If, as expected, Kevin Brown returns to the MASN microphone Friday night to call the game between the Orioles and Mariners, he might want to skip the part about Baltimore’s record against Seattle since 2016. It isn’t pretty, and the mention might get Brown another suspension.

KB should probably leave out the part about Seattle’s starting pitcher having a better earned run average than Baltimore’s. Why go there? The boss might not like that.

Should a camera pick up the image of a Mariners fan chewing pork bao buns or crispy fish taquitos, Brown might want to avoid the subject of food: T-Mobile Park has the No. 1 ranking for eats in Major League Baseball, according to a Thrillist survey. Camden Yards ranked a respectable ninth, but why get into comparisons fraught with peril?

Surely I jest.

But given what reportedly happened in July, when Brown dutifully stated facts about the Orioles’ dismal record in recent seasons against the Tampa Bay Rays, any slip of the tongue could result in MASN’s excitable play-by-play guy serving another ridiculous suspension or even getting canned.

Surely, I do not jest.

Imagine yourself in Brown’s job. He’s employed by MASN to call games. The team owns the network; John Angelos serves as the CEO of both the Orioles and MASN. He’s the boss. Brown has to please the boss. He’s expected to put a shine on everything the Orioles do. That’s a big part of the job.

But — and here’s the thing management apparently doesn’t get — that’s not all of the job.

Obviously, Brown is not a sports journalist employed by a news channel. He’s not a freelancer. He’s not a sports writer contributing to a newspaper, website or blog. No one wants him to get snarky about the Orioles when they lose. No one expects him to harshly criticize Brandon Hyde for a bad decision about the batting order or a midgame pitching change.

Besides, with the Orioles having such a good season, Brown hasn’t had to go negative much at all. While it took Gary Thorne fans a while to warm up to his style, Brown’s youthful enthusiasm has turned out to be a perfect match for the 2023 team and its joyful achievements in building the best record in the American League.

But — and here’s another part management apparently doesn’t get — viewers of a MASN broadcast do not want “a complete homer,” the play-by-play announcer or color commentator who sounds more concerned with pleasing the boss than giving a full picture of the game. We know “complete homers” when we hear one. They make us cringe.

For the most part, during the many losing seasons under Angelos ownership, MASN broadcasters did their best to describe the action without sounding like apologists for management. Some of Jim Palmer’s dissections of lousy performances by Orioles pitchers were as cutting as they were instructive, and highly entertaining.

What Brown did before the Tampa game — setting up a big contest between the Orioles and the Rays, noting how poorly Baltimore had performed against Tampa in the recent wilderness years — constituted a professional setup.

He and his MASN colleagues — I assume a producer was involved in this — flashed the sports journalist badge a bit: The Orioles had been 0-15-1 in previous road series against the Rays, going 3-18 at Tropicana Field from 2020 to 2022.

But — here’s another part that management apparently doesn’t get — this is called building tension.

In theater, you usually don’t have drama without tension and conflict; historic context is important, too. A conflict that builds into a rivalry makes a great story. The emergence of an underdog against a dominating rival is even better. So Brown did exactly what any dramatist would have done: Set up the importance of the July 23 game in Florida by celebrating the Orioles’ return to full-strength rival of the Rays.

The decision to suspend Brown for this looks like an unforced error by thin-skinned management, and it blew into an absurd sideshow to the exciting story at center stage.

But there’s a serious aspect: the potential chilling effect on everything this young, talented broadcaster says during future games.

Imagine being benched by the boss for merely doing your job — setting up an important game, creating that dramatic tension I mentioned — and then coming back to work. What now? Do you never mention the past? Do you leave out the unhappy parts?

It’s pretty strange, considering that the Orioles just recognized the last team that won a World Series. That was 40 years ago, and three-quarters of that drought belongs to Angelos ownership.

Brown being benched brings to mind efforts in Florida and elsewhere to discourage classroom discussion of ugly American history, specifically racism and slavery, or to spin the story of the nation’s original sin with the “benefits” of bondage. Teachers have pulled books and scrapped lesson plans out of fear of being penalized. In Maryland, mentioning racism in an email to parents of public school students in Queen Anne’s County led to an uproar and eventually cost the superintendent her job.

This kind of thing proceeds from denial and ignorance. It happens because too many of us spend too much time seeking affirmation for our beliefs and prejudices rather than wider truths.

And Kevin Brown was just trying to set up a baseball game. I wish him luck, and hope he can shake off the big chill.

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