The Ravens reportedly drew 200,000 fans to their Super Bowl celebration last month – almost three times the stadium capacity – with Pratt Street closed, and with little advanced traffic or parking planning. So what’s the fuss with the Orioles and Ravens playing at the same time at Camden Yards on September 5th?

Let’s do it! Are we a bunch of wusses who can’t deal with the thought of a little traffic and parking inconvenience? After all our local teams have done for us, busting their tails to bring winning baseball and football together to Baltimore for the first time this century?

This is chance to show the world what Baltimoreans are made of – that we’re a real city and not just small-minded Smalltimore.

In reality, this is not a traffic issue. The O’s would start at 7 p.m. The Ravens would start at 9 p.m. It is strictly a parking issue and there is LOADS of parking within a mile or so of either stadium, stretching from the vacant Westport waterfront lots on the south to all the lots that state workers flee at rush hour up at Preston Street.

The fight is really over just a few hundred prime spaces between the stadiums, reserved for high-maintenance muckety-mucks.

Actually, the dispersal of the parking will make the traffic less of a problem, not more. Unlike the Super Bowl celebration and the Grand Prix, it is a fairly simple matter to work it all out in advance before the September date.

Who knows? Maybe it can even get the MTA to get their act together.

PR Potential

So, yes they can do it. But also, they should do it. Think of the publicity opportunities of a Baltimore baseball/football/thon. This will be a big national story, with boffo prime time TV ratings. Think of the aerial photo-ops, with both stadiums lit up with fans at the same time.

There’s human interest too. Somebody will no doubt have tickets to both games, and shuttle back and forth during halftime and the seventh inning stretch. Some hearty souls will be joyously riding their bikes home from the game after midnight, wearing team colors.

Doing some actual parking and traffic planning will also be good preparation for the new Horseshoe Casino just to the south. The casino will have a 4,000-car garage, all emptying out at exactly the same point. That’s roughly the same number of spaces shared by the two Camden Yards stadiums which empty out into a whole street network. And they won’t be closing the casino down every time there’s a sports event.

Remember that the casino didn’t even submit a traffic plan, even though they want to permanently close Warner Street, which is a primary feeder for traffic around M&T Bank Stadium from the south. That’s a big mistake, and hopefully a real study will demonstrate how important Warner Street is, and could be with a real Middle Branch/Camden Yards development plan. A dense complex street grid is what allows downtown areas to function vitally and respond flexibly to various conditions.

The Suits Mucking it Up Again?

Could the real problem be that the s#$@&*ing Grand Prix will still be messing up the downtown streets, with Labor Day only three days prior? Say it ain’t so!

In any event (or two events or three events), traffic and parking are supposed to serve us. We’re not supposed to bow down and cower to the specter of imagined insurmountable traffic demands.

When it all boils down, what this is really all about is two factions of competitive “suit people,” representing the Orioles and Ravens, dramatically playing out their dispute in public with the gullible compliant media as their unwitting accomplices.

It’s just like what the D.C. crowd now do with every dumb hyped-up crisis like the fiscal cliff and the sequestration. As Chicago mayor and former Obama aide Rahm Emmanuel says, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” They’ve learned to play the media like a fiddle.

But the players and fans know better. The O’s and Ravens should just magically come to an agreement and get the publicity purveyors to spin the happy resolution. If they do, we’ll roll our eyes, but applaud.