I met my wife at a hockey game. She had season tickets in the front row tickets at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H. for AHL Monarchs' hockey. It was the first professional sports team to come to her city. She was in the FIRST ROW of the building.

Obviously, sports are important to her.

When I found her (and released her from the relative misery of New England winters) she didn't know how to keep score at a baseball game, but being the high-achiever she is, she WANTED to know because she knew it would make the game more fun for her.

My wife, God love her, was TRAINABLE!

You wouldn't believe the baseball memories I already have with my wife. I guarantee it's more than ANY of you have with your wives, even the most ardent baseball fan.

We've been to 13 different MLB stadiums during the four summers of our marriage and making road baseball games is usually a deciding factor in whether we book a trip.

We got to see Miguel Tejada's final game as an Oakland Athletics member. It was Game 5 of ALDS in 2003 in Oakland. It was one of the best baseball games I've ever seen. Zito vs, Martinez, tight game, Damon carried off on a stretcher, the "crotch chop" of Derek Lowe. VERY memorable! And we woke up that morning in Vegas and just jumped the cheapest flight we could find. Next thing I know I'm the back of my buddy Julio Bermejo's Toyota Highlander in traffic in the trunk area of the family truck with his parents and friends in the car. Jenn had to go the bathroom. We're on the BAY BRIDGE between San Francisco and Oakland, bumper to bumper. This was not a good situation.

But as my pal Agent Orange would say: "Comedy ensued!"

But these are the memories that ARE baseball.

Like the Master Card commercial says:

Hopping a ride to Oakland in the back of your buddy's car: FREE

The view of the most beautiful city in the world out the window: FREE

Two tickets to the A's-Red Sox Game 5 for all of the marbles with Zito and Martinez pitching right off the third base coaches box: $80

Seeing San Francisco from the Bay Bridge with friends, music blaring, old couple in the front seat, my pal Julio driving and my wife peeing in a cup under a blanket: PRICELESS!

The memories we have of the 2004 postseason alone would make most marriages or friendships whole. I was with her for EVERY pitch of the postseason as her team won the World Series.

We spent the early part in Baltimore, watching on our living room TV as the Sox dispatched the Angels.

We were in Mexico for the middle of the ALCS, but before we left I called my ticket broker and told him to hold me a pair for a potential Game 7 at Yankee Stadium and we agreed to a price.

The Yankees were already up 2-0 in the series when we left for BWI. She sat in our hotel room all night and watched the Yankees score 11 unanswered runs in the middle innings of Game 3 and refused to turn the TV off until the final out as they lost 19-8 that night.

The next night, she was resigned to watching the last outs of the 2004 season, as her Red Sox were about to get swept right in Fenway Park in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Obviously, the Dave Roberts miracle comeback began and 72 hours later, we were in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium for Game Seven.

Johnny Damon hit that leadoff home run, and I honestly don't ever think I've ever seen a bigger smile on her face, not even when they won the World Series seven days later.

Later in the game, when it was decided (but the highlight for me was still hearing the Yankees fans chant "Who's your Daddy?" to Pedro Martinez one last time!) we headed down behind home plate to find my childhood friend Shonda Schilling, whose hubby had pitched the famous bloody sock game the night before.

We somehow forgot our camera that night in a rush to get on the highway toward The Bronx. Shonda had hers. She handed me the camera and told me to take pics of her celebrating. Then, she took pictures of us.

The picture that Shonda snapped of us -- BOTH of us in her Red Sox caps (hey it was kinda cold, right?) -- is a centerpiece of our photo display in our home.

You can see the final score behind us and the red jerseys dancing on the field at Yankee Stadium. I've always HATED the Red Sox, and it was STILL kinda cool to see: the BOSTON Red Sox dancing on the ghost of Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium.

(Remember: I saw the Bucky Dent game in 1978 on TV and the Red Sox STILL hadn't beaten the Yankess 26 years later!)

And the picture was taken by Curt Schilling's wife. With Curt Schilling's camera.

Do you think that my wife's friends and relatives in New Hampshire think she's making that story up?

(For the record: they do!)

For my wife, the World Series and the games at Fenway Park and in St. Louis were sorta anticlimactic. I offered to fly her to St. Louis and get tickets, but between all of our other travel plans and football season and the fact that she really does have a job (and one that she'd like to keep!) we decided against it.

As she said: "There's NOTHING that's gonna top beating the Yankees in Game 7. There's no way winning the World Series and being there will be more fun than that!"

I had a tricked-up plan to get her to a potential Game 7 at Fenway Park, but it never got that far.

For the clincher of the sweep in Game 4, we watched on TV from our place and I worked up some of New England's finest: Fenway franks, some Legal's clam chowder and a six-pack of Sam Adams (not a sponsor, but it IS the Boston beer).

I had a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne that I had bought from Fritz at White Marsh Plaza Liquors about seven years earlier. I bought it for a "special occasion" and never drank it. Not on the night of our engagement (yes, that was on an Orioles-Red Sox game night as well in April 2004…we went to Nacho Mama's for a Natty Boh, hold the bubbly). Not on the night of our wedding. Not on our first anniversary.

But for the Red Sox, I made a donation and a memory.

In the ninth inning we iced it.

When Pedro Martinez was dousing his teammates in the Busch Stadium clubhouse, my wife and I were having the first taste of Dom Perignon of our lives.

The champagne was great. And, as my wife will attest, it tasted better with baseball.

Already, some of the greatest moments of our marriage have baseball ties.

The postseason trips to Oakland and to Yankee Stadium are just the longer versions.

I could tell you that we went to Camden Yards the day after our engagement and broke the news to my friends in the media.
We also took our entire out-of-town wedding party (there were 50 of us!) to Camden Yards the day after our wedding reception to see the Red Sox play the Orioles (believe it or not, the Orioles actually WON that game in 2003).

