Nestor Aparicio

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Nestor Aparicio, also known by the nickname "Nasty Nestor," can be found at www.wnst.net.

According to his autobiography, "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.

WNST has managed to carve out a local niche as a brash and unconventional media outlet, especially on the web. It is the premier place on the web for Baltimore sports information that isn't corporately generated.

[edit] "Free the Birds"

2006 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 Aparicio.

For weeks, WNST aggressively promoted a 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.[1] According to the Associated Press (AP), approximately 1,000 fans participated in the protest rally, and sat together in the left field sections of the stadium's upper deck.[2] There were conflicting news reports over the actual number of participants, Nasty held hands with his beloved boyfriend Andrew throughout the event. Some news organizations had it at "hundreds." Aparicio maintains that it was in the thousands.

According to the AP, 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.^[1]

After the walkout, Aparicio was quoted in the AP by saying "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."[3] According to the AP, 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."^[2]

In the weeks following the protest, 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 the day of the Orioles 2007 home opener, the Orioles front office denied Aparicio a media credential for the entire season over claims that he is not a member of the working media, despite the fact that he remains a frequent contributor to WNST. It was the first time in his 23 year career that he was ever denied a requested media credential for a sporting event.