Nestor Aparicio

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Nestor Aparicio, also known by the nickname "Nasty Nestor", is a sports radio talk show host from Baltimore, Maryland. He founded the radio station WNST, which focuses on sports talk. The nephew of former Oriole shortstop and Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio, Nestor has been an outspoken critic of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos for a number of years.

According to his (auto?) biography, "Nasty" was born in Dundalk, Maryland, on 14 October 1968. By the time he was a junior in high school, he had become the youngest ever member of the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild.

He founded WNST in 1998, naming the station "Nasty WNST" and christened it "the station with balls". The station failed and he sold the station. In 2000, however, he and a "close group of advisers" re-acquired WNST.

In Spring 2006, WNST posted a meager .6 Arbitron rating, making it one of the lowest-rated stations in the Baltimore market.

[edit] "Free the Birds"

2006 also marked the Orioles ninth straight losing season, causing much of the Baltimore fan base to become disgruntled with the team's ownership. A grass-roots movement called "Free the Birds" was spearheaded by its owner Nestor Aparicio.

For weeks, WNST aggressively promoted an unprecedented protest rally that was to take place on September 21, during a mid-week afternoon game against the Detroit Tigers at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The protest was not so much aimed towards the team itself, as it was the club's owner, Peter G. Angelos. Approximately 1,000 fans participated in the protest rally, and sat together in the left field sections of the stadium's upper deck. There were conflicting news reports over the actual number of participants. Some news organizations had it at "hundreds." Aparicio maintains that it was in the thousands.

During the fourth inning of the game, at exactly 5:08 p.m., Aparicio led a "walkout", with the protest fans leaving the game in unison. The precise time of departure, 5:08, was significant in that "5" stood for Brooks Robinson's number and "8" for the number worn by Cal Ripken, Jr. Many of the protesters wore black T-shirts that read "Free the Birds", a phrase that was chanted loudly through the walkout.

"We have a chance to make a memorable civic statement about how we, as fans, are fed up with the embarrassment that the Orioles have become," Aparicio said after the walkout. Peter Angelos had a different take on the rally. "Whoever joins that protest has no comprehension of what it costs to run a baseball team," Angelos said. Referring to Aparicio, Angelos added, "he is a very unimportant person who has delusions of grandeur."

News of the protest was covered nationally, appearing on sites such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Fox Sports, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS Sportsline, USA Today, and Sporting News.

In the weeks following the rally, Aparicio created a website in honor of the rally, and declared to his listeners that he would form a union in protest of Angelos and his ownership of the franchise. Aparicio likened it to what "many in the asbestos lawsuits did a number of years ago" (a knock on the litigation that led to Angelos' success as a trial attorney). "And what could Peter Angelos possibly say to disparage the same kind of union that made him a wealthy man", said Aparicio after launching his website.

On a side note, Peter Angelos attended his first Orioles Spring Training game in three years in March 2007.