We've been on roadtrips to see the Orioles play in Arlington, Texas (it was a rare big weekend for Luis Matos in May 2003) and to Toronto in early 2004 (we got a picture with the mascot there, which is our little fun thing to do, taking pictures with fuzzy creatures)

We've been on road trips to see the Red Sox as well. They were, coincidentally, in Detroit the weekend of my pal Scott Wachter's wedding there in 2004, so we've been to Comerica Park. We also saw the Sox play the Cubs at Wrigley Field on a steamy Saturday afternoon last June.

She says our next roadie will be to see the Red Sox play in Seattle and I'm cool with that (it tells me that she's really like me and that I married the right person!).

We've seen Barry Bonds play at Pac Bell Park (or whatever they're calling it these days), we've seen the Dodgers from high atop Chavez Ravine and we've partied in the Gaslamp District for a Padres-Cubs game in 2005.

The last two Red Sox trips into Philly for interleague play, we've been in the house with the Phanatic and that gray road BOSTON 11 jersey.

We went to visit Marvin Lewis last year at his home in Cincinnati. It was Mother's Day. Marvin took us to the Reds-Dodgers ESPN Sunday Night game at Cinergy Field, where we sat like hotshots in a fancy club suite and ate chili cheese dogs and laughed all night. For the record, Marvin's favorite Red was Wily Mo Pena.

We also try to get down to RFK Stadium when we get a chance to catch the Nats play. We have a bunch of funny pictures from their inaugural game last April with Agent Orange and his sweetie. We all bought Nats hats and trash-talked Peter Angelos.

It was fun while it lasted, and we've been to about six games over the two seasons.

But going to Nats games isn't the same as having your own team. And it never will be.

We want a team we can be proud of here, despite my wife's allegiances to the Red Sox.

After all, we honestly moved downtown more to go to baseball games than for any other reason. We went to about six in the spring of 2004 and haven't been since.

We went until we -- personally -- felt uninvited, unwanted, disrespected and unappreciated.

When the product no longer qualifies as "fun" for me, I'm out. There was NOTHING fun about dealing with the Orioles: as a fan, first, but even more so with that "media" tag thrown on, which immediately qualifies you as a mortal enemy of many people in The Warehouse and that filters down to the clubhouse.

Short of getting physical with a reporter, there's NOTHING out of line for a player in regard to dealing with the media. They can say what they want, how they want and there's an "old boy" network of veteran ballplayers telling younger ballplayers to act like jerks. I watched it over a decade, and most sportswriters who spend time in there wouldn't disagree.

Standing around a bunch of naked young men with bad attitudes toward the media (fully supported by the front office and ownership's nodding approval, because no one there answers questions either) is just not a cool perk associated with my job.

It's not why I got into this line of work, to get sneered at by a bunch of millionaires who are my son's age.

That said, guys like Brian Roberts and Melvin Mora, who have been great guys and a credit to the franchise and the community, have gone virtually unseen because so many of us have been chased away for one reason or another.

So, combined with my innate birthright to Oriole fandom and a lifetime of watching and enjoying baseball as a centerpiece part of my life, it makes my blood boil more than a tad and I don't want to be a party to it.

And I'm not an angry person. So, I walked away, told them to shove their product. Except that I AM their product -- I am the fan. They have nothing without us, the fans.

Much like a lot of the weird stuff in my career, I was a little ahead of the curve in some cases. I told anyone who would listen that Jim Speros was shady in 1994. I told people that before it was all said and done, that the Ravens would own this city back in 1997 because I saw the way both groups did business and how they treated people. But, even as bad as I personally thought The Warehouse was, I couldn't have foreseen it to sink to the depths we've seen this year.

There was a three-game weekend series last month against the Blue Jays that was just jaw dropping in its lack of populating downtown. No traffic, no parking problems, no people.

There might have been 10,000 in the stadium on that beautiful 85-degree Sunday afternoon.

So, what happened to all of you?

I know why WE stay away. I suppose what I'm asking you today is why YOU stay away.

You don't stay away for the same reasons we do, that's for sure.

So, what is it?

Too far? Too much money? Kids aren't interested? Kids don't play the game? You don't know who's on the team? Something the owner did? The nine years of ineptitude? The passing of another trade deadline with no action? Team doesn't spend enough money? Jon Miller? Is it just not fun to go anymore? Did the ushers throw you out, too?

Well, WHATEVER THE REASON, consider this:

What is it costing you? What memories are YOU missing because of baseball's slide in our community? What experiences, in your life, have measured up to the fun you've had at a ballgame or watching a ballgame with a friend, a relative, a loved one, a buddy?

And what are you going to do about?

If this community really intends to make future memories at Camden Yards -- and I personally feel, as taxpayers, we PAID for the right to have Camden Yards -- someone needs to step up and take action now.

No one in the local or national media or the local government or the Orioles family has spoken up or out about what's happening downtown to all of the bars and restaurants and the tax dollars on those 81 nights a year.

No one has mentioned how lonely downtown is on gamedays and gamenights when the Yankees and Red Sox aren't in town. I live here and I see things every night that no one in Bel Air or White Marsh or Catonsville can see.

And I know having been there in 1992 how full it used to be and how empty it is now.

We're hoping to change that on Thursday.

We hope you consider how we, as citizens, can impact the future of the franchise.

Like we did in 1988 with Fan Appreciation Day and the funding for Camden Yards. Like we did we when said we wanted to continue to fight for an NFL team in 1993.

Like we didn't in the early 1980's when the Colts went on the skids.

I never want to go through that again but with the team continuing to hold to the status quo, it's like they really aren't here anymore right now anyway.