Ripken not quite popular enough

Is anyone following this Baltimore Celebrity Smackdown tournament The Baltimore Sun is running? I have to say, as a sports fan, I’m a little disturbed at some of the results so far.

Most of the celebrities are media personalities, sports heroes or politicians. In round one, Oriole Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson pounded Gov. Martin O’Malley, 92.7 percent to 7.3 percent and Raven Ray Lewis easily handled Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak, 77 to 23. But Oriole Brian Roberts lost out to former Gov. William Schaefer and Raven Todd Heap was overtaken by radio personality JoJo Girard.

And in round two, our beloved Cal Ripkin Jr. is losing to WWE diva Stacy Keibler in a landslide, 75.2 percent to 24.8 as of Friday afternoon. The beating has even caught Sports Illustrated’s attention.

Of course this is by no means scientific. And I seriously doubt anyone’s legacy (from Ripken to O’Malley) will be affected by losing early on (we still have three more rounds to go). Just because the Iron Man is about to lose to a former Ravens cheerleader does not mean that Baltimore isn’t still a great sports town. I hope.

In fact the only thing really significant about this tournament is the amount of traffic it is driving to The Sun’s Web site. I’m imagining the Web editors over there gleefully watching the number of votes tick up — along with their online viwership. And that’s what we call a smart business move.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Orioles, sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

Leave a Reply