Mike Burke
With the rebuilding of the Orioles in full swing, and the ongoing re-Pirating having become as much the norm as the late ’70s and early-to-mid ’80s Bucs changing uniform combinations (hideous uniform combinations at that), it’s clear that not only did the dog days of summer arrive in both Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but disappeared almost as quickly as a highball seemed to whenever young Spaulding Smails was in the room.
Make no mistake about it, it’s football season in both places, not that it’s not always football season in Pittsburgh anyway; but the wall of summer has finally jumped out and smacked both the Orioles and the Pirates square in the chops, with both teams likely to keep dropping deeper and deeper into the cellar — although the Pirates might have been spared the deeper and deeper fate playing in the NL Central had they not been reduced to being what many of their fans are calling a double-A team.
Both teams entered Thursday’s play with identical 45-62 records, but overall the Orioles do seem closer to becoming a competitive team than the Bucs do, even though there’s no telling how truly dreadful the Baltimores’ record will become once the AL East is done with them.
Of course, that wasn’t a bad number the AL Central’s Detroit Tigers did on them in three of the last four games, which is a case in point. With rookie starter David Hernandez turning in the shortest start of his brief big-league career for the second consecutive start, the Orioles had no choice but to rush their bullpen out there to pitch the majority of the game, which is something that has become an all-to-frequent occurrence and is pretty much the telltale sign that a team is gassed, with too much of the long haul still facing it on the road ahead.
Of course, this would be expected of any team that sends six pitchers out to make their major-league debuts in the same season. In fact, the Orioles are the only team in big-league history to have accomplished this dubious, yet promising, feat as the last team to come close was the 1888 Chicago White Stockings, who threw five rooks to the wolves in the same season not long before they would become the Chicago Cubs.
The Pirates? Well, it’s even more difficult to say these days, because of the players who are on their current 40-man roster I had only heard of 11 of them at the beginning of this season, and the bad part of that is one of them is Lastings Milledge.
Meanwhile, the owners of the Cleveland Indians, who just completed a Pirates-like fire sale themselves two seasons after missing the World Series by a single stinkin’ game, say their club can look forward to losing $16 million this season, despite a revenue-sharing plan being in place in MLB. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence that the Indians entered yesterday’s play with that same 45-62 record.
As my friend Joe says, “Money talks and (whatever that other thing is) runs a marathon,” and even under ideal circumstances the cold hard facts are all three franchises are mid-to-small market baseball franchises. Compound that with the failing economy, and well ...
Hey, it’s always football season in Cleveland, too.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
