Butterflies for Baltimore’s Sports Community

March 13, 2017 Michael Olesker

Over lunch the other day, a friend with deep professional connections to the Baltimore sports establishment talked of anxious days.

The Orioles’ attendance is down. The Ravens have empty seats where there used to be none. The after-effects of the Freddie Gray street disturbances of 2015, he says, are still being felt.

This man grew up in Baltimore, and he’s been a professional insider in Baltimore sports for decades. He remembers early years when the impoverished Orioles were life-and-death to attract a million fans a year – but he also remembers a decade, the 1990s, when they drew more than 3 million people every year (but one) to their brand new ballpark.

They haven’t drawn 3 million people for 15 years now. And last year’s 2.1 million was down 10 percent from the previous year.

This man remembers the heartache when the Baltimore Colts stole away in the middle of the night – but he also knows the exhilaration that’s accompanied the Ravens, whose fans are every bit as passionate as the faithful were in the heyday of the Colts.

But he also knows that while the Ravens continue to sell out, there are cool heads who did the counting of empty seats at last season’s games, and many times they numbered well into the thousands.

This man isn’t alone when he says some fans are still anxious over the troubles of 2015, when isolated sections of the city erupted in rioting after the death of Freddie Gray. Adding to that, he says, is the steady drumbeat of crime stories on the nightly TV news.

With the Orioles ready to open their 2017 season in a couple of weeks, these are not casual concerns.

But let’s have some perspective here. It’s hard to imagine people being afraid to go to a ballgame downtown on a Sunday afternoon, which is when the Ravens play almost all their games. Their problem is that they haven’t been a quality team for a few years now.

And, while the Orioles’ attendance is disappointing at 2.1 million – that’s still a lot of folks. And the truth is, while there may be lingering anxiety over street crime in Baltimore, it’s not the streets outside Oriole Park that are dangerous. They’re as safe, and as heavily patrolled, as any in town.

What’s left for the 2017 Orioles is to put an exciting team on the field.