Writers and fans have been bemoaning the fact that the poor Orioles are in the AL East and don't stand a chance in baseball's toughest division, yet the AL East hasn't been in the World Series for the past two seasons. I realize that the Evil Empire and the Red Sox spend more money than a lot of teams combined but that has not made them unbeatable.
The Phillies have been in two of the last three WS and even this year the best pitching staff (and most expensive) in the majors wasn't enough to get them to the NLCS. Out of the last six World Series the AL East has only won two of them, while only being in three of them.
Granted I think it's stupid that Selig and MLB allow the Yankees to spend over two hundred million a year to play teams paying 40 to 60 million and two allow the Yankees to go out and BUY the best but I have come to accept that as long a Bud Selig is Commissioner baseball will bend over backwards to keep the Evil Empire (Yankees) happy and let them do as they please.
Still if PA will hire good baseball minds and let them do their job there is no reason the O's can't return to the outstanding professional baseball organization that represented the great City of Baltimore for years.

or the wrong time. I'd feel more confident playing a team on a roll - hard (or impossible ) to stay emotionally high to play such a violent sport for 16 out of 17 weeks.
And yet the owners want 18. Big mistake

QUESTION ON THIS:
You don't have to ask anyone for permission to talk to him and you don't have to convince him to come to Baltimore.

IS COMING TO BALTIMORE THE PROBLEM, OR WORKING FOR ANGELOS?

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Pete's reply: Well, in all seriousness, I don't think either is a problem in the GM hunt. People who aren't GMs want a GM job no matter where it is or who it's for. When it comes to players, however, coming to Baltimore is a problem for several reasons.

Peter,

Thanks for all the great stories and blogs. I am not going to be subscribing to the Sun website but I guess I will be checking into 15 of your postings per month with my free account. You kept the last several years of Oriole news fun and interesting, which is a tough job.

Stay in touch.

Jim

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Pete's reply: Jim, I appreciate your long support and understand that readers have come to expect The Sun to be free on the Internet. I don't speak for the company, but I assume that we wouldn't do this if we weren't battling to survive in this very tough newspaper/media economy. We live in an interesting consumer market. Millions of people are willing to walk into Starbucks and pay somebody $4 or $5 to make one cup of coffee or a latte, but many of those same people aren't willing to pay half that much to have a highly educated staff of journalists entertain and inform them -- as well as investigate wrongdoing in government and corporate America that might affect them greatly -- for an entire week. Doesn't that seem a little odd to you?

Okay--I like Buck as GM, but don't drop the ball on Francona.

I think that it is a very good thing that no team from the Northeast (or California too!) remains in pursuit of the MLB Championship. Enjoy the lack of louts and bad actors that pose as fans of the 2 AL and 2 NL teams located north of us!!!! The NL Championship is a proxy war between the two biggest beer cities!!