Mike Burke
This will mark the 27th straight year the three major-league teams within three hours driving distance of here will not win a World Series. Or a pennant.
It will mark the 17th straight losing season for the Pirates, the 12th in a row for the Orioles, and the fifth for the Nationals, who really still just got here. It’s been 12 years since a league championship has been clinched on either Baltimore or Pittsburgh soil, and that was done by the Cleveland Indians Oct. 15, 1997 in front of 49,075 hushed Orioles fans in Game 6 of the ALCS at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
Mike Mussina pitched brilliantly for eight innings that evening, and Randy Myers held off the Tribe for two more. But then our old friend (or I should say Marquis Grissom’s and Tony Fernandez’s great friend), fireballing Armando Benitez, hung a slider for the second time in the series, and for the second time in the series, a punch-and-judy hitter hit it over the wall to give the Indians the 1-0 win and the American League pennant.
Never felt a more empty feeling in my life as a baseball fan. The Orioles had experienced a wonderful season, going wire-to-wire in first place under second-year manager Davey Johnson. Happy days were here again, but they would soon spin off into Laverne and Shirley — or maybe it was Lenny and Squiggy — as Johnson and Orioles owner Peter Angelos had been nothing more than irritants to one another for the better part of two seasons. Two colossal egos were under the same roof, and as we filed out of Oriole Park that night the only sound to be heard was everybody asking themselves, “How is this going to blow up in our faces?”
Not long afterward, we found out. Johnson asked for a new contract, Angelos said no, and on the day he was named AP Manager of the Year, Johnson faxed the Orioles owner his resignation, although to Orioles fans it is still considered a firing.
Since then many bad things have happened to the Orioles, most of which have been self-inflicted. There was Ray Miller, who Angelos called “my oak,” adding he wouldn’t have to look for a manager for a very long time. Well, the 1998 season was a long one, although the Orioles would gladly take a 79-win season now, and Angelos was looking for another manager the following year.
Who can forget the sunny Albert Belle? Syd Thrift’s confederate money? How about two midseason purges, the Aruban knight eating and drinking his way out of the kingdom, and, of course, Texas 30, Baltimore 3? That’s the trouble. Orioles fans would like to forget, but haven’t had a choice, because for the last 12 seasons every new misery has become their latest company.
As for the Pirates, it’s been more of the same — nothing but losing, even if it has been packaged slightly differently. So as the 2009 season opens tonight in Philadelphia when the world-champion Phillies (and, yes, that will be former Orioles victim Sam Perlozzo in the third-base coaching box) open against the Braves, area baseball fans will be left with one more night to ponder just how the Orioles and the Pirates, once the model franchises of their respective leagues, will go about turning summertime pain into summertime pleasure. Or at least make things interesting.
The Pirates have been hard to follow over the offseason, because other than extending the contract of Gold Glove centerfielder Nate McLough and signing free-agent Eric Hinske, the Bucs have stood pat, apparently willing to wait for their farm system, which is depleted of pitching, to blossom. It could be a very long wait, but once the Bucs bring up five-tool centerfielder Andrew McCutchen, look for McLouth to be dealt for young arms.
The Orioles, finally in the capable hands of a qualified baseball man in future Hall of Famer Andy MacPhail, have been taking the same approach and appear to be much closer to a winning season than the Bucs are, although it won’t be this year.
The Orioles are outstanding up the middle defensively, and will be even better once catcher Matt Wieters is called up, perhaps by May. Baltimore will also hit the ball this season, and will have a fine bullpen, but after Jeremy Guthrie and Koji Uehara, back-end starters in a real rotation, things don’t look so good. The farm system, however is loaded with starting pitching as the Orioles again embark upon a plan of, in MacPhail’s words, “growing our pitching and buying our bats.”
A .500 season would seem to be a stretch for both the Orioles and the Nationals, and even more difficult for the Pirates. But since the season begins tonight, and since tomorrow is Opening Day, it is further proof that God loves us, because baseball is ours to ponder and enjoy for the next 182 days.
Or at least until the Ravens, Redskins and Steelers open training camp.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
