After yesterday’s rumors of the Orioles offering Yoenis Cespedes a contract, this morning’s news shows that the Birds’ moving on from Chris Davis DID indeed force his hand into making a decision.

Per Jon Heyman, Davis and the Birds have agreed on a new seven-year $161 million contract.

There will be plenty of time to do examine the contract and potential implications in the days/weeks/months/generations ahead. Today’s piece is to look back on the memories Chris has already made in Birdland, and to look forward to some news ones.

2011 – Beginnings

Davis, along with Tommy Hunter, was acquired from the Texas Rangers by Andy MacPhail back on trade deadline day in 2011 for the low, low price of Koji Uehara. Koji, of course, would move on to the Boston Red Sox, where became a dominant closer and was a huge part of their 2013 World Series Championship – ugh.

Anywho, Crush and Big Game were now Birds. Davis’ first hit for his new team was, appropriately, a home run. It came in his second game, off Everett Teaford of Kansas City, in an 8-2 Baltimore win. In another harbinger of things to come, Davis would later that season strike out five times in a single game, accomplishing the Platinum Sombrero in a 5-4, 11-inning win over the Yankees on September 7. Davis was the first Oriole to wear that particular crown since good ol’ Phil Bradley on – you guessed it – September 7, 1989.

In that first half-season with the O’s, Davis played in 31 games (he spent some time on the DL), hitting .276/.310/.398 with two homers and 13 RBI. Certainly nothing to get excited about.

2012 – Just Make Contact!

Davis entered the 2012 season as an everyday player, with Buck Showalter penciling him in the lineup as a first baseman on Opening Day. He started 19 games at first base in April and 18 in May before Buck began to tap into Chris’ versatility as a fielder.

Speaking of versatility though…on May 6 at Fenway Park, Davis was in the lineup as the designated hitter, i.e. the player who, in the American League, bats for their team’s pitcher. That was quite apropos on this day, as in the 16th inning, Davis would give us our first concrete memory of his Oriole tenure, and still one that pops to the front of our minds when we hear the name “Chris Davis:”

He also started off 2012 hot with the stick, batting .309 with nine homers through the season’s first two months. After playing mostly 1B and DH to that point, Davis started to see his role as “power-hitting utility player” come into focus. In June, he made 10 starts in right field, followed by another seven in July, when he then moved to left field for 11 games. In August, he served exclusively as the team’s DH, before moving back to left field for 13 games in September and October following the team’s acquisition of veteran Jim Thome to DH and C.C. Sabathia ending Nick Markakis’ season by drilling him in the hand.

Looking back, perhaps all the moving around messed with Davis a bit, as his numbers dropped off markedly through the summer months. Of course, more likely, this was just a matter of the league’s pitchers catching up to the emergence of a new threat in the Birds’ lineup, but Davis’ .309 average on May 30 fell steadily to a low of .252 on August 11 before he turned it back on a bit. He hit .337 in September to finish at a very respectable .270.

What I remember most about 2012 Chris Davis was just begging him to make contact with the ball. My dad and I would sit at games or at home watching them when Davis was at the plate, just imploring him to please, please, put the ball in play. Because, when he did, magical things seemed to happen. Showalter, of course, famously began referring to this as Davis’ “contact-to-damage ratio,” which was, in effect, off the charts.

In June, he wowed us with a broken-bat home run:

Three nights stand out in my mind during that magical “Buckle Up Birds” run of 2012 when it comes to Davis. The first was August 24:

Rick Dempsey, in the above video (on MASN as the color guy, remember that??) says of Davis “Wow, wow, wow, this guy just has power that I’ve never seen in this game before.” Typical Dempsey hyperbole, but was he really that far off the mark when you look back?

Less than two weeks later, Davis was a part of the most fun inning of the most fun game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards since the late 1990’s. September 6. Cal Ripken Jr. statue night. Need I say more?

A week later, in a walk-off win over the Rays, Davis became part of the memory not because he had anything to do with the play, but because of his celebration.

Baltimore Sun Photo

Davis was quiet in the postseason, going just 5-for-24, all singles, with nine strikeouts and two driven in in the O’s first playoff games since 1997, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that he had a huge part in the team getting to said playoff games.

His 2012 totals: 139 games, .270/.326/.501, 33 HR, 85 RBI, 37 BB, 169 K. At age 26, it looked to many like a premier power hitter was blossoming. Since Mark Reynolds was already here, and had the nickname “The Sheriff of Swattingham,” many Orioles fans (I believe credit for this one goes to Jeremy Conn of 105.7 The Fan) started referring to Davis as “The Deputy.” It was a solid moniker, but a season later Davis would earn one that was even better.

