Where Major League Baseball Pays Attention to Me (finally)

So I woke up this morning, as I often do, to not only the sound of my cat crying right above my face, but thinking of the Orioles and their prospects for success in the future. As everyone knows, Baltimore plays in the toughest division in baseball, the AL East, where not only the red sox and yankees hold sway, but which now also features a much-improved Toronto team and a Tampa Bay team that went to the World Series last year.

I'll be the first to tell you: tough shit. It is what it is. As much as I hate the fact that we play in a division wherein we could win 90 games and still come in third place, I don't mind the challenge, and at least we can never say we won the division by default, like San Diego did in 2005 (with a .502 winning percentage). Plus, as bad as we might be, we will still pack Camden Yards (and downtown Baltimore) with idiots with disposable incomes every time the red sox and yankees come to town.

Still, it frustrates me that there will likely be no let-up in the determinable future. Unless the NY somehow stops being the most recognizable baseball franchise in the world and the symbol of Americana for many foreigners (not likely), or they for some reason decide to stop spending tons of money on good baseball players (not likely), they will be good forever. Unless Boston somehow stops hiring smart people like Bill James and Theo Epstein and running their franchise like a smart version of the yankees (not likely), they will be good forever.

So the best chance for Baltimore is to do something like Tampa Bay did last year: wait until your prospects that you have been stockpiling for years come to fruition, make a couple of smart trades to fill gaps, get extremely lucky, and hope that Boston and NY have injury problems to have a shot at it for one year. After that, everyone will be gunning for you and you won't have any money left anyway, so good luck to you. That sound is my heart breaking.

Anyway, I woke up this morning thinking about how hopeless it is to be an O's fan and also how cool it could be if there was a divisional re-alignment that went North, Central, and South instead of East, Central, and West. I figure it would work out like this:

AL North:
Boston
Toronto
Detroit
Minnesota
Seattle

AL Central:
New York
Baltimore
Chicago
Cleveland
Oakland

AL South:
Tampa Bay
Kansas City
Texas
LA Angels of wtf

How cool is that? Right now (assuming the current schedule) the standings would look like this:

AL North:

BOS     33  24 .579

TOR     33  27 .550  

DET     31  26 .544

SEA     28  29 .491

MIN     28  31 .475

AL Central:

NYA     34  23 .596

CHA     27  31 .466

OAK     26  30 .464 

CLE     25  34 .424

BAL     24  33 .421 

AL South:

TEX     33  24 .579

LAA     28  27 .509

TB      29  30 .492

KC      24  32 .429

That AL North is shaping up to be a pretty hot race down the stretch.  The AL Central is all but locked up, but the AL South
could still go a bunch of different ways.

Okay, so Baltimore would still have no chance this year, but that's not the point.  I would have to think that these divisions would be more competitive. 

That took longer to do than I thought it would.  I'll do the NL tomorrow.  NIN tonight!!!!

It has Sprung

Baseball is back!

Well, kinda. The Braves played the Phillies last night and whooped up on them courtesy of a bunch of homeruns off of poor ol' Brett Myers. Its not completely Brett's fault, though...I mean, look at those eyebrows. That's got to make it pretty difficult to pitch.

Anyway, I'm happy because my wonderful girlfriend got us two tickets to Opening Day today, and despite the fact that the forecast calls for "thunderstorms, strong winds, hail, and a plague of locusts" I'll actually be watching live Orioles baseball today. Hopefully.

I'm bringing my batteries to chuck at Mark Texiera's head, though it would be quite the toss I would have to make to hit him from our seats. But when there's a will, there's a way.

Goh Oh's!

omgomgomgomgomg

Dateline: Thursday, Dec. 19.

Boston -

9:58pm: Red Sox owner John Henry said:

"We met with Mr. Teixeira and were very much impressed with him. After hearing about his other offers, however, it seems clear that we are not going to be a factor."

Now obviously, as a massive, undying, through-and-through, dyed-in-the-red Orioles fan, I would love to see us obtain Mark Teixeira. It would not be the end of the world, however, if we did not end up getting him. All reports are pointing to the fact that he will most likely get an 8-year contract valued at about $22mm a year. That is a lot of dough for a long time. He is an amazing player and a perfect fit for the O's, but one player is not the answer, and we really need pitching. I think if the season were to start tomorrow, the O's rotation would be:

1. Jeremy Guthrie

2. Garrett Olsen?

3. The Oriole bird

4. Ernie Tyler

5. The re-assembled corpse of Hoyt Wilhelm

ANYway, the point is that while it would not be the end of the world if Tex didn't end up in Baltimore, it would be the end of the world if he were to end up with the red sox. To have to see that guy play against us day in and day out for the team I most despise would absolutely kill me.

But now, it looks like that won't happen! Happy x-mas to moi!

Except...this is Scott Boras that we're talking about, so who knows whether or not John Henry is bluffing in calling Boras' bluff. In all likelyhood, the sox have already signed him and they are just holding off on announcing it in some sadistic plot to allow the fans of shitbag teams like the O's and the Nationals to believe that there is a glimmer of hope in the massive black hole of despair that is Major League Baseball these days.

But of course, all of this information will change in about 15 minutes from now, so whatever.

Moooose

I love this picture. I also love Mike Mussina. Like most Orioles fans my age, I absolutely loved him, then I hated him, and now I've pretty much grown to love him again.

