Imagine this.
The date is September 28, 2011. You’ve watched the Orioles put together a decent September (15-13) at the tail end of what has been another wholly disappointing year (69-93). Still, baseball has been exciting, at least for a few days. The Orioles have just finished doing their part to help the Boston Red Sox toward a historic collapse that will ultimately see the Sox fail to make the playoffs. Robert Andino has just dropped one in front of a sliding Carl Crawford to score Nolan Reimold, and the O’s beat the Sox in the final two games. That, along with a lot of crazy things happening around MLB, results in Boston missing the postseason.
While the O’s don’t stand to benefit in any real way from the night of incredible MLB fun that will henceforth forever be remembered as “Game 162,” we’re living vicariously through the other fan bases, and taking a modicum of pleasure that our team at least had a small hand in things.
Perhaps you’re of the age that you remember the glory days of Orioles baseball. The days of Palmer, and Frank, and Boog, and Earl, and 100-game seasons being the norm. Or maybe you’re (like me) a bit younger, and Cal & Eddie were your first baseball heroes, but those few years in the mid-90’s are all you know of watching the Orioles play in October. There’s a chance that you’re even younger, and you have no idea what it’s like to cheer for a winning baseball team. Your grandfather’s and father’s stories sustain you and keep you from jumping ship to another team, but with every lost season your resolve weakens.
Whatever the case, the end result is, unfortunately, the same. You know that tomorrow you’ll just wake up and have no choice but to notch another mark onto the end of a dubious streak. It’s the Orioles’ fourteenth consecutive losing season.
As you reluctantly ask the bartender to settle your tab – you won’t be back here until Spring, when hope is once again eternal; after all, who wants to watch other teams fight for the trophy, again? – the stranger seated next to you beckons.
He was quiet all game, never once attracting anybody’s attention in the least.
“Hey man,” the fella says. “Don’t worry. The Orioles are about to turn it around.”
“Sure they are,” you say, amusing him. You toss your $20 on the bar and get up to leave. “Wait until next year, right?”
“I mean it, brother,” he insists. “They’re gonna win a lot of games. Not just next year, but the year after that, and the year after that. This team is about to string together some consecutive WINNING seasons.”
His words fall upon your ears like water onto the tongue of the thirstiest of desert travelers, and for a moment, you can’t help but stare in stunned silence. In an instant, though, reality shoves itself back into your pennant-starved mind and your senses return in a flourish.
Consecutive winning seasons? As in, more than one? With all due respect, you’re not convinced.
How do you react to this man, who has obviously been downing copious amounts of the strongest thing this bar has while your eyes were glued to the television?
Call him a cab?
Challenge him to a fistfight outside? Seriously, how dare he joke about something like this? Guy must be a Yankees fan or something, just reveling in your misery.
Sit back down next to him and ask him how, exactly, the scenario he has laid out could ever possibly come to fruition? After all, the sheer thought of the number of stars that would have to align perfectly for his words to ever ring true seems cosmically, laughably impossible. Sure, this last month has been fun and all, but they teased us just like this a year ago. Remember that? They finished the year on a 34-26 run and got us all excited, only to turn right around and lose 90 games again.
This Jones guy seems to be coming into his own a bit, but that Wieters fella hasn’t really lived up to the hype just yet (really, how could he?), and who knows if any of these “Cavalry” guys are really going to be any good? The new manager has a good pedigree and comes across as knowing what he’s doing, saying all the right things, but didn’t he just oversee 93 losses? This is supposed to instill confidence?
No sir, obviously drunk stranger, you’re not buying into these words.
You’re an Orioles fan. All you want is ONE season of .500 baseball. Give us important games in August and September. That’s all you’re really asking for. An Orioles team playing in October? Psssh…icing on the cake. No need to get greedy.
“Keep the change,” you yell to the bartender as you put on your jacket. And to the sad, delusional stranger, you can offer but a sympathetic smile.
“I wish I had your optimism,” you say as you turn to walk away, closing the door behind you. Then you’re standing alone talking to nobody but yourself. “I really do.”
A guy in a Boston cap stumbles out of the bar across the street, yelling profanities at the heavens.
Oh, to have his problems, you think to yourself, as you hail a cab.
Fast forward nearly three years, and here we are. The Orioles have just won their 82nd game, on September 4th, after winning 93 in 2012 and 85 in 2013. While we all have much, much loftier expectations for the remainder of 2014, it is well worth it for every single member of Birdland to stop and take a moment to reflect on how wonderful the last three seasons have been, and how absolutely improbable they would have seemed had someone – a drunken stranger at a bar, say – predicted them to you back in September of 2011.
Thank you Buck Showalter. Thank you Dan Duquette. Thank you Adam Jones. Thank you Nick Markakis. Thank you Chris Tillman, J.J. Hardy, Matt Wieters, Darren O’Day, Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Jim Johnson, Wei-Yin Chen, Miguel Gonzalez, Nelson Cruz, Ryan Flaherty, Kevin Gausman, Zach Britton, Steve Pearce, Jonathan Schoop, and on, and on, and on down through the Brad Brachs, Taylor Teagardens, Jim Thomes, Bill Halls, Omar Quintanillas, and Jimmy Paredeses of the world. Every player who has been optioned time and again to make room on the roster for what we need TODAY, and who has done so without so much as a single, solitary complaint, all in the name of making this team what they are today: Thank you.
No, a winning season isn’t nearly the sum of our aspirations for this 2014 Baltimore Orioles squad. But it’s also not something any of us should take for granted. Here’s to some banners being raised at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in the very near future. For tonight, though, let’s appreciate what we have right now, O’s fans. It’s good to live and die with the black and orange once again.
