The Athletic’s Zak Keefer published a feature on Wednesday about a man who attended his first Colts game since 1983 this past week after being paroled from a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder.
“Bird on ‘The Wire,’ a life sentence paroled and a Colts game 40 years in the making,” the headline reads.
Among the details in the feature is that the man — Antonio Barnes — is the inspiration for the character, Bird, on HBO’s popular series The Wire.
Writes Keefer:
More than a decade later, Burns would co-write a television drama with a longtime Baltimore Sun cops reporter named David Simon. They called it “The Wire.” One of the most feared drug kingpins in the show went by the name Marlo Stanfield. And in the sixth episode of the second season, a vicious hitman stands trial for killing a state’s witness, defiant to the end.
They called him Bird.
In addition to the headline, Keefer’s social media posts promoting the story also reference The Wire, with one since-deleted post also implying that Barnes was the inspiration for the entire series.
https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1742548870192570429
https://twitter.com/TheAthletic/status/1742538803942728161
There was just one problem: Keefer’s story made its way to the show’s co-creator David Simon, who made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that Barnes had nothing to do with The Wire or the Bird character.
“‘Bird’ is in fact just a character, entirely fictional,” Simon wrote in one post on X (formerly Twitter). “And the moniker itself was a simple shout-out by Ed Burns and myself to a Baltimore street legend whose adventures date to the 1970s. You should correct this. It is false.”
To be transparent, the character "Bird" in The Wire was not based on this man, or on anyone in particular. The moniker itself was a simple shout-out to another Baltimore street legend whose adventures date back to the early '70s.
That said, I certainly wish this gentleman well. https://t.co/51sagYJbgV— David Simon (@AoDespair) January 3, 2024
"Bird" is in fact just a character, entirely fictional. And the moniker itself was a simple shout-out by Ed Burns and myself to a Baltimore street legend whose adventures date to the 1970s.
You should correct this. It is false. https://t.co/HRexAuFrul
— David Simon (@AoDespair) January 3, 2024
Please stop.
Nothing in The Wire is based on this gentleman. https://t.co/vUoeRV77Pe
— David Simon (@AoDespair) January 3, 2024
Keefer’s story notes that Barnes has never seen The Wire — “No need, he says. He lived it,” he writes. A 2022 book published by Barnes, titled Prison Is Not A Playground also touts his alleged connection to the hit HBO show, with the description on the Amazon listing reading “Antonio ‘Bird’ Barnes’s life was the muse Baltimore Police Reporter David Simon and Homicide Detective Edward Burns used to create the HBO hit series ‘The Wire.'”
While some characters in The Wire were based on real-life people (loosely or otherwise), there doesn’t appear to be anything out there indicating that Barnes was the inspiration for Bird, aside from his own book and a 2018 profile in The Indianapolis Star, which was also written by Keefer. Connecting the dots, it appears that the primary source of Barnes being the inspiration for Bird — who by no means was a crucial character in the grand scheme of the series — is Barnes himself. And while it’s perfectly reasonable that Barnes is actually under the impression that the character is a shout-out to him, it should have been incumbent on Keefer and the editors at The Athletic to confirm that to be the case.
As Simon noted, simply checking in with him could have avoided this issue. Even without the alleged connection to The Wire, Barnes’ story is certainly a worthy one, even if it’s not as easy to promote on social media.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.