2013 – Emergence of “Crush”

During Spring Training of 2013, the club decided to give Davis one position and stick with it, rather than moving him all over the diamond. Reynolds had departed in free agency, so there was an opening at 1B, which Davis seized. He played 155 of his 160 games at first that year, and finished as a finalist for the Gold Glove. Not too shabby.

Defense, yay, right? That’s not what you’re here for. Let’s talk about Chris’ stick, shall we?

On Opening Day at Tropicana Field, Davis crushed a 7th-inning three-run home run off tough Rays lefty Jake McGee, helping lift the O’s to the 7-4 victory. In his first at-bat of the next game, he again went yard, another three-run job, this one off Jeremy Helickson. Davis finished the game 4-for-4 with 4 RBI, albeit in a losing effort. Game three? More of the same. Davis went two-for-three with a double and a two-run shot in the win, leaving Tampa with the modest numbers of .636/.692/1.727, 3 HR, 11 RBI.

Then, on the REAL O’pening Day, in Baltimore, he continued his scorching start:

Davis racked up an MLB record 16 RBI in the season’s first four games, and also joined Nelson Cruz, Mark McGwire, and Willie Mays as the four players to homer in the season’s first four contests.

Davis finished April batting .348/.442/.728 with 9 homers and 28 RBI. He struck out 26 times in 92 AB, or once every 3.5 AB, slightly less than his 2012 numbers of once every 3.3.

The Birds marketing department was ready to capitalize on their new superstar.

And we all remember Chris Davis t-shirt night, right? Davis went 4-for-4 with two homers and three driven in in the O’s win over the Gnats. Tyler Clippard couldn’t believe Crush’s power.

No way indeed, Tyler. No way indeed. At one point shortly after this game, those Chris Davis shirts were going for $114 on eBay.

“Crush” (a play on Crash Davis, Kevin Costner’s character in the classic baseball movie Bull Durham) was the talk of MLB. Davis had 19 homers through May, smacked another 12 in June, and was headed to his first All-Star Game (as the leading vote-getter), where he would also be competing in the Home Run Derby. Davis had driven in 93 runs by the break, passing Boog Powell’s 86 in the Orioles record books. He also had 37 homers by the Midsummer Classic, a new American League record.

FanGraphs did a piece where they just looked at his five most “effortless” home run swings.

He also literally hit a baseball through a wall.

It was a fun time to be an O’s fan, and Davis’ at-bats were must-see TV. Even if the O’s were getting blown out, even if you were doing something else – dishes, yardwork, brain surgery – you’d stop to watch when Crush stepped to the plate.

In New York for the All-Star Game, Davis had some fun with teammate Adam Jones:

And represented himself well in the Derby, smacking 12 home runs before being eliminated:

It was Crush’s world, and we were all just living in it. If he needed a towel, he’d just use whatever shlub happened to be around him at the time, as Bobby Dickerson found out:

Though he had a rough July, hitting just .211./.294/.500, on August 1, Davis knocked in his 100th run, and he rebounded nicely that month, bouncing back to .287/.395/.660. On September 13, Davis hit his 50th home run, tying Brady Anderson for the single-season Orioles record.

Someone made a GIF of all 50:

Four days later, he claimed the record for himself.

On September 27, at OPACY, Davis but a bow on his incredible season with home run number 53.

That was his 28th home run at home, breaking Frank Robinson’s O’s record. Unfortunately, Davis, like the team overall, slumped a bit in September. He hit .216/.304/.451 and his six homers were his fewest in any month in 2014 as the team went just 14-14 to finish with 85 wins, unable to make the postseason in back-to-back years.

Davis ended up leading all MLB hitters in homers, RBI (138), extra-base hits (96), and total bases (370). He also set another Orioles record with 199 strikeouts, but nobody was talking about those, as his good ol’ contact-to-damage ratio more than made up for the whiffs. Somehow, he finished third in AL MVP voting, behind Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout, though all three players had very valid cases for the award.

2013 was the year of Crush. Birdland, though disappointed that the team took a step backward and a bit uneasy about the future, was hungry for more. We knew we could count on our burly first baseman to put up another MVP-caliber season…right?

2014 – Crush Crashes While Birds Soar

In every career, as in life, there are peaks and valleys. If the years of 2011-2013 represented a steady climb up to the summit of America’s Pastime for Davis, then 2014 was his rapid descent back to earth, without benefit of a parachute or lifelines. Though, as we’d find out (see the next section), there was, at least, a trampoline at the bottom – at the very, very bottom, below even “rock” bottom.

