But no one would dare "boo" him that day, not when he's FINALLY doing the right thing -- giving the team back to its rightful owners, US -- the fans who built the franchise and supported it and made a sacred place in our hearts for the orange and black!

Can't you see the crowd rise to its feet as Jon Miller, in full tuxedoed regalia introduces Cal Ripken and Peter Angelos side by side. Angelos speaks first and gives a short, public speech -- a thank you for all of us who endured the years. He could start with praising our patience and giving a few well-chosen words about doing the best he could, even through the rough times with D.C. and MLB. He could wax with pride for a few minutes -- his final, Nixon-like speech to the people -- about how he left the team in a strong financial position to compete and with capable leadership to improve and that his legacy would be richly rewarded simply by leaving the team with strong, dedicated, local ownership (just like him!)

And that he's proud and honored to present the team to its rightful owners -- the people of Baltimore, the citizens of Maryland and their favorite son, whose father was "an absolute architect of the Oriole Way which brought so many championships and so much joy to our great community in the land of pleasant living -- the great, and in just four months to be in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. -- I'm proud to introduce you to the new owners of the Baltimore Orioles -- Cal Ripken Jr. and his ownership group," led by Ed Hale, Chip Mason, Steve Geppi, John Waters, Pam Shriver, Jim McKay, Barry Levinson, Stacey Keibler and Monique (and fill in your favorite Baltimore celebrity here).

Ok, so maybe I'm dreaming, but maybe I'm not.

I remember being at that final Colts game in 1983 walking out of the stadium and wondering if it would be my last game ever (and, at 15, not really internalizing the finality that it WOULD be my last football game, not only with the Colts but with my Pop). I honestly didn't think it was POSSIBLE that the Colts could leave Baltimore. That was just, well, UNTHINKABLE!

I remember those feelings I had in 1991 when I dabbed the tears from my eyes at Memorial Stadium and thinking I was really, really leaving 33rd Street for good. Any more games there -- be it minor league baseball, or CFL football or dare I say the impossible dream of getting an NFL team back -- was absolutely unthinkable. It just couldn't happen.

I remember being in my studio at the Lord Baltimore in 1993 when the first NFL expansion dream for this city was extinguished by that metropolis of Charlotte. And I was at the front bar at Bohager's with eight other diehard football souls, with champagne on ice when Paul Tagliabue gave our football team to that armpit called Jacksonville.

And at that moment I just KNEW that Baltimore was destined to never get back into the NFL. C'mon ALL of you just KNEW we were NEVER going to get a team, right?

There were plenty of times when we as a community, and I as an individual, have seen the impossible become a daily reality in Baltimore.

Like me being the first person in that Parking Lot in November 1995 to ask Art Modell a question about his football team? Or me being on that stage in Manhattan being the first person to shake Jon Ogden's hand as he became the first-ever Raven? Or me showing Ray Lewis how to pick a Maryland crab at The Barn after the inaugural game against the Raiders? Or being the first person from Baltimore to meet Brian Billick in that locker room at the Metrodome? Or being in that locker room in Tampa holding the Lombardi Trophy on that January night six years? Or me owning a cool little sports radio station that can share in the community and contribute to making a positive difference in Baltimore? Or staging a stupid rally that somehow could be so upbeat, so positive and so loving of the Orioles, that we might actually persuade the richest man in the state to relinquish control, see the error of his ways and give in to near-universal public sentiment just to be the bigger guy and to do the right thing by the community?

So, being a lifelong dreamer of big dreams (as perhaps you've heard or read for the past few weeks), today, for me, is also about dreaming and envisioning a brighter future for Baltimore sports and for the BALTIMORE Orioles.

Saying to myself that maybe this whole silly rally thing might somehow move a mountain.

But I'll also say it again: I'm done believing whatever story Peter Angelos or this ownership group has to tell. I'm done buying what they have to sell. I'm also done with telling them to "Go to hell!"

No more bitching from me, no more "it's the owner's fault" speeches, no more gripes about Angelos or any of his deals in regard to the BALTIMORE Orioles.

The team is mine and yours and not his -- for without the people in the stadium every night and a community that supports the franchise and shares in the good times and bad, they don't have anything.

NOTHING!

As one fan told me a few weeks ago, you can't have the BALTIMORE Orioles without Baltimore.

And that has clearly been a topic that has been lost on most EVERYONE in Major League Baseball in general over the past 25 years while the NFL has been taking baseball behind the woodshed and bending it over for a quarter of a century, really!

