Rebuilding in Birdland?

Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

—     Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City

BALTIMORE — There is a classic moment in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when someone asks the protagonist, Mike Campbell, how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” That’s kind of the way it happened with the Orioles, too. One minute they are a couple of pitches away from going to the World Series during a 98-win season, the next they are fighting to climb over .500, and then…

This.

The Orioles, once the Major League Baseball franchise that did everything right, has not had a winning season since going to the ALCS in 1997 when general manager Pat Gillick and manager Davey Johnson designed a two-year run that put the club one step shy of the World Series.

But then just like that… poof!... it ended. Only the Pirates have a greater streak of losing seasons than the Orioles, which for those of us who remember the epic 1979 World Series, is simply unfathomable. Moreover, aside from the Blue Jays and Royals in the American League and the Nationals/Expos and Reds in the National League, no team in baseball has had a longer absence from the playoffs than the Orioles.

And no, this simply isn’t a case of bad luck or outside forces conspiring against Baltimore. It’s not like in 1980 when the Orioles missed the playoffs even though they won 100 games. The Orioles seemingly have everything in place, too. Their ballpark is still the crown jewel and the standard of the retro stadium age, the facilities for the players and workers remain top-notch, and the strong history of winning and fan support is well documented.

More obvious was the fact that the “Oriole Way” worked. With Hank Peters calling the shots as the long-time general manager and Earl Weaver and Cal Ripken Sr. schooling the players, Baltimore players came to the club young and stayed until they were old. Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Al Bumbry, Cal Ripken Jr. … the list goes on and on. Even players that came from other organizations like Frank Robinson, Ken Singleton, Lee May, Scott McGregor and Rick Dempsey, quickly caught on.

The results? Three straight trips to the World Series from 1969 to 1971, five 100-win seasons between 1969 and 1980, as well as trips back to the World Series in ’79 and ’83.

Then gradually and suddenly it all went away.

Why?

The easy answer is to blame the new ownership led by famed litigator, Peter Angelos. Certainly the charges against him as a poor owner have been written about ad nauseum and don’t need to be rehashed here. A quick Google search using the terms “Peter Angelos” and “worst owner” turn up a trove of stories for those so inclined.

It’s also easy to look at the list of bad moves and busted drafts and point a finger of blame. For every Markakis and Wieters there is an Adam Loewen or Chris Smith to throw back out there.  

But from all reports, Angelos has allowed his new GM Andy MacPhail to run the team unimpeded since 2007 and he swiftly changed the direction of the club. Gone was malcontent staff ace Erik Bedard in a deal that landed the Orioles All-Star Adam Jones and pitching prospect Chris Tillman. The team also didn’t jerk around with top draft picks Matt Wieters and Brian Matusz. In fact, Wieters is finishing off his second season as the Orioles catcher, while Matusz has gone 8-12 with a 4.68 ERA in 29 big league starts this season.

Better yet, the Orioles also signed mainstays Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis to long-term extensions and tabbed big-name manager Buck Showalter to guide the club. Since taking over for Mike Trembley and Juan Samuel, Showalter’s O’s have gone 26-15 and the starting pitchers have remarkably turned in a 19-11 record with a 2.93 ERA in those 41 starts.

“If you sit around and think about what happened yesterday, you won’t think about what you have to do today,” Showalter said in preferring to leave the past behind.

So maybe things are looking up for the Orioles? Sure, they play in the toughest division in baseball where moving the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays out of the top spot will take a little more than finding young talent to develop, but it’s tough for things to get any worse in B’more.

Until then the attendance likely won’t get much better at ol’ Camden Yards. On Wednesday night they announced a crowd of a little more than 13,000, though Eutaw Street was hardly abuzz and there were barely lines at any of the concession stands. No, Wild Bill Hagy is long gone noting that the Orioles rank 10th out of 14 teams in attendance in the American League. Through the early part of Wednesday's game, one could hear the sound of the gloves popping and bat rattling against the ground when it was dropped.

Yes, things are still quiet at Camden Yards, but nothing lasts forever. Not even losing.

