The Orioles and Pirates - two of baseball’s great, traditional franchises are going on their 13th and 18th straight losing seasons

The other day I vented about The New York Mets and their unwillingness to admit to their mediocrity and clean house in an effort to actually be, well, good. That night, watching the Mets (surprise) win a game, I noticed the Blue Jays-Orioles score as it flashed across the screen. I think it was 8-2 Blue Jays in the fifth inning—something along those lines.

Of course the Blue Jays went on to win and then they won against last night. In fact, Toronto is now 12-0 against the Orioles this season and has outscored them by a margin of 68-23. That’s simply embarrassing as is the Orioles record of 31-70. It is entirely possible that they will be mathematically eliminated before Labor Day, which is extremely difficult to do.

If you’re a baseball fan on any level this is very hard to watch. Right now, two of baseball’s great, traditional franchises have become utterly pathetic: the Orioles and the Pirates. The Pirates are, if possible, worse, even though their current record is marginally better than the Orioles. For one thing, they play in a weaker division. Worse than that, there are no signs that they have any interest in actually rebuilding. This will be their record-breaking 18th straight losing season and there is no sign that streak will end anytime soon.

The Orioles are experiencing ‘only,’ their 13th losing season in a row. I tend to pay more attention to their travails for two reasons: my daughter Brigid remains a diehard fan for reasons I can’t completely fathom (she liked the mascot when she was little and still loves going to Camden Yards even now) and because I have been going to games in Baltimore on a regular basis since I was in college.

I loved Memorial Stadium. It was a great old ballpark filled with terrific fans and, to be honest, I saw no reason for the Orioles to leave. Of course I was wrong. Camden Yards was the first of the new-look ballparks and even now, in its 19th year, might still be the best of them although PNC Park in Pittsburgh is spectacular as are the parks in Texas, Seattle and San Francisco—I have trouble keeping up with the corporate names on them.

Camden Yards was a miracle when it opened in 1992 and it revitalized both the ballclub and downtown Baltimore. The Orioles had been awful in 1991; they won 89 games in 1992 and were in the pennant race until the last 10 days. Every night was a sellout back then, the team routinely drew well over 3 million fans a season even though the ballpark seated no more than 45,000 if you squeezed everyone in very tight.

It was the Orioles, in the form of Cal Ripken Jr., who helped bring baseball back after the strike of 1994-1995. Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played and the way he handled it made people believe in the game again. And, unlike the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run spree of 1998, it was real. The night of September 6, 1995 was one of the most joyous nights in sports I’ve ever witnessed.

For the next two years the Orioles made the playoffs, losing in the ALCS both years—to the Yankees in 1996 and the Indians the next year. There were storm clouds forming though: Peter Angelos, the new owner, was dubbed ‘Steinbrenner South’ (the pre-suspension Steinbrenner) because of his meddling. He ran off Pat Gillick—as good a general manager as there was in baseball. He feuded with Davey Johnson and ran him off too, losing one of the game’s best managers. He even fired Jon Miller (!!) as good a play-by-play man as there was in the game because Miller wasn’t enough of a homer.

Well, with the exception of Jim Palmer (who is untouchable because of his iconic status in Baltimore) Angelos has a bunch of homer announcers now. I certainly hope he’s happy listening to them cheerily describing one loss after another. (To be fair none of them can touch Rob Dibble in Washington when it comes to being homers, but that’s another story).

This was supposed to be the year when Andy McPhail’s work rebuilding the farm system and the franchise around young pitchers began to pay dividends. It wasn’t as if anyone expected the Orioles to challenge in the ridiculously tough American League East—remember the Blue Jays are in FOURTH place right now—but the thought was they’d be respectable; that they’d get 6-7 innings a night from the kids and maybe if everything fell right, they could break the 12-year losing skein.

Not so much. The team has been awful from the start—everyone included. Adam Jones was an All-Star a year ago; he’s hitting .273 with an OBP of .305 right now and 42 RBI’s. That’s still better than Nick Markakis, who has a solid batting average (.295) but just 33 (!!) runs batted in. The supposedly future All-Star catcher Matt Wieters was hitting .251 when he went on the disabled list earlier this month. The two most productive hitters have been journeymen Luke Scott and Ty Wigginton.

Worse though has been the pitching. The young guys have had some moments but they’ve been few and far between. They’ve all been on a shuttle to and from the minors all year long. The question is this: Growing pains or are they just not that good? If you think about it, pitching often comes down to scouting. Scouting is easy when you have the No. 1 pick and Stephen Strasburg is in the draft. The real challenge is finding guys later in the draft who become solid Major Leaguers.

Once, the Orioles were famous for finding pitching. They’re still the only team to ever have four 20-game winners on the same staff in a season in the modern era (1971). Even in the 90s they were able to sign a guy like Jimmy Key and draft a guy like Mike Mussina. They even had Jamie Moyer on the team but gave up on him a little too soon.

Plus, everything they did was done with class. There was something called, “The Orioles Way,” which meant you played the game hard and well every day, you conducted yourself with dignity as a player or a member of the organization and you were part of a team that almost always contended. About the only person who ever violated any of that was Earl Weaver and his famous temper but Weaver was so good and such a unique personality he was forgiven. When the late Johnny Oates managed the team, you couldn’t have a classier person representing you. Gillick was the same way and, arguably, the game’s best general manager of the last 30 years. All he did was build winners in Toronto (expansion team), Baltimore, Seattle and Philadelphia.

Now the Orioles are about to lose 100 games. Camden Yards is a ghost town except when Yankee and Red Sox fans show up to watch their team. There’s no guarantee the young pitchers will ever become good young pitchers.