After the strike of 1994 it was going to change.

After the Cal Ripken "savior" stuff of the 1995 season and the now fully EMBARRASSINGLY staged 1998 McGwire-Sosa steroid home run race, which has brought into question the integrity of an entire decade or more of baseball as we know it.

It really freaks me out that I sat at all of the games the same as you did, but I was as complicit in the story as anyone. I was IN THOSE CLUBHOUSES befriending many of these guys who put on 25 pounds of "protein milkshake" muscle from September to February.

And I never asked one question about steroids.

Not to Brady Anderson, who I dined with many times and went water skiing with.

Not to David Segui, who is still in my cell phone dialer, and who, I have nothing but high personal regard for just because he always treated me with dignity, friendship and respect.

Not to Rafael Palmeiro who once stared me down with a bat in his hands and was threatening me at the on-deck circle in June 1996 as his teammates glared during batting practice accusing me of saying something that I honestly never said about him. (I had three coaches and two players privately coming to ME to throw him under the bus with words for his cowardly stance on facing Randy Johnson every time Seattle came to town.)

Palmeiro was a cowardly bully even in 1996.

But what difference at this point does it do to ask anyone questions or find people willing to admit guilt or point fingers. We were all guilty and foolish, in retrospect.

Look, I'm no angel here, obviously -- never professed to be. I've made my fair share of mistakes behind the microphone and elsewhere (I was 23 -- almost my son's age, when this ship set sail), but I ALWAYS cared about the Orioles and wanted them to win and prosper. And I always wanted to believe everything they did was good and right.

With the spiritual guidance of my Pop and what he thought was right about baseball and sports, I grew from Dundalk and lived to build this little radio station and I decided we were going to stand for something that the Orioles of Peter G. Angelos have seemed to have forgotten: community.

Without the people this team is nothing. And today the people are saying, ostensibly, you don't have us anymore. And we have tuned out your message. And we have tuned out your team. And we have tuned out baseball. And we will silently sit through summer after summer until training camp opens in Westminster each July, waiting for the purple team to play.

I've walked the streets the past eight weeks, touched thousands of people and read hundreds and hundreds of passionate and desperate emails from disgruntled former customers of Peter Angelos and the BALTIMORE Orioles.

It's been a very cathartic experience along with writing the volumes of material you've been hearing and reading the past few weeks.

It's not personal. It's business, just like the court cases Angelos has won to become a billionaire over the years.

Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

And today is a massive civic memo to Mr. Angelos: you've lost. The game is over for you.

I don't speak for anyone besides me. I'm just one voice, but today there will be thousands who will echo that sentiment. And I can't tell you how many people have emailed me and said they can't make it with us on the march today, but are with us "in spirit." And every one of them used that phrase: IN SPIRIT. How ever many of us there are -- and I honestly believe there will be 10,000 of us given the positive weather forecast and interest, but I'm only really guessing and hoping and wondering myself, but I'd be stunned if there aren't at least 5,000 -- there are a dozen more behind each of us who feel the same way.

I just know it, simply hearing the feedback in the parking lots during the three Ravens' games these past six weeks. Those signs are going to wind up all over town, you'll see. In car windows. In store fronts. Someone else will make a fortune selling FREE THE BIRDS T-shirts, bumper stickers. You'll see. Today isn't the beginning AND the end. It's just the beginning.

You wanna know the sad, sad reality of this whole deal: not one person has come to me, publicly or privately, to defend him or say anything at all nice about him.

Not ONE!

Some have pulled me aside and said that his kids are nice guys. I've never personally spoken to either one of them. I've never laid eyes on Lou that I'm aware of and I've exchanged a wave to John once in Fort Lauderdale, but that's about it. The late Syd Thrift once told me that they were "nice kids, but introverts, uncomfortable with all of the attention."

Even his friends and associates and folks who do business with him and some people actually IN THE WAREHOUSE have sent me notes and messages saying that we're doing the right thing today.

You know, I was furiously angry with him for all those years, but I honestly now kinda feel sorry for him, to be honest with you. All that money, all that power and he's killing the community's spirit and mojo with his mismanagement of a civic treasure of a baseball franchise and running it further into the ground every day?

It's really kinda pathetic and very, very sad, if you ask me, how a man with that much financial wealth and charity can be so disliked in by a community that he wants to so badly serve and contribute to and promote.

