Neal Shaffer is a self-described Don Quixote in orange and black on what he admits is quite possibly a "fool's errand" to take back Camden Yards for the home team when the Boston Red Sox come to town in September -- probably under a full head of steam headed for the AL East title. You shouldn't be surprised to learn that will mean a noisy herd of Boston supporters passing through the turnstiles at Orioles Park.
As we told you yesterday, there's a grassroots Internet movement to wrest control of Camden Yards from the Borg that calls itself Red Sox Nation and Shaffer, a 29-year-old freelance writer who runs the fan blog site, thelosscolumn.com, is the ringleader. Well, right now it's a small ring. There's Shaffer and then there's ...
Well, let's just call it an army of one at the moment.
But I think Shaffer's on to something.
He's calling for Orioles fans to purchase tickets in a couple of specific sections of Camden Yards for the Sept. 8 game against Boston with the object being, in Shaffer's words, "to cheer for the home team and give the out-of-towners a hard time."
Shaffer isn't advocating vulgarity or poor sportsmanship. Just a lot of decibels so the Orioles know it really is a home game. The phenomenon of Red Sox and Yankees fans taking over Camden Yards -- and Orioles fans allowing it -- goes down hard for the Hamden resident.
"It is odd to me and I don't think it's representative of the character of the city," said Shaffer, a transplant who became an Orioles diehard at Memorial Stadium. He longs for those days when the Orioles were the city's pride like they were in the photo here.
So far on his Web site and even on some comments left here, Shaffer's efforts aren't being entirely well received, either by Boston or Baltimore fans. Some Red Sox types accuse him of instigating hooliganism, something Shaffer adamantly disavows. And Orioles fans carp that they're not spending one more nickel on an Orioles game as long as Peter Angelos owns the team.
"Look, I'm not particularly fond of Peter Angelos," Shaffer said, "but I'm not going to turn my back on the team because of ownership. People have said to me, 'They've got to win me back as a fan!' What?"
The essence of being a fan means supporting the team through dark times, Shaffer said, although he acknowledges that the region's patience has deservedly worn thin.
The idea for Take Back the Yard occurred to Shaffer during the first home series of the season against the Red Sox. He was watching on TV and the roar of support for Boston just got to him. "I like listening to baseball on the radio and it's even worse that way because it's an auditory medium," he said.
"I don't think this happens anywhere else," Shaffer said. "Look at the Cubs, look at the Tigers ... even though they've been more successful lately. It doesn't happen in Philadelphia and they haven't won anything in how long.
"I think it says as much about our fans as it does about the ones who come down here," he added. "And I don't want that to be true."
What Shaffer is pushing for on Sept. 8 is for a few hundred Orioles loyalists to show up in orange and black. "I just want them to show some passion," he said. "If we could get that, it would be fantastic."
Photo credit: Sun file photo