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Baltimore Orioles
Category: Professional Sports Teams [Edit]
Oriole Park at Camden Yards333 W Camden St
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410) 685-9800
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
3 reviews for Baltimore Orioles
We live with our teams and we somehow, incredibly "die" with our teams. Though nothing changes in our real day to day lives rather they win or lose it somehow matters deeply to us. I see this in myself and my son. I can remember a time last year when following a particularly wicked Dallas Cowboy loss we both literally cried (he 15 and I 45 at the time).
Yet this is about the Orioles, our local underachievers, who every now and then strive mightily. They will beat the Yankees and then drop three to Toronto.
But you have to step back and remember that our sports teams ( and the heroes as well as the goats) give us something to bond over. Something to pin our hopes against, something to hang our dreams on. A chance for those few moments of escape from whatever thing that life has on your shoulders that day. When they perform badly it is something harmless to gripe about. When they reach the heights we get to go along for the ride.
Sports should allow us to as Kipling asks of those who would be men; "to meet with triumph and disaster and threat these two imposter's just the same." It is not the winning or losing that matters, that is a hard lesson to learn and many of us never get it. Those who suffer the most when the cheering has stopped are those who confused sports success with self worth.
We lost my father in 2006 and he was a huge baseball fan, had played with some of the negro league players and even in the Army during Korea ( See the movie A Soldier's Story with Harold Rollins...Excellent). He spent the last couple of years of life in a nursing home. He and my son would talk sports, specifically baseball. I always marvelled at how that silly national pastime provided that common ground and bridge for three generations of my family to interact across the gulf of space and time and absent fathers and the hurt feelings that go with that. My Dad didn't take me to many ballgames, wasn't around that much. But, I have been given the opportunity to forgive him each time that I take my son to Camden Yards, each time I have a salty peanut and remember the story my father told me about them being bad luck.
His team was preparing to play a game and the starting pitcher hopped the fence to go to the peanut cart...he tripped and broke his ankle.
I'm in an abusive relationship with the Orioles.
I love them. They crap on me.
I find ways to excuse their faults. They figure out new and different ways to insult me as a fan.
And yet here I am, in my 1983 World Series Champions Orioles shirt, holding out hope that one day they might realize:
IT'S NOT THE FREAKING MANAGER (seriously, Sam, you're in a better place getting out of that mess)
It's the ownership.
And the General Manager (sorry, Mike. You were a good pitcher, but you suck serious ass in the front office)
And the scouts.
And the shitty development system.
And the commitment to incremental change through costly (and mostly over-valued) free agents-- despite years of proof that THIS DOESN'T FUCKING WORK.
You can't be a successful baseball team if you don't develop talent in your own system. Name ten decent MLB players who have come up through the O's farm system since Mike Mussina.
Go ahead. Try. I dare you. I DOUBLE DOG dare you.
Right. You can't. Because they don't exist.
What the Orioles DON'T DO: improve their development system. get some decent scouts. make an honest commitment to rebuilding.
What the Orioles DO DO: let the inmates run the asylum. overpay for band aid solutions. allow the front office to run unchanged despite years of failure. give Peter Angelos' kid a job. fire the manager for show. blame MLB and "washington fans" for declining revenues and attendance.
I'm not sure if the O's front office is willfully ignorant of how bad they are at running a professional baseball team, or if they just don't give a fuck. What I do know is nothing, seriously, nothing has changed in ten years.
I have every reason to hate the Orioles.
And yet I can't stop loving them.
Clearly, I need therapy.
*********UPDATE, 9/27/07***************
I just have to say that if the Orioles sign Barry Bonds next year I'm officially going on protest and conditionally resigning my fandom. DO YOU HEAR ME, ANGELOS? I am one of the few f'ing people who still watch your shitty team with regularity because I LOVE IT, despite the years of neglect and mismanagement, but I WILL LEAVE YOU if you sign that man. So help me God, I will. Don't do it, Angelos. You've already abused me enough. Don't go there.
***UPDATE, 11/15/07****
Well it looks like the Bonds Threat Level has gone from Red to a decidedly calmer shade, thank you SF Federal Grand Jury. That being said, I HAVE NO FAITH IN YOU, ANGELOS. Don't try me.
***UPDATE, 9/21/08******
God damn it, O's, you couldn't even win ONE solitary game during the last series at Yankee Stadium? Not one? Worthless, I tell ya. Why the hell do I still like you? Grrrr.
In terms of the current organization, this franchise is sad. Tons of history, and fans who really love the game are why I'm giving them 3 stars. It's just a shame that the current ownership has no idea what they're doing. I don't care what anyone says, you CAN compete with the Yankees and Red Sox. You just have to have a clue.