Does Peter Angelos read this blog?

I'm thinking probably not. But perhaps someone at MASN came across it. Because to my pleasant surprise Tuesday night, MASN decided to stop identifying the Orioles by "O's" on the Nationals broadcasts. Yes, up in the scorebox (which featured a new graphical look tonight) the two teams playing tonight in Baltimore were identified as "WSH" and "BAL," just as they should--not "WSH" and "O's" as they were last month, which seemed to indicate that Peter Angelos thought the Orioles were the home team even on the Nats' TV broadcast. (Over on the Orioles' broadcast, they were using "O's" to identify the Orioles, and that's fine--just don't bring that over to the Washington side.)

Some might nitpick and say that the Nationals should be identified with "Nats" on the scorebox and graphics, but I don't really care. I have no problem with being identified by "WSH"--I believe that's how Comcast Sports Net identifies the Capitals and Wizards on their broadcasts. I just didn't like that an out-of-town team was being identified on Washington's broadcasts as if they were they were the home team, and I guess the message got through. And the Nats got an easy victory too--what a great night!

Peter Angelos is still evil

First Peter Angelos tried his best to keep a baseball team out of Washington. Then he was given the television rights to the Nationals and, along with Comcast, managed to keep most of the Nationals games off television for the first two seasons of the team's existence. But with the TV dispute worked out and all the games on television this season , I was ready to not use any more energy hating Angelos anymore and just laugh at how he's run the Orioles into the ground. Then, this weekend's Nats-Orioles series happened, and I'm furious.

I sat down to watch the game Saturday night and noticed something odd on the Nationals telecast. Up in the score box in the corner of the screen, the Nationals were identified with, as is customary, the abbreviation "WSH." No problem there. But the Orioles were, strangely, not identified with "BAL" or "BLT." No, they were identified by "O's." Even more amazing, when the line score was put up at the end of each half-inning, the teams were identified as "Orioles" and "Washington."

Yes, this was the Nationals television broadcast and the graphics on the screen were essentially treating the Nationals as the opposing team--and the Orioles as the "home" team. Has this ever happened before, that the graphics on a team's own television broadcasts treat another team as the home team? I guess this is what happens when your team's own television broadcasts are owned by the owner of another team--ridiculous just on principle but even more ridiculous when stuff like this happens. Can't Bud Selig step in on this? (That's a rhetorical question--if he didn't do anything on steroids, I'm sure he can't be bothered about this.)

Last year, this also happened, and I believe I read someone at MASN saying that the orders for this graphical set-up came directly from Angelos. Whether my memory is correct or not, that really is the only explanation for this--the rest of the Nats broadcast (announcers, etc.) is geared around the Nats. They don't talk about the Orioles as a home team on the pregame show or during the game--it's only identified that way on the graphics. They don't identify the Florida Marlins as the "Marlins" on the line score, they identify them as "Florida." This is just another case of Peter Angelos still trying to keep his monopoly on baseball in the Washington area by pronouncing the Orioles the home team in both markets--and it's just another sign of his malignancy. Yes, I know this whole graphics thing isn't that important--much more crucial is that the Nats are getting less money for their TV rights than they could on the open market because he owns them. But it still rankles. I guess I should look on the bright side, though--at least he doesn't own the Nationals. That's something Orioles fans still have to deal with, for what looks like plenty of years to come.

(Oh, there is one explanation that I haven't considered. The Orioles famously dropped "Baltimore" from their uniforms a few years back in order to appeal to the Washington area and make them more of a regional team. Did they entirely drop Baltimore from their name? Are they now like the Cosmos from the old North American Soccer League? Probably not, but it would be the only somewhat defensible explanation for this outrage.