2012 was a great year for Baltimore baseball, and Baltimore sports in general.
Now, in the wake of the Ravens’ Super Bowl run, Baltimore fans find themselves lusting for another champion to take over the city.
Critics of our once great but still proud baseball team have already counted the Orioles out due to lack of offseason acquisitions. We (I use that term in the dearest sense, even though I am not part of the organization) could have easily have gone out and spent in wild abandon like the other teams that showed marked improvement on paper; however games are not played on paper. I was appreciative of the way our brass has managed the payroll in accordance with putting a good, if not great, product on the field.
I would have loved to see Josh Hamilton in orange, but I don’t want to have to pay $40 for an upper deck seat to see it. Besides do you really want to pay a king’s ransom to a player who doesn’t really want to play here?
“Confederate money,” you say?
In the grand scope, the Orioles have a miniscule payroll. A few years ago, a man turned the organization upside down and rebuilt from the ground up, making a “New Oriole Way” as his grandfather did in the Infancy of this club; and for that we thank you Andy McPhail.
He brought us a new perspective on how to run this club and got the owner out of the day-to-day dealings. He also brought us what we hope to be the new Earl of Baltimore, Buck Showalter.
Enter Dan Duquette, a quiet man that seemed reluctant and uninterested when hired late in 2011. He created trades that didn’t go over well at first but by June all was understood. He had a knack for finding the diamond in the rough and exploiting them for all they were worth, turning a 14 season losing streak to a playoff run. His credentials speak for themselves. He built the 2004 Red Sox, and he pulled David Otriz off the scrap head for dirt-cheap. Much like his manager, he was cut loose and another man took his team and ran to the World Series with it.
Other teams have modeled their organizations after the winning tradition in New York and gotten there with bloated payrolls only to rape their fans of their hard earned money to fund them.
The new “Oriole Way” should be a relief of our wallets. They take the best player available and put them in the best possible situations to succeed. This is the mark of great management – a page they may have taken from the Ravens.
Last May, the Orioles were “sticking around” and staying competitive with the likes of what we consider great teams in the AL East. I believed it to be smoke and mirrors, but wasn’t complaining and by the end of June it was apparent that this team had the will, fortitude, and talent to endure the season and end the losing tradition. So they did and became the first team in the American League to win the second wild card in the new playoff system.
No they didn’t make a blockbuster trade or sign the most expensive player available. They stayed true to their formula. One that has shown us results. Minor trades and minor league contracts put the tools in the shed. Buck crafted a work of art with those tools. I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt before we make snap judgments about how they spend their money.
Games are not played on paper, they are played in the dirt, and we like to do things dirty in Baltimore.
