J,
I think you missed the writer's point. He was saying that anyone who is from MD/Baltimore knows all about lacrosse because it's such a part of the culture. But the story in the paper treated it like this exotic thing that no one had ever heard of. It would be like Sports Illustrated writing an article explaining the basic rules of baseball. A real Baltimore paper would have never been this condescending. The writer is saying, I think, that this is a sign of how out-of-touch the out-of-town owners and reporters had become.