A “tax” for Baltimore baseball fans

There is a lot of responsibility that comes with rooting for a winning baseball team. This is something that could be new to a younger generation of Orioles fans. Before last season’s 93-win campaign, I myself had only been alive for five seasons of winning Baltimore baseball and only two of those resulted in a playoff berth. The first of those was the year I was born: 1989. That was the year the “Why Not?” mantra was adopted by the team, one that was in some ways reinvented during the 2012 playoff run.

My question the majority of the time to Orioles fans nowadays isn’t “Why Not?” but mostly just “Why?” As in, why the overreaction, why the sudden urge to rename yourself Buck Showalter or Dan Duquette and why do you think that losing one game is the equivalent of falling back into the 14-year hole that was 1998-2011?

I’m here to tell you that a 162-game baseball season is not something that you might be used to. Many Orioles fans, who are also Ravens fans, could be used to a 16-game schedule instead. Baseball is nothing like football. Losing one game out of 162 is the same as dropping 0.617% of your season. Losing a football game is like losing 6.25% of your year. You shouldn’t even need the numbers to realize that there’s a huge difference. Baseball and football are worlds apart, so playing Monday Morning Quarterback with a baseball game really never works. The team doesn’t do such a thing. They won’t have six days to stew over a loss; they have anywhere from 12-24 hours instead.

I’m also not here to tell you that you can’t react to a loss. That’s part of what being a fan is, and no one will deny that. It’s what makes sports, and being a baseball fan in particular so great. We can point fingers at a player, the bullpen, the bottom portion of the lineup or whatever you like. None of that really matters though. Sometimes in baseball, there are things that are just out of your control. Sometimes you run into a hot team that finds a way to win. Sometimes a ball bounces the wrong way and it makes a two-run inning a six-run inning. Let this be your reminder that if a baseball team is good enough, 162 games will prove it.

That’s part of what makes baseball so great. There are no secrets because of a 162-game season. Every little flaw in a team will at one point or another be exposed over the course of a long hot summer. The good thing with that is that every great part of a team can also be revealed over that period of time. A 162-game slate eventually helps the good teams rise to the top.

Since winning baseball has been back in Baltimore, some fans have all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and felt some kind of entitlement towards success. Luckily, the actually baseball team doesn’t feel the same way. Buck Showalter’s crew of 25 men know they have to earn victories. They know that nothing will be given to them, and taking a step back as a fan and realizing the same will save a lot of turmoil.

No one can tell you how to be a fan; that’s not the intention of this at all. I’m merely reminding you that as a fan base that had 14 straight years of losing baseball, it’s nice to be back on the winning side. The trick is staying here, and acting like you are used to it. One can only hope that winning Orioles baseball is back in town for a long time. In my eyes, as long as Buck Showalter is running things, the chances of that are very high.

The best way to think of this in my mind is that you, as an Orioles fan, now have an extra responsibility. You aren’t a fan of the Miami Marlins or the Houston Astros. Your team is expected to compete not only in your eyes, but in the eyes of many national experts. Orioles fans in Maryland may even see this as an extra tax being put on them. This tax however, unlike many others, is worth it and makes sense.

It’s worth it to take the small bit of responsibility to act like you’ve been there before.