Phillies, Braves on a collision course

The silly, old adage with Major League Baseball is, “it’s a marathon,” and as a veteran of 14 competitive marathons (not bragging or anything), I would call the 162-game baseball season with its spring training and month long playoffs, the much more grueling sport to play and cover. For a good marathon a person is investing three to four months of focused training and then two-and-a-half to three hours of running on race day.

Plus, when broken down, running is just moving forward… one foot after the other. It's kind of simple when looked at that way.

Baseball is like that, too, only the training period never really ends. Sure, a lot of ballplayers will try to rest up during the month of November, but typically start working out for spring training and the season around Thanksgiving. Not including all the games, the travel, the sitting around and waiting and all of the late nights and early mornings, the self-respecting ballplayer and ballscribe look as if they have been put through a meat grinder when the playoffs roll around. Considering all the bad flights, bad food, lousy sleep patterns and no true semblance of a “real” life while friends and family are off enjoying the summer and vacations, the baseball lifers earn all those Marriott points they rack up during the season.

Respect? Well, someday… someday.

Nevertheless, over a 162-game season it often gets tough digging up a story idea. Sure, the news of the day always prevails, but with so much competition and so many different people disseminating it, a fresh angle is always the goal. So the search for an obtuse or acute angle brought us to the second game of Monday’s day-night doubleheader[1] led a lot of us to the same spot…

The race for the NL East is going to come down to that last weekend of the season in Atlanta.

Hey, it was a long day. Besides, sometimes the best story is the most obvious one. Other times it’s best to give credit to the schedule makers. After all, the past few years the Phillies had a way of wrapping up the season at home against Washington or Florida with a few days to rest the team’s big guns. In fact, last year, the Phillies had things sewn up with four games remaining in the season to reinforce the accepted fact that there is nothing worse than meaningless September baseball.

Obviously, the converse of that is also fact. There is nothing in sports more exciting than meaningful September and October baseball and it appears as if the Phillies and Braves are headed for a collision course.

“If I had my way we’d get a lead and be four up with three to play before we went in there,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “I don’t know, but it’s kind of traveling that way. It’s like a hurricane they’re predicting to go up the coast with the track it’s going to take.”

Yes, two hurricanes headed for the same spot at the same time. Meteorologists say this can’t happen in nature, but it seems as if the Phillies are resigned to let it happen. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Publically, however, the ballplayers are still in the play-them-one-game-at-a-time mode. That makes sense considering the Phillies are at the most crucial stage of the marathon, well past the point where glycogen stores are depleted and the dreaded “wall” is staring them right in the face.

With a clubhouse full of seasoned, playoff veterans, the Phillies aren’t sizing up the Braves and calculating how it will go down during the final weekend of the season.

“Let’s not look too far ahead,” Shane Victorino said. “We’ll just keep playing. We worry about ourselves. We’re not worried about what [the Braves] are doing. We control our own destiny. We’ve got to go out there and play our baseball.”

Logically, Victorino is correct. If the Phillies keep winning ballgames a trip to the playoffs for a fourth season in a row is a virtual lock. The numbers crunchers at Baseball Prospectus put the odds for the Phillies to win the east at 29 percent, the wild card at 40 percent and a berth at the playoffs at 68 percent. Interestingly, the BP formula has the Phillies going 11-12 the rest of the way and a match up against the Cincinnati Reds in the NLDS with the Braves pared with the winner of the NL West.

Still, like in any marathon a mile in the beginning of the race logically carries the same importance as the last miles. But we know better. So too do they Phillies and every other ballclub in Major League Baseball. The example I like to cite is the end of the 1982 season where the Milwaukee Brewers went to Baltimore for four games in the final three days of the season. The Brewers needed one win to clinch the division, while the Orioles had to sweep all four to complete the improbable comeback to win the AL East.

The Orioles cruised in Friday night’s opener, 8-3, highlighted by a three-hit game from Rich Dauer and 2 2/3 of one-hit relief from closer Tippy Martinez. Storm Davis tossed a gem in Saturday’s first game as the Orioles rolled 7-1 and swept the doubleheader with 18 hits in an 11-3 laugher.