I'm also wondering if that's "wealth" at all, to be honest with you.

Forget the money!

I wouldn't want to be hated like he is, and I really wouldn't use that word normally, but in all of those parking lots and emails that's the word I always hear: hate!

Man, these are some STRONG, STRONG feelings people who love the Orioles have!

As I told espn.com last week, people are really, really pissed off, but they feel absolutely HELPLESS to create any change. And of course, the majority of the rest of the so-called "legitimate media" -- many of whom have no true voice at all because they work for a corporate entity or a partner of Peter Angelos (and that would be WJFK, WBAL, WJZ, WBFF, MASN and The Examiner) -- have been busy for days now either ignoring the rally, disparaging me or my radio station or calling today's march a "publicity stunt" or saying that we're all wasting our time.

Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. Who knows? But letting the ballpark go empty all summer doesn't seem to be creating a helluva lot of change, either. And it's certainly not any fun.

And one more thing: I'm kind of bored with the name calling, the midget, the Napoleon stuff, the "I'm a very available individual" soundtrack, the blah, blah, blah.

At this point, none of that really serves any purpose.

I'm almost 38 now, and I've made the many, many mistakes of growing up in front of you for the past 15 years (and that was NOT always pretty, four hours a day, five days a week I assure you!). I've gone from angry to belligerent, to frustrated to frightened to paranoid to indifferent to now, just plain sad.

But I want to be bigger than all of that today.

I want to simply cast one final public vote on how I feel and why I, personally, feel that way.

And today is a chance for everyone and anyone to speak their minds one time as a civic, united voice.

Wear black, wear purple, bring a sign, write a message, buy a shirt, tip a panhandler, buy a beer at a local pub, eat a sandwich and enjoy yourself.

Today is YOUR day! Let's resign ourselves to having fun, enjoying the whole day, if not just simply sending a positive message to the entire sports and baseball world that we're angry but we still love the BALTIMORE Orioles!

And if Peter G. Angelos and his family own the BALTIMORE Orioles into perpetuity, and continue to run it exactly in the fashion they have for the previous 13 years, that's OK too. Because I'll realize that I had one final day, one final chance, much like on that day, and rich with irony that again, it's against the Detroit Tigers just like in 1991, to think of my Dad, and 33rd Street and all the magic that I enjoyed the first 30 years of my life with the Orioles, who will then be referred to as my "first wife."

Today will be the official divorce for me.

I guess after today, I'm officially now married to the Ravens, and we can just post-date the wedding certificate back to November 1995, because they really did have me, much like Jerry Maguire, at "hello."

The purple clouds, the beautiful field, the roar of the crowd, the taste and smell of the tailgate, and a chance at a glimmering, shiny silver trophy each year -- my new wife can give me what you never did, Mr. Angelos, a championship. And best of all, I actually feel like she hears me when I talk to her and adjusts in some subtle way, like she did after that 6-10 disaster last year.

We're growing together -- the Ravens and I -- through the good and the bad, as it should be. We're making beautiful music and memories together -- hell, we’ve made two already in the past 10 days, which is two more than I've had with the Orioles over the last 10 YEARS!

I have the pictures, both mental and physical to prove it. The Ravens are calling to me and have been for a decade. I've heard it and felt it, but you've ignored it and you've ignored me and everyone in this town -- people just like me, with the same memories, the same pride, the same love of the Orioles and baseball but without a microphone or a radio station to voice their own displeasure about how unwelcome we all feel rooting for our own team.

But, I promise, you've ignored me for the final time.

It's sad for me Mr. Angelos, but much like my Pop and I did to the Colts…much like I did to my first girlfriend…much like I did to my, Pop, in 1992 in that casket in Essex, I'll say one final goodbye.

Cause, I swear, I'm not going back for more abuse or neglect from you and your franchise.

And here's why. Despite the fact that Peter G. Angelos has been a very charitable man in both political campaigns and in helping people with his money in this city, I only know of his name for one reason.

BASEBALL.

Mr. Angelos bought the love of my life and systematically wrecked her and my love for her.

He's a helluva lawyer, but those "lawyerly" wins and loses don't add up to much when the public gets to register a vote, as they're doing today.

You can't question the law: it's right there in writing. Baseball in Ball'mer ain't so simple, hon.

He's just been, simply put, a TERRIBLE baseball owner. Just terrible!

