So I know this has little to do with life in Jewish Baltimore, but I have to write something about the Orioles.
There’s nothing that I can add that hasn’t been written or said. I don’t know the players or management personally. I don’t know the owner personally.
When I was growing up, my mother used to sit by the radio or TV with her knitting and listen or watch many, many games. She called the Orioles “my boys.” The O’s did a lot of winning back then, but even when they lost, there was often a spark to their step that said to the other team, ‘you know what, we’re still better than you are.’
I watched them on TV last night lose to the Yankees. That spark is missing in action.
Instead, there’s a look of hopelessness. There’s a feeling almost of why bother going out there.
So many of us as kids used to go outside and pretend we were Brooks Robinson.
There’s just none of that now.
Yes, there are many reasons. Free agency, the cost of doing business, the creation of the Washington Nationals, the owner’s seeming unwillingness to bring in big names, and the mere fact that the big names probably don’t want to play here.
We seem to count down now on how many days left until Ravens training camp.
The team and the community’s Oriole morale is a mess.
If they weren’t being well paid, I’d almost feel sorry for the players who are wearing the Orioles uniform.
The shame of it all is, we’d come to the stadium in droves if they team was above average. It wouldn’t have to win the American League East or the World Series…yet.
I remember in 1968, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series despite the long hot summer of racial unrest in their city. The Tigers were given credit for not only winning the Series, but for helping Detroit gain some sort of semblance of healing.
Fortunately, we’re not having racial riots, but we could use a unifying spirit here in our city.
It would be so wonderful to be able live in the presence of a great team instead of always remembering how great 1983 was.
I wish sometimes that the ghost of Jerry Hoffberger could come back and wake up Peter Angelos from a sound sleep a la “A Christmas Carole” and take him back to the days when winning meant so much here in the summer.
Now our baseball team goes through the motions, treading water in a sea of losing.
Losing has become the corporate culture of the Baltimore Orioles, and that is so tough for me to write.
Because this is a city made up of families who would love to feel empowered by a winning baseball team. It would give us all a jump to our step.
I’m so sick and tired of going to Camden Yards to be unnumbered by the Red Sox and Yankees’ fans. I remember one year the entire crowd it seemed was yelling “Let’s Go Yankees.”
My wife, Lisa, stood up on her seat and yelled, “Go Home Yankees.”
I was so proud.

What’s more, most people can’t even afford to go see them lose.

I’d love it for my kids to get into baseball as they grow up and be able to go to all the home games for whoever their team is.  But it’s all become so corporate and sponsored that we’d have to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.

Hearing the stories of my dad, as a kid, taking the train from New Haven to New York to watch games, who would have though that watching millionaires beat up on other millionaires would get so expensive.

*sigh*

There’s always the minors.