Put "Baltimore" on the Away Jerseys Now

I recently read that the Orioles are considering putting "Baltimore" on the away jerseys. It makes perfect sense to me. We're not the Nova Birds or the DelMarVa Orioles or The BWI Orioles. We're the Baltimore Orioles and we should flaunt our glorious city and its uniqueness. Baltimore is my Rome and my Dublin combined, a place where my feet are on familiar ground and where I first embraced my Italian and Irish heritage along with Oriole baseball. My grandmothers, one Italian and the other Irish, were passionate bird fans. Carolyn Bartoli and Mary Swift each made "the best crabcakes in the city" and I made sure to never favor one over the other. They were Baltimore matriarchs who ruled their families like Earl Weaver ran the Orioles.

Baltimore possesses a rich baseball tradition and "Orioles" should not be the sole brand experience. I don't like the hats that simply say "O's" and nothing else as this signifies decades of failure on the field, a big "zero" or an "Oh-for" the last ten years. I remember a game in Yankee Stadium in the mid-nineties when I first witnessed people wearing air-brushed O's graphics on their tee-shirts with pictures of Camden Yards and thinking I don't know my team anymore. I'm okay with the ornithologically correct bird but that's where I draw the line. Let's put our city's name back on the jersey the way we had it when we won championships, contended with regularity, and jumbo crabs ran abundantly in the bay.