Painful Just to Watch

Watching the Baltimore Orioles on television, this weekend was painful. This is not the team of the 1960's '70s and early '80s, which the team was managed by "The Earl of Baltimore" Earl Weaver. Those great Orioles teams had probably one of the best pitching staffs in all of major league baseball. The four starters cmprised of Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Pat Dobson and Mike Cuellar, and in one season, all of them were 20 game game winners. Of course they had other pitchers too, on through the years like; Ross Grimsley, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Tippy Martinez, who was one of the better relievers on the Orioles bullpen crew.

As for the infielders, outfielders and catchers, they're just to many to list. A few I will tell you about are; shortstop Mark Belanger, nicked named "The Blade" as it seemed nothing got by him, and made some hard plays that seem seem to easy. At third base was, Brooks Robinson, at second Bobby Grich, first base was big John 'Boog' Powell. In the outfield was Paul Blair, Al Bumbry, Ken Singleton and others. Catching was Rick Dempsey, Andy Etchebarren and Elrod Hendricks. 

There was a lot of enjoyment listening to the Orioles games on WBAL, in which I can hear after sunset. The radio tandem of Bill O'Donnell and Chuck Thompson, in my opinion was second to none in calling a baseball game. 

The Orioles also won three World Series, 1966 over the LA Dodgers, 1970 over the Cincinnati and in 1983 over the Philadelphia Phillies. The O's also lost three of the Fall Classics; 1969 against the NY Mets, 1971 and '79 against the Pittsburgh Pirates. They came close to going the World Series a couple of other times, but it wasn't their calling.

Since the late 1990s, the Orioles have been having nothing but losing seasons. It does hurt to see them lose games that they should have won. And if you don't have the pitching, or the big guy with the bat, your not going to win to many games.

I could go on, but it just hurts sometimes just thinking about, and this is one of those times.