So with the season coming down to one final game on the last Sunday of the regular season, and aces Jim Palmer and Don Sutton on the mound, the Brewers regrouped to clinch the East with a 10-3 victory. Not only did the Brewers save themselves from the indignity of blowing a three-game lead with four to play, but the last game served as a signature game for 1982 AL MVP, Robin Yount, who led his team with two homers, a triple and scored four runs.

Not a bad afternoon, for Yount or the Brewers. For the Orioles, the one game proved to be the lasting image of the 1982 season.

And that’s what the Phillies (and every other team) is up against.

“I think our team will be remembered by how we finish,” Manuel said, astutely. “We’ve hung in there. Our starting pitching has kept us in there. We’re sitting in a good place, and now is a good time for us to pick it up and start putting some runs on the board consistently.”

As it shapes up now, Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt (in that order) will pitch in the final series. The Braves will have Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrgens and Tim Hudson ready to go, too.

How can it not come down to that last weekend?

---

[1] The doubleheader, especially the day-night doubleheader, is a phenomenon foreign to every pro sport aside from baseball. Yes, the physical tolls of the games on its participants aren’t as foreboding in baseball, but think about the scribes. Most folks got to the ballpark for Monday’s day-nighter before 10 a.m. and did not leave the park until after 11 p.m. That’s a long day no matter what the task.

World Series: Howard's End

NEW YORK—In 1983, Mike Schmidt had one of those playoff series that people remember forever. In four games against the Dodgers in the NLCS, he very well could have been the MVP if ol’ Sarge Matthews hadn’t hit three homers and driven in eight runs in four games.

The fact of the matter is that Schmidt and Lefty Carlton single-handedly won Game 1 with a homer in the first inning of a 1-0 victory. All told, the Hall-of-Fame third baseman went 7-for-15 with five runs, a pair of walks and a .800 slugging percentage.

Statistically speaking, the 1983 NLCS was far and away Schmidt’s best postseason effort.

The thing is no one remembers how good Schmidt was in the 1983 NLCS because he was so awful in the ’83 World Series.

So it’s kind of odd that he followed up the success against the Dodgers with one of the worst showing by a Hall of Famer in World Series history. In fact, take away the 0-for-21 effort by Brooklyn’s Gil Hodges in the seven-game defeat to the Yankees in the 1952 World Series, and Schmidt’s 1983 World Series could go down as the worst by a superstar.

Schmidt went hitless in his first 13 at-bats with five strikeouts in the series against the Orioles. Had it not been for that broken-bat bloop single that just made it past shortstop Cal Ripken’s reach, Schmidt would have gone 0-for-20 in the series.

Not quite as bad as Gil Hodges in 1952, but pretty darned close.

After wearing out the Dodgers to get the Phillies to the World Series, the Orioles had Schmidt’s number. There was the hit against Storm Davis and a bunch of oh-fers against Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Sammy Stewart, Jim Palmer and Tippy Martinez.

Schmidt had no chance.

Kind of like Ryan Howard against the Yankees in the 2009 World Series,

Just like Schmidt, Howard wore out the Dodgers in the NLCS with eight RBIs and four extra-base hits out of the five he got. Moreover, with six walks, Howard reached base in 11 of his 21 plate appearances.

Mix Howard’s NLCS with his performance in the NLDS, and it truly was an epic postseason. With an RBI in the first eight games of the postseason, Howard tied a record set by Lou Gehrig. Then there was the career-defining moment in the clinching Game 4 of the NLDS where trailing by two runs and down to their last out, Howard blasted a game-tying double to the right-field corner.

After the Rockies took the lead in the eighth inning, Howard paced the dugout during the top of the ninth and calmly told his teammates to, “Just get me to the plate, boys.”

That’s pretty darned cool.

But will anyone remember the RBI streak, the production in the NLCS and that clutch at-bat in the ninth inning of the NLDS after the World Series Howard had?

