Every Sunday night from April through September, his booming voice resonates from the television. Every Sunday night, his calls are just as likely to send chills down our spine as they are chuckles up our esophagus. And every Sunday night, we ask ourselves the same damned question: What the hell were the Orioles thinking when they let Jon Miller go?
Time was, we used to pray for rain delays just so we could hear Miller's endless repertoire of dead-on impersonations filter through the radio. More importantly, the man knew how to call a game. Still does. Best in the business, in fact. The San Francisco Giants (Miller's primary employer) know it. ESPN (his Sunday night employer) knows it. Approximately 5.3 million Marylanders know it. The one who doesn't is Angelos.
Angelos claims Miller left because he wanted to leave. Right. Truth is, the objective Miller called it like he saw it, and Angelos didn't like it. There have been plenty of painful moves during the Reign of the Beast--Mike Mussina going to New York and Albert Belle coming to Baltimore among them--but none still hurts as much as Miller's departure. See, Mussina's going to retire in a few years anyway, and Belle, he's already done. But Miller, he'll keep going for another 30 or 40 years. Unfortunately, not for us.