In the first four games of 2013, Davis hit four home runs. In 2014, it would take him until game number 12 to get on the board at all, and 31 games to hit four. It was a slog for Davis through the season’s first month-plus, a stretch that included 12 games missed due to an oblique strain. However, in the game that he hit number four – on May 20 in Pittsburgh – he also hit numbers five and six, starting what would be a common refrain in Birdland over the next season and a half or so:

“Crush is back!”

Crush, unfortunately, was in fact NOT back. Davis would hit just one dinger in his next 11 games after the explosion in Pittsburgh, and finished May hitting just .231/.353/.427 with seven home runs. Newly-acquired Nelson Cruz was picking up the slack for his former Texas mate though; “Nellie” had 13 home runs in May and 19 through the season’s first two months.

Davis continued to slump. Mired in a 4-for-36 drought that had seen his average fall to .216, he was given the night off against the Chicago White Sox on June 23. He was summoned as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the 9th, though, and reminded us – and ChiSox – that “Crush” was still in there, somewhere.

(What a call from Joe Angel on that one, by the way. “The loaded gun!”)

Alas, even this huge, uplifting, game-winning home run wasn’t enough to wake the sleeping giant from his ongoing slumber. Davis would go 13 more games before his next blast, during which time his average fell further and further, dipping under the Mendoza line by mid-July. Far from returning to the All-Star Game, Davis would instead spend this Midsummer Classic resting, reflecting, and trying to figure out what the hell was wrong.

Things didn’t improve. After hitting .175/.292/.381 in June, Davis was even worse in July, slashing a meager .167/.250/.333. July 26 was the last game he’d end with a batting average over .200. Meanwhile, Davis’ teammates continued to excel all around him. Just 27-27 on June 1, the Orioles surged to first place thanks to some wonderful starting pitching, a solid bullpen, and the continued mashing of Cruz. They went 33-20 over the next two months, then 18-9 in August.

By this point, Davis had been relegated to the seven spot in the lineup. In September, Birdland had graduated to “counting down the magic number” mode, eagerly anticipating our first AL East title since 1997. Davis was little more than an afterthought at this point, though the hope remained that he would suddenly turn it on the way we knew he could, just in time to help carry the team through October and perhaps to their first World Series appearance in 31 years.

On September 11, the Birds had an off day. They held a 10-game lead in the division and their “Magic Number” was down to just eight. The third-place Yankees were coming to OPACY for a four-game set, we O’s fans could taste the division crown, and we were busy getting our Cal Sr. pictures ready to post on Twitter once the magic number moved to seven.

Then, on the morning of September 12, this happened:

Talk about a kick straight in the nuts. Granted, Adderall is decidedly NOT a steroid, but details such as that are extraneous to the legions of Twitter trolls, Facebook freaks, Instagram idiots, and everyone else who had been quick to shout “STEROIDS!” at Davis during his incredible 2013 season. To make matters worse, Davis had been an outspoken opponent of PEDs back in ’13, vehemently denying ever taking one and even saying that Roger Maris was still the true home run king in his mind.

“I have not ever taken any PEDs,” said Davis. “I’m not sure fans realize, we have the strictest drug testing in all of sports, even more than the Olympics. If anybody was going to try to cheat in our game, they couldn’t. It’s impossible to try to beat the system. Anyway, I’ve never taken PEDs, no. I wouldn’t. Half the stuff on the list I can’t even pronounce.”

And then, thanks to taking Adderall after not renewing the Therapeutic Use Exemption he had previously acquired from MLB for the drug, Davis was, just like that, forever lumped in with guys like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire to the general (ignorant) baseball fan. Unfortunate indeed, but also self-inflicted.

From that point on, the O’s would play 24 more games in 2014. If they’d managed to make it to the World Series, Davis would have been eligible for the roster. Whether or not he would have been on it is another issue, as there were rumblings that many within the organization were quite upset with the slugger for his poor judgement. Throw in his continued struggles, and #19 was anything but a lock for said roster spot. Regardless, the point is moot, as the Orioles were of course swept by the Kansas City Royals in the ALCS.

As for Davis, he still had one more year under contract with the Birds. After a good season, a great season, and a horrible season, his future path was foggy, to put it mildly.

