I was looking back over the site and came across a number of drafts I pretty much completed but failed to post. Since we’re talking about baseball books and pop culture — which are timeless — and not the latest news, I thought I would make a mini-series of sorts.
Unfortunately, some of the reference material is no longer available but not enough to make me junk the idea. Such notes will appear in a different color font.
In no particular order, here’s the first: David Simon on the Baltimore Orioles (original date Sept. 28, 2012)
As you know, I love a good backstory, which is why I enjoy the Inside Sports Illustrated podcast where their writers go into greater depth about their work.
This week’s guest is David Simon, the brains behind some of the best TV series of all time including Treme, The Wire, Homicide: Life on The Streets (among my top three), who writes about his beloved O’s. Unfortunately, that episode is no longer accessible but there are written excerpts in the story. Both Homicide and The Wire were set in Baltimore.
Degrees-of-separation anecdote: HLOTS featured a storyline about baseball within a three-part episode titled “Blood Ties.”
From Wikipedia:
Munch and Kellerman investigate a murder at Oriole Park at Camden Yards during a late-season baseball game, leaving 48,000 possible suspects. The Long Island man, presumably a Yankees fan, is found beaten to death on the stairs of the stadium, and the governor of Maryland pressures the police department to solve the murder before the game ends so that millions in tourism dollars and ticket revenues will not be jeopardized. After several fruitless interviews, Munch and Kellerman question Scott Russell (Brian Tarantina), a New Yorker who attended the game with the victim. Russell admits he killed the victim because he said the Baltimore Orioles were a better team than the Yankees. He agrees to confess to the murder if they let him watch the rest of the game.
HLOTS features one of my favorite actors, Andrea Braugher, who currently stars in the ABC series Last Resort. His further baseball connection? He played the title role in the 1990 made-for-TV movie The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson. I know I saw it at the time, but even watching the trailer doesn’t bring back memories of Braugher engaged in any real baseball activity in the film. (I had the pleasure of meeting Braugher quite by accident at the Dick’s Sporting Goods down the road from my office. He was shopping with his teenage son and was quite gracious when I approached to convey my appreciation for his work.)
More Simon/baseball connections? The final season of The Wire revolved around a reporter for the Baltimore Sun who, pressured to come up with a story and too lazy to actually do any real work, fabricated a story about young boy in a wheelchair at an Orioles’ home opener. His immediate editor, played by Clark Johnson (an HLOTS alumnus), was skeptical, but the paper’s higher ups bought the fish tale hook, line, and sinker, leading to accolades for the writer and further complications on subsequent stories.
You can hear the SI/Simon interview here.
More on Simon and the Orioles:
- Another SI piece from 2014.
- A major storyline in “Unconfirmed Reports,” the second episode of the fifth and final season, deals with a reporter fabricating a story about an wheelchair-bound Orioles fan.
- The team receives several mentions in this list of “The Great Sports Moments from The Wire.”
- Armando Benitez and Scott Ericson appeared as themselves in a three-part story arc on HLOTS that dealt with a murder at the ballpark.
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