Fan creates Wear Orange Wednesdays to unify Orioles supporters

Head to Camden Yards for a packed night game, and you'll see the stands flooded with a sea of orange and know that you are are surrounded by thousands of Orioles fans. Nancy Cook, creator of Wear Orange Wednesdays, wants to create that sense of community and Orioles pride away from the stadium. She started the grassroots campaign toward the beginning of the 2012 season. Cook said that she selected Wednesday for a specific reason. "I came up with the idea. Well, we know that Purple Fridays are really popular in Baltimore," Cook said. "You know, why not pick a day for the Orioles? I thought about it and came up with the idea that Wednesday was considered hump day, and I thought it might be fun to tie the two together and make it Orange Wednesdays and help them over the hump." As the Orioles began to pick things up on the field, so did Cook's initiative, with local news outlets beginning to cover Cook's initiative, including ABC2 News and WBAL Radio. By meeting people at Orioles games and through social media, Cook has grown her initiative and her team, which now is made up of roughly a dozen volunteers. "I just kept building my time around Orioles baseball both through MASN with the live chats, through attending the games and meeting people at Dempsey's Brew Pub, which became a nice place for me to go, and I made friends there," Cook said. Cook, a retired Baltimore County Public Schools employee, now works to rally Orioles fans, a cause she feels called to. "I feel like it's a mission, and that the blessings and people I've met, the opportunities that are given to me, are just kinda coming right and left. ... For me, it's a personal mission," she said. By using social media and by networking with fans at various events and games, Cook and her team hope to continue to grow Wear Orange Wednesdays and unify Orioles fans. "In my mind, by being on Team Orange Wednesdays, we can do a lot of things, not only to help our children, but to help our team, the Baltimore Orioles, as well as help our city and our state," Cook said. "And I think that it can be a win for all of us." For more information on Wear Orange Wednesday or to see how you can get involved, be sure to give them a like on Facebook or tweet Cook.