Orioles sale update

As some of you suspected, it was indeed an April Fools’ Day Gag.

Baseball Musings was the first to bite. Deadspin posted it with a warning. I’ve heard from at least one prominent reporter who initially fell for it and a couple of others who figured it as a joke. I even had one commenter who appeared to be commenting from a major media outlet’s internet address.

As one Orioles message board’s readers surmised, the story was plausible until I added one part to make it obvious that it was a joke - the part about community ownership and the possible involvement of Nester Aparicio. This is no slam on WNST or Aparicio’s efforts with Free the Birds or their credentialing battles with the team. I just wanted to have an element in the post that was implausible, like most good April Fools’ jokes.

The plausible part was a possible sale to Cal Ripken, Jr.. Ripken and Angelos have both denied in the past that Ripken was gradually buying the team, although Ripken said he would be interested in buying if the team was ever on the market,

I apologize to some of my readers who made comments during the day because I deleted them to preserve the gag on my site until now.

Here is a sampling of comments.

nh23003:

Way to good to be true.

April Fools?

Schwind:

This has to be an April fools joke, and if it is, it’s an extremely cruel one. Don’t mess with my hopes and dreams to finally be rid of that gaping a-hole.

soccer dad:

Uh, it’s April 1.
Please tell me you’re not just yanking our chains.

CT:

April Fools?

MB:

This is the cruelest April Fools joke ever.

Rob

Nice April Fool’s joke. Its bad enough that we as a fan base have hit a moral low the last decade. You playing with our emotions like this is unforgivable.

Its common knowledge that the one dream of every legitimate O’s fan is for Peter Angelos to sell our beloved franchise. April Fools or not, its flat out wrong for you to toy with us like this.