2015 – Crushin’ for a Contract

With one game remaining on his 25-game suspension, Davis watched Opening Day 2015 from the bench. We O’s fans still had his disappointing 2014 fresh in our minds, and the stench of the suspension hung in the air threatening to overpower even the wonderful aromas emanating from Boog’s BBQ. We were hoping against hope that “Crush” would return, but most of us were far from optimistic.

April offered a glimmer of hope, as Davis hit .268/.333/.549 with five homers. He put an exclamation point on the month with this blast in the famous “no fans” game on April 29:

May was a different story altogether. Davis completely tanked, hitting just .196/.301/.464 for the month. The homers were still there – he hit seven in the month – but the strikeouts were reaching ridiculous proportions – 40 in 97 AB, or one every 2.4 AB. Through two months, “Whiff” Davis had worn the Golden Sombrero (four strikeouts in one game) four times.

Davis continued to slump, and his average bottomed out at .214 after an 0-for-4 against Boston on June 9. While we were enjoying the homers, for most in Birdland, the ends didn’t justify the means, and the overwhelming sentiment among fans seemed to be “it was fun while it lasted, but see ya later.” Birds faithful were preparing ourselves to part ways with Davis at the end of the season, or perhaps even sooner if the right trade offer came along.

Slowly but steadily, Davis started to turn a corner. He hit in six of his next seven games, and in 11 straight from June 20 – July 1. At the conclusion of a 3-2 loss in the Bronx on July 21, Davis was hitting .238/.319/.460, with 19 home runs – decent power-hitter numbers, but certainly nothing approaching the MVP-caliber production he displayed two years prior. On the other hand, things were certainly much rosier for “The Big Fella” then they’d been in 2014. The trade deadline was rapidly approaching, Davis was heating up, and many expected that a trade was imminent. His value wasn’t at a peak, but it certainly wasn’t at the valley it had crashed into the previous winter. Would the O’s sell (moderately) high for once?

Of course they wouldn’t. Whether or not this decision was a wise one or not remains to be seen, but the trade deadline came and went, and the O’s were again buyers, acquiring Gerardo Parra from Milwaukee. With Davis coming on again, the hope was that the outfielder, who had been putting up career numbers for the Brewers, would help an inconsistent Orioles team string together some winning streaks and make a push for the postseason. At just 52-50 as the calendar turned to August, their hopes were slim, but very much still alive in a top-heavy American League.

Davis had continued to rebound from dismal May, and was up to .247/.328/.501 with 25 homers, and had not one, not two, but THREE dingers taken from him during the month. No other player had three home runs robbed all season. Davis was proving to be good, but none would accuse him of being “lucky,” that was for damn sure.

On August 5, Davis lifted the O’s to a win in Oakland with this 10th inning grand slam:

10 days later, again against Oakland, Davis delivered once more, this time to walk it off:

You want more? Oh, I’ve got more. If these were indeed Chris Davis’ last six weeks as an Oriole he did all he could to end on a high note, and to make O’s fans froth at the mouth to re-sign him, just a couple months after they (we) were ready to let him walk.

On September 2 against Tampa, Davis delivered not once, but twice. First, he tied the game with a two-run shot in the third:

Then in the 11th, he walked it off again:

In the Birds’ next game, on September 4, Davis once again launched not one, but two bombs. He had five home runs in the last three games, and 40 for the season:

Number 40 made history for Crush, as he became the first Oriole EVER to smack 40+ in two separate seasons. Still, he wasn’t yet done with his curtain call.

On September 15, he walked it off against Boston (though this time, the ball stayed in the yard):

On September 30, Davis smacked two dingers again:

Still, Crush wasn’t done yet. In the O’s final game of the season, on October 4 – a game that many anticipated to be his final game as an Oriole – Davis went out in style, AGAIN smacking two home runs, including one in his final AB of the season:

Those were home runs number 46 and 47, giving Davis the MLB Crush Crown for the second time in three years. It was a poetic, emotional day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and the gravity of the moment was not lost on Davis:

.262/.361/.562, 47 home runs, 117 driven in, and a new team-record 208 strikeouts. Make what you will of the fact that Davis’ two best seasons (so far) came in the two years of the last three that the Orioles DIDN’T qualify for the postseason. Personally, I’ll chalk it up as an aberration. Watching Chris Davis hit baseballs has been one of the most fun aspects of one of the most fun stretches of Orioles baseball ever, and certainly of this generation. Watching him swing and miss baseballs has, of course, admittedly been very frustrations, but on balance, I think we’ll all admit that the good far has far outweighed the bad.

Let’s hope for many more great memories from #19!