And he certainly appears to be (and again I've only spent 2 hours with him and that was 10 years ago) one of those guys who is never, ever going to give up or give in to doing the "right" thing and sell the team to Cal Ripken or Steve Geppi or Chip Mason or whomever?

Let's be honest (and maybe brutally so): If Peter Angelos was a guy who routinely "did the right thing" regarding the BALTIMORE Orioles over the past 10 years, we'd never have been in this predicament and we could all be using today to fill the stadium to decide whether it's us or the Tigers who is getting home field advantage in three weeks for the first game of the ALCS, right?

So, will the "right thing" happen and will a power movement today by the citizens of Baltimore and the fans of the Orioles, bring upon some humility and dignity where heretofore there has been none?

Or will Angelos be so offended that he digs in even harder and continues to watch the franchise bleed from what Scott Miller of CBS Sportsline.com last week called, "this self-inflicted gunshot wound?"

I dunno.

But, geez, I don't know that it can get any worse than it is. I've spent two years rooting against them and I honestly don't even watch now and I won't be watching in the future to a team that I don't feel at all welcome in supporting.

So, this is it for me: I'm coming downtown, I'm paying my $9, I'm casting my final ballot, and I'll move on with respect, integrity and dignity in tact. After all, the undefeated 2006 BALTIMORE Ravens play at 4:05 on Sunday in Cleveland and I intend to be on the roof next to Lake Erie with a purple heart and soul and plenty of wonderful orange -- and I DON'T mean that candy-assed Browns' orange -- memories. Just like my old blue memories of My Pop and those Sundays with Bert Jones and Roger Carr and the Baltimore Colts Fight Song.

If the team is sold, I go back. If it's not, I won't. It's pretty black and white for me, which is why I made the rally T-shirts those colors.

Orange is a color of celebration, and that's been missing for a long, long time.

It's been more than 28 months for me, and I've basically used up every ounce of energy and burned up what little is left of my integrity and dignity with this stupid rally over the past two months.

But I know I gave it everything I had. I did what I could do and I did with every ounce of passion and pride my father instilled in me.

Since my life has really been about baseball, and in no small order, music, I'll leave you with a song today. I'll provide the words on the website with a bow to Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day and the music you hear on The Moon.

I think the words are very apropos even though I really don't know what he was writing about when he put this song together. I also love the way the song builds and crescendos. And its references to fathers and sons and pain and summer and years and springs and hope are kinda cool as well.

Miss Monday, my Dundalk High 10th grade English teacher who was with me at Game 4 of the 1983 World Series, would be proud -- me using some simple poetry in this final chapter of The Rally Moons.
Hopefully, the crescendo we're planning in a few hours will indeed make September end.

And I really hope that a new day in Baltimore baseball is coming, and coming soon.

Before it's too late!

Peter G. Angelos didn’t buy the Baltimore Orioles in 1993 for $172 million. He bought the love of my life. The Orioles are the nearest, dearest thing I have -- my memories with my Pop, my Mom, my friends, my loved ones, my oldest pals who have drifted since childhood -- they are the one constant in my life, the one thing in my life that's been constant since birth, really.

I've been gone for 28 months and I'm angry and I'm sad and I'm venomous and I'm wistful -- and I'm kinda all of these at the same.

I'm exasperated, breathless and on a baseball respirator.

And football is whispering sweet things in my ear and begging me to come aboard for yet another season of fun and high fives and hopefully -- just like 2000 -- sweet, sweet memories.

The love of my life -- baseball and the BALTIMORE Orioles -- has been held hostage long enough.

She's choking and I'm begging you to let her up for air, Mr Angelos!

I want her back. But I'm ready to give her up forever if this craziness and peaceful message doesn’t work today…because I can't stand to look at her in this condition any longer.

I loved her too much! And so did my Pop!

Mr. Angelos, if you have any soul in there at all, please wake up tomorrow morning and do the right thing.

Make September end and FREE THE BIRDS!

As Billie Joe Armstong of Green Day once sang: "Wake Me Up When September Ends"…
Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when September ends

like my fathers come to pass
seven years has gone so fast
wake me up when September ends

here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we are

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when September ends

summer has come and passed
the innocent can never last
wake me up when September ends

ring out the bells again
like we did when spring began

wake me up when September ends

here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we are

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when September ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when September ends

like my fathers come to pass
seven years has gone so fast
wake me up when September ends
wake me up when September ends
wake me up when September ends