Orioles back home and, oh yeah, me too
For starters, I want to thank colleague Kevin Van Valkenburg for stepping in last week and keeping the ball rolling here with insights, entertaining links and posts that invited audience involvement.
And secondly ... PLAY BALL!
The Orioles open their season today with a late afternoon game down at Camden Yards against the newly abbreviated Tampa Bay Rays. I actually liked Devil Rays but then I have a way of getting attached to things. I was always a little confused about that Redlegs-Reds thing, too.
A headline on an article by fellow Sun scribe Childs Walker put the Orioles new season in perspective. It said: 2008 Orioles: selling hope. The release of Jay Gibbons over the weekend was the ending punctuation mark (a period if not an exclamation point) to an offseason that had transition written all over it.
With today's game, most realists will accept that the battle for fourth place in the AL East is officially on. In Las Vegas, the Orioles are expected to win closer to 60 games than 80. In online odds, they are the longest of long shots in the entire Major Leagues to win the World Series ... 200-to-1. And with their ace, Jeremy Guthrie. on the mound at home today against the less-than-powerhouse "Rays," the O's are still slight underdogs for the opener.
But this is not about today, it's about a year from now and beyond. We will have to look for signs of optimism in a young, talented outfield; development from some promising arms, and perhaps later in the season, some contributions from a few of those prospects picked up in those off season trades that helped unhitch the future from a losing past. What we hope to see is enthusiasm, some grit and improvement, and have to accept that it will be incremental. Victories at this point have to be considered gravy.
But it would be nice to start out 1-and-oh.
Comments
Welcome back. Audience involvement? Thats funny. I thought we had lack of writer(s) involvement with our comments. Sports Illustrated like the Rays too, well enough to put them above the Orioles this year.
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For whatever it's worth, the opening line on the Orioles winning the WS was 125-1 and went to 200-1, I'm assuming after the Tejada and Bedard trades. There are a handful of teams at 150-1.
-- Bill O.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 31, 2008 10:07 AM
I think the "Redlegs" was adopted as the Cincinnati nickname during the McCarthy Era for a few years before everybody calmed down and let them be the "Reds" again. But those were my formative years and "Redlegs" sticks for me, too.
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You are absolutely right on the Reds-Redlegs thing. I loved that little baseball guy with the mustache.
-- Bill O.
Posted by: Drewdy | March 31, 2008 10:42 AM
Couple of quick thoughts as we wait for the O's to take the field.
I just realized over the weekend via some banner ads on the Sun site that the Orioles' marketing slogan for this year is "This is Birdland." Are you kidding me? I am old enough to remember the "Come to Birdland" campaign from 20 years or so ago, and at least that had a call to action. "This is Birdland" might as well be "We are creatively bankrupt."
Cutting Gibbons was the right thing to do and I applaud MacPhail for making the move. Swallowing $11 million is tough, but if the Orioles (like every other team in baseball) had gotten off their rears and taken advantage of the Spring Training Camp Sweepstakes that has swept Florida and Arizona in the last two decades, they'd have pocketed 10 times that amount and gotten a shiny new spring complex as well.
However, the Gibbons move does indicate that Angelos appears to have finally seen the light and that MacPhail truly has the green light to rebuild. The next several years will be difficult, not just because the Yankees and Red Sox aren't going anywhere, but also because of the ever-increasing quality of the Blue Jays and Rays (hey, if the Blue Jays and Rays merged, they'd be the Blu-Rays! Maybe all their games would be in HD!)
I fear the Orioles are doomed to last place for the next couple of years, but we've seen enough teams turn around to know what can be possible. Hopefully, the O's have taken the first true steps along the path back to respectability and at least a little of the future's promise will be evident this year. Go Birds! ---------------------------------------- Joe, Good points. All any Orioles fan can hope for is to have a team that in a few years can be in the hunt in September and hope for a few breaks. Let's try to enjoy for now. -- Bill O.
Posted by: Joe Dalhart | March 31, 2008 12:32 PM