmare.
The wildest thing about all of this was that the Orioles had no signage or other methods to try to control the line. One lone employee was trying to get people moved over in a method to clear the path. But he was but one man. It was obvious that the Orioles had not prepared to keep the sidewalks moving and to keep the line of parents trying to get into the game moving and separated.
That was the other problem with all of this. Ostensibly the Home Plate Gate and Gate D were open for parents to enter the game a few minutes early to see their kids march around the field. And yet the lines were so long, slow-moving, and convoluted that I’m sure that many parents did not get to see their kids on the field. We barely got to see ours.
After the game, it turned out our kid was upset. The kids were promised that parade participants would meet the Oriole Bird and a few Orioles Players during the event. That did not happen, at least for her team.
The other issues were more minor, but were still there. Like having several concession stands in the upper deck near the seating area for parade participants closed off today despite the number of attendees and the heat during the Sunday afternoon.
Look, I know that many of these things including the oppressive heat were beyond the Orioles control. And, and the end of the day, Little League Day Youth Baseball and Softball Day is about the experience of walking on the field. But for a team that is getting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to renovate Camden Yards, would hope to see some sort of basic organizational skills by the game day operations team for a huge community event like this.
We get to several O’s games a year; a lot of families aren’t that lucky. It’s just unfortunate that their one trip to the Yard this year may have been a disorganized mess. The kids deserved better.