The subject of professional sports franchises wooing the blogging unwashed has come up in this space previously, whether it was Caps owner Ted Leonsis rolling out the dessert cart or the New York Islanders’ ill-advised “Blogger Box”. With an overture that sounds quite similar to SNY’s 2008 attempt to make-nice with a gang of Matthew Cerrone-approved Mets bloggers, MASN and the Orioles invited a collection of O’s bloggers to enjoy the splendors of a Camden Yards luxury box. Camden Chat‘s Stacy reveals the highlights :
I’d never been in a suite at Camden Yards before and I felt especially fancy. There was plenty of good food, a refrigerator stocked with beer, soda, and water, AND celebrity visitors! Gregg Zaun had his entourage there, and Rick Dempsey spent a good deal of the game in the suite with us. Duck was especially geeked to get his picture taken with the Demper. Jim Hunter also stopped by for a bit and Al Bumbry was hanging around as well. The entire thing was just so…cool. Perhaps the greatest celebrity run in was when Rock Kubatko stopped in and Duck introduced himself as being from Camden Chat. I’ll let Duck tell the story as I wasn’t there when it happened, but the bottom line is Roch wasn’t amused about the time that a story was written about Roch challenging a Camden Chatter to fisticuffs. Sadly I did not even see Roch as I was outside cheering on the O’s.
Rather than engage in (another) unseemly pissing match over blogger ethics, let’s just say we’re living in a world of very low expectations when Roch Kubatko qualifies as celebrity.