Kevin Brown, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network’s lead play-by-player announcer for Orioles games, was removed from the club’s television broadcasts a day after listing off statistics about Baltimore’s poor play in recent seasons, according to sources with knowledge of the team’s decisions.
Brown hasn’t been featured on MASN broadcasts for the past two weeks. The Orioles entered their July 23 game against the Tampa Bay Rays with a chance to win a series at Tropicana Field for the first time since 2017. With an accompanying graphic on the MASN broadcast, Brown pointed out that the Orioles were 0-15-1 in their previous 16 road series against the Rays, going 3-18 at Tropicana Field from 2020 to 2022. Brown listed the figures in praise of the current team, which holds the best record in the American League.
The Orioles won the game to take a two-game lead over the Rays in the AL East, their first time leading the division that late in a season since 2016. They have since stretched that lead to three games, but Brown hasn’t called any of those games on MASN. As the club finished off its recent road trip with three games in Philadelphia, Brown was in the Orioles Radio Network booth rather than MASN’s as he was originally scheduled. He has not called the team’s subsequent games against the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets on either television or radio.
An Orioles spokesperson directed a request for comment Monday to a MASN spokesperson, who did not immediately reply. The network is majority-owned by the team, with John Angelos serving as the CEO of both the Orioles and MASN.
Brown also did not respond to a request for comment. He became the Orioles’ lead television play-by-play announcer last season, after being part of the team’s broadcast crew since 2019. During Brown’s first three seasons calling Orioles games, Baltimore went 131-253, finishing with one of the majors’ five worst records in each campaign. Still, he popularized himself with the fan base through analytical insights, pop culture references and rapport with color commentators such as Jim Palmer and Ben McDonald.
The Orioles went 83-79 in 2022 but still struggled at Tropicana Field, going 2-7. This season, Baltimore is 70-42 and finished 4-2 at Tropicana Field.
Brown is scheduled to rejoin MASN’s broadcasts Friday, when the Orioles begin a series in Seattle to start a three-city trip out west, a source confirmed. The Orioles first complete their homestand with three games against the Houston Astros. Brett Hollander, who typically hosts pregame and postgame shows on MASN or provides play-by-play on radio broadcasts, has primarily called games on MASN in Brown’s place.
This isn’t the Orioles’ first dispute involving a MASN broadcaster’s perceived lack of positivity. When eventual Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller left the team after 14 seasons in 1996, owner Peter Angelos, the father of the club’s current CEO, criticized Miller for not being “an advocate for the team.”
“You have the detached observer, but that’s the role of the journalist,” Peter Angelos said at the time. “I don’t think that’s the status of a team broadcaster. They should be an advocate for the team. They’ve got to bleed a little bit for the Orioles.”
Miller, who eventually signed with the San Francisco Giants and calls their games to this day, said then, “When I heard that and I realized that it was serious, I knew it was inevitable that I’d have to leave. You can’t broadcast the games that way.”
Numerous other broadcasters came to Brown’s defense Monday evening, including SNY’s Gary Cohen, YES Network’s Michael Kay and MLB Network’s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo.
“Let me just say one thing to Baltimore Orioles management: You draped yourself in humiliation when you fired Jon Miller, and you’re doing it again,” Cohen said during the broadcast for Monday’s New York Mets-Chicago Cubs game. “And if you don’t want Kevin Brown, there are 29 other teams who do. It’s a horrendous decision by the Orioles. I don’t know what they were thinking, but they’ve gotten exactly the reaction that they deserve, and it’s just a shame because the Orioles are playing so well, and now they’ve diverted attention from that and now made themselves a laughingstock.”
Sports media blog Awful Announcing first reported the reason for Brown’s removal from MASN broadcasts. The Athletic first reported his tentative return date.