I feel particularly connected to Mussina in that he was the first ballplayer that I can remember actually tracking as he came through the minors. I saw him pitch at Municipal Stadium when he played for the Hagerstown Suns. I tried to get his autograph, but I missed the chance. I remember very distinctly watching his major league debut on TV. I'm told by Baseball-Reference.com that he won 7-3 in 8 innings of work over Scott Erikson and the Twins. In my mind, he threw a no-hitter against the AL All-Stars, but whatever.

So I felt as though I had a justifyable claim on Mike. He was pitching for me. He was young, cool, he kicked ass, he played for the Orioles, my team, and I felt like I was the only one who knew or cared about him. Which was entirely possible, at least in my general vicinity, as I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania that really didn't give a crap about the Orioles at all.

I watched Mike pitch along side Gregg Olsen, Fernando Venezuela, Alan Mills, Ben McDonald, Todd Frowirth, Curt Schilling, and play along side Cal, Mike Deveroux, Brady Anderson, Harold Baines, Rafael Palmeiro, and all the rest of the Orioles throughout the heyday of my baseball-watching and playing youth. He was absolutely my favorite pitcher, and probably my second-favorite player in all of baseball.

So when he was picked up by the Yankees, I was obviously disappointed. And saddened. And a little bit hurt. But at that time, I had kinda grown away from baseball anyway. I kept track of the O's by seeing their record in the paper or whatever, but I really had grown pretty disillusioned with the sport, and I didn't really care about it any more. Cal was almost done, Brady had his steroid year and fell off the table, Jose Canseco was playing for Tampa Bay, there was a team in Tampa Bay, the Yankees won everything every year, and now my favorite player, the one guy I still actually gave a shit about, had done the unthinkable - he had become a traitor and forsaken his ties to the good people of Baltimore and gone where the money was. Fucking New York.

I remember officially dismissing baseball as soon as I found out that he had left. That was the final straw. I was going to college, my life was changing, and I didn't need that kind of bullshit anymore. Baseball was kid's stuff, anyway.

So life and baseball went on. Moose kept on pitching in his inimitable silent and crossword puzzle-completing fashion, I ironically moved to Baltimore to go to school, and I didn't think twice about baseball. For a while.

I'm not sure what it was in me that clicked, exactly, but in 2004, all of the sudden I was absolutely unapologetically head-over-heels back in love with baseball. I read every single book I could get my hands on, I played fantasy baseball, I played baseball simulations, I thought about statistics and new analysis techniques that I never knew existed in my younger days, and pretty much just immersed myself back into baseball. It helped that the first half of the summer of 2005, the Orioles had a great start and were actually looking like a real team...that didn't last long, but I was back in the fold. I'm so glad that I did - it gives me something to do when I'm at work, and something to look forward to when spring rolls around.

And so I think that its fitting that as my love for baseball has been renewed, my admiration for Mike Mussina as he is retiring has also been renewed. He is the first baseball player that I can remember fully tracking the entire arc of his career - from minors to retirement. He has been a class-act all of the way, and has held his own in an era that saw both the highest offensive output in the history of baseball and at least 5 for-sure hall-of-fame pitchers (Clemens, Johnson, Maddux, Glavine, Pedro). In another era, he may have been seen as one of the best in baseball. He stood tall amongst giants of ability and ego. He does crossword puzzles. He's a pretty cool guy.

So thanks, Mike, for hanging in there even when I didn't give a shit about baseball. Thanks for not (probably) taking steroids. Thanks for having a cool signature pitch. Thanks for hanging with Baltimore for as long as you could and not complaining, even though Albert Belle was probably a total jackass. Thanks for learning command and control after you had lost your velocity. I'm sorry I hated you for pitching for the Yankees. Secretly, I'm pretty glad you never won a World Series with them.

And good luck with that whole Hall of Fame thing. You've got my vote.

Oh, Hell Yes

'nuff said.

Ahh, the Year in Review

Time: Longer than usual because I had to run back upstairs to get my scooter keys when I went outside this morning and found that it wasn't -50 degrees outside

Miles: 879

I'm a huge fan of FanGraphs.com - its a great site that has a lot of people who are much smarter than me discussing baseball topics that I'm typically really into. I'm also a huge fan of the Baltimore Orioles (NEW UNIFORMS COMING TODAY!!!). So I've been waiting with baited breath for FanGraphs to finally write the Year in Review for the Orioles. And they finally did.

blah.

I don't really know what I was expecting - I mean, they hit all of the nails collectively on their respective heads, but I think the review was a bit more dismal than it needed to be. But I'm used to it by now...somehow in the past 10 years or so, Baltimore has consistently received this kind of treatment, and with good reason. I think it was the worst in the beginning of 2005, when the Orioles looked like legitimate contenders before it was discovered that Miguel Tejada was injecting Jay Gibbons' and Rafael Palmeiro's love child with anthrax, or whatever. There was close to zero coverage of the team, and what coverage there was of "when the wheels were going to fall off" (which they did), "when the yankees would turn it around" (which they did), "red sox because boston", and "yankees yankees red sox Ortiz Jeter Jeter yankees courage red sox gamer gritty Jeter A-rod sux red sox yankees".

But I mean...read the article. The guy's name is Melvin Mora, not Melvin More. The top catching prospect in the game, if not the top prospect in the game's name is spelled Wieters, not Weiters.

I know, its just me being petty and picking on them for telling me that my team sucks. But....dude...I mean....c'mon...dude. And plus, Aubrey Huff is going to repeat his numbers from this year, so we're in good shape, right? Right??

/has faith in Baltimore
/responds to e-mail stating that he won $1,000,000
/falls for other such nonsense