Better yet, how does Howard get people to forget about the World Series?

Needless to say it will be difficult. After all, Howard whiffed a record-breaking 13 times in six games. He managed just four hits and one, stat-padding homer in the final game. Until that homer, Howard had just one RBI. After piling on 14 RBIs in the first eight games, Howard got one in next six games before that meaningless homer.

“Sometimes you’ve got it and sometimes you don’t,” Howard shrugged after the finale.

Actually, the Yankees had Howard’s number largely by scouting the hell out of the Phillies for most of the second-half of the season. So what they saw was that the best way to handle Howard was with a steady diet of left-handers. Howard batted .207 with just six homers against lefties in the regular season so that was the strategy the Yankees used.

Against the Yankees, Howard faced lefties in 18 of his 25 plate appearances. And against righties he didn’t do much better by going 0-for-6. Charlie Manuel calls Howard, “The Big Piece,” and clearly the Yankees saw the Phillies’ lineup similarly.

Schmidt said the one thing that bothers him the most about his career was his 1-for-20 performance in the 1983 World Series. If that’s the case for Howard, he has been as candid about it—of course he doesn’t have the luxury of time and space to properly analyze his showing.

“I feel cool,” Howard said. “The only thing you can do now is go home and relax and come back for spring training.”

For now, that’s it.

Hellooooo? Anyone there?

Remember what it was like when the Phillies were awful? Remember when you walked into The Vet and there were so few people there that it felt as if there was a legitimate chance that you could get in the game? Now imagine if Harry Kalas and Chris Wheeler got up and left after the first inning. Just vanished and took off for an early dinner and some TV before bed.

If there is no one there to broadcast a game, did it happen?

Get this... it happened. Kind of.

During a 90-minute rain delay in Ft. Lauderdale yesterday, Orioles' radio announcers Joe Angel and Fred Manfra called back to Baltimore, told it the game was washed out and took off. No problem, right?

Except for the game wasn't a wash out. When the rain stopped, the Orioles played the remaining eight innings though the good people in Bal'mer didn't get the broadcast. Crazy stuff, huh?

OK, yes it was spring training, but is there any more apt analysis of the Orioles' chances in 2009 than the radio guys walking out? Or, is there a more telling how a once mighty franchise has fallen? The Orioles used to be a powerhouse that did it with gritty, team-oriented players, executives and scouts. They had the Ripkens, Brooks Robinson, Ken Singleton, Jim Palmer, Hank Peters, Pat Gillick... the list goes on.

In the booth, Brooks and the great Chuck Thompson were fantastic. They were almost as good as those teams the Orioles put out there that went to the World Series in 1979 and 1983. Plus, O's games at Memorial Stadium (and then Camden Yards) were a happening - it was a true community event. Galvanizing even...

Now, show up at the park early enough and they just might ask you to play.

The crazy thing is that the Orioles used to be the team in D.C., too, before the Nationals arrived. Now, the folks in The District, Northern Virginia and Maryland have two dysfunctional teams to ignore.

In his defense, Joe Angel issued a statement:

To ALL Orioles Fans.....Fred And I had nothing to do with the decision to discontinue the broadcast on Sunday March 29th. It was completely out of our hands ... On Sunday,....we filled for about 40 minutes and then we were told to discontinue the broadcast and simply sign off. The engineer left, the equipment went with him. Fred And I did NOT make that decision......we are not in a position to make that decision.

Fred Manfra and I would much rather have preferred to stay and finish the broadcast after the rain delay. That's why we were there...to keep you informed and entertained. We consider ourselves to be professionals and would never abandon a broadcast as some would seem to perceive.

The decision to end the broadcast was made by the decision making level at our flagship station. It didn't come from us.....and certainly not from the Orioles. Thanks for listening........There's a lot to look forward to with Orioles baseball. Fred and I are grateful and privileged to be your Orioles baseball companions. See you on the radio!

OK, so Angel and Manfra didn't just take off... the folks with the radio equipment figured there was a better way to spend an afternoon than give Baltimore their baseball team.