50 Million Orioles Fans Can Be Dead Wrong

Apparently, we’re living in an alternate sports universe where one of the worst Major League Baseball over the last ten years is also one of it’s most popular. And has 50 million ways to prove it.

“…the Orioles are now receiving the ultimate affirmation on the importance and popularity of their ballpark as they get set to welcome the 50 millionth fan in Oriole Park history — the fastest ballpark in the history of baseball to reach such a milestone.”

So what we’ve learned is that going to Camden Yards is not unlike Arundel Mills, a nice place to eat and meet friends. That has to be the case because 50 million people cheering on a team that hasn’t sniffed .500 since 1998 just doesn’t make a lot of sense, now does it?

Is it Boog’s Barbecue? Is it a love for subpar pitching and unbearable mid-Atlantic humidity? Just what keeps bringing these morons back to do anything other than protest? Maybe there’s something to this whole ‘Orioles Magic’ thing here in Baltimore, because there’s no explanation for this milestone that shouldn’t involve David Blaine.

Maybe I’m just a jaded baseball fan that was disadvantaged from the start. I grew up in the Washington area with a paper that treated the Orioles like a passing hobby, and came of age in a town where Redskins were and are king. But 50 million people is a lot of people anywhere, and in a park where glitz is the only that’s good, it’s just a hard number to digest.