West Coast road trips by the Orioles are a bad-news, good-news proposition.

The bad news is that you often don't  get to find out the game's result until the next morning (c'mon, fess up -- you fall asleep before the game is over because you're a responsible adult who has to be to work in the morning).

The good news is that listening on the radio as sleep overtakes me brings back vivid memories of my youth, when I'd sneak a handheld transistor radio under my pillow, then turn the sound down ever so low so I could hear Bill and Chuck paint word pictures of my beloved Birds as I drifted off to dreamland.

Years later, mom and dad admitted they knew I had the radio, but figured I'd just pester them if they took it away. So, in order to get their own good night's sleep, they created a parental win-win situation. The kid was happy, the parents were well-rested.

Now, for those of you who think a certain Greek baseball team owner has cornered the market on poor -- and decidedly fan-unfriendly -- decisions, I ask  you to look 35 miles to the south of Baltimore to Nationals Park.

Friday night's game against Pittsburgh was supposed to feature a postgame firreworks extravaganza. It didn't happen, and the Nats -- who generally make good decisions and consistently please their fans -- were to blame.

A slowly paced game and a 25-minute power outage conspired to douse the fireworks. Apparently, the Nats promised their new neighbors along the Anacostia that they'd never shoot off fireworks after 11 p.m. It was a deal make in good faith with the best of intentions.

So at 10:45 p.m., the public address announcer made the announcement that the display would not be held. Just to drive home the point, the message was printed on the mammoth scoreboard in center field. And the fans did not take kindly to the news, chanting "We want fireworks," accompanied by staccato clapping, through the final two innings.

Sadly, the Nationals had the whole situation in their own hands. By starting Friday night games at 7:35 p.m., instead of the more traditional shortly-after-7 p.m. first pitch, they put themselves behind the proverbial eight-ball. In an era where three-hour games are the rule and not the exception, the decision showed unusually poor planning.

Perhaps President Stan Kasten remembered the firestorm created about 20 years ago in Atlanta, when the Braves went 20-some innings and into the wee hours of July 4 before prevailing in a marathon. The planned fireworks display went off as scheduled -- about 4 a.m., mind you -- and residents of the neighborhoods around Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium must have thought they'd woken up in the middle of the Civil War. Of course, there were only a few hundred folks in the stands to enjoy the festivities.

If I were a paying customer who had bought a ticket to last Friday's Nats' game, I'd be steamed. But the fact that the home team exacerbated a bad situation by cancelling a promoted event -- good intentions aside -- just doesn't cut it in terms of an explanation. I mean, if a team were planning a bobblehead giveaway, could someone make a unilateral decision to scratch the promotion and not expect hurt feelings and vocal protests?

Call me crazy, but I can't see Orioles management allowing that to happen.