Jon Miller was inducted into the Hall of Fame last Sunday. Gillick is a lock to go in someday soon. Even the Rays, who didn’t come into existence until a year after the Orioles last had a winning season, have built a solid team on a shoestring budget.

The Orioles, who made a proud baseball city so proud for so many years are an embarrassment. It is really a sad thing to watch.

The Record-Breaking Pirates -- a Real Shame

In most newspapers around the country this morning it was a note that rate one paragraph, perhaps two: The Pittsburgh Pirates became the first professional franchise in the history of the United States to have 17 consecutive losing seasons when they lost on Monday to the Chicago Cubs.

There’s a bit of irony that the loss would come against the Cubs who have gone 100 years without winning a World Series and a mere 64 without getting to The World Series. No doubt that will cheer people up in Pittsburgh a great deal.

It is amazing that the Pirates have fallen as far as they have fallen and then stayed bad for so long. I mean even the Tampa Bay Rays finally pieced together a pennant winning team after years of high draft picks and they did it playing in one of the most God-awful stadiums ever created.

The Pirates play in an absolutely gorgeous ballpark. They play in a town with great tradition and extraordinarily loyal fans. My guess is if they ever popped back into contention people would pack PNC Park to witness their rebirth.

But there is no sign at all of that happening. The Pirates keep trading players for prospects every year, claiming that they’re going to rebuild through youth. The problem is, whenever that youth begins to develop, they trade it in order to avoid arbitration or re-signing someone before they become a free agent.

A couple of times there have been glimmers. In 2007, the Pirates had three young pitchers who appeared to have the potential to be the core of a decent team in Paul Maholm, Mike Gorzelanny and Ian Snell. Only Maholm remains and his ERA lingers near the five runs per nine inning mark. Of course it is tough to pitch consistently when your defense is lousy and you know most nights you have to hold the other team to under three runs to have any chance to win.

A year ago, after playing fairly well in the first half of the season the Pirates traded Xavier Nady and Jason Bay, two established, productive outfielders in return for a bunch of prospects. Neither Nady nor Bay was going to be a free agent at the end of 2008 so if they had stuck around this season along with some of the other players the Pirates unloaded—including their one true franchise player, Jack Wilson—this year, they might have had a chance to at least end the sub-.500 streak.

But they’re gone and, worst of all, hope is gone in Pittsburgh. I find that sad. I remember the great Pirate teams of the 70s—the one that won The World Series in 1971 when Roberto Clemente put on one of the great performances of all time against the Orioles—and then the Willie Stargell-led group that came from 3-1 down to again beat the Orioles, winning the last two games in Baltimore.

That was the first World Series I covered and the Pirates were a fun team to be around. Chuck Tanner, the manager, was a great talker and so were Stargell and Manny Sanguillen. It was a fun clubhouse.

That World Series also produced one of my more humiliating moments. After the Pirates won game six, 4-0, I was assigned to the Orioles clubhouse. Jim Palmer had pitched very well even though he had lost and he was the natural sidebar. When Palmer came out to his locker, everyone waiting for him kind of hesitated. No one wants to ask the first question and get barked at by a frustrated player.

But it was late and I was on deadline. I walked over to Palmer, who I had talked to in locker room situations in the past but only as part of a group. I introduced myself.

“What do you need?” Palmer asked.

The rule in those situations is always ask an easy question first. You don’t start by asking what pitch the guy threw on the game-winning homer. So, knowing he had pitched well, I threw a softball: “How’d you feel out there?” I figured the answer would be something about having good stuff, only making a couple mistakes and so on. I was wrong.

“HOW DO I FEEL?” Palmer screamed. “HOW DO I FEEL? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I JUST LOST THE SIXTH GAME OF THE WORLD SERIES AND YOU COME IN HERE AND ASK ME HOW I FEEL?”

He looked at the other writers who had started to gather around his locker after I walked up and said, “How does a guy like this even get in here?” With that he stormed off to the training room while I kept trying to say that I hadn’t asked how he felt NOW but how he felt on the mound.

Doug DeCinces, who lockered a few feet away, looked at me and said: “Don’t feel bad. I heard what you asked.”

I appreciated that but now I had a bunch of deadline-pressed guys standing around me wanting to know what the hell I was thinking getting Palmer so angry. A few minutes later, Palmer came back. My old friend and mentor Bill Millsaps, from The Richmond Times-Dispatch, said quietly, “Okay Jim, let’s try this again: How did you feel while pitching tonight?”

Palmer never looked at me but he answered the question and all the others he was asked. Years later, when he became an Orioles TV analyst, I reminded him of the story and we both laughed about it. I think he forgave me because he liked my golf books.

I also covered the Pirates last winning team, the 1992 team—Barry Bonds’ last year in Pittsburgh—that lost a 2-1 lead in game seven of the National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves and ultimately lost 3-2 on a pinch-hit, two runs single by Francisco Cabrera. I was working on my first baseball book, “Play Ball,” that year and spent a lot of time with Jim Leyland.

Leyland was amazingly open and cooperative with me during the season—I still remember him telling me in spring training that year that Bobby Bonilla would never be able to handle the pressure in New York; boy did he have that right—and I was really torn throughout that series. The Braves were a fabulous group to deal with—Bobby Cox, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Terry Pendleton and company were about as easy a group to be around as you could ask for. The Pirates had good guys too, but they also had Bonds who was a world class jerk even then.

So, when Cabrera got the hit and Sid Bream slid home with the winning run, I was happy for the Braves, but felt terrible for Leyland. Since I wasn’t on deadline, I sat with him in his office until everyone else had left. He finally looked at me and said in a choked voice: “My God this is so hard.”

Five years later, he finally got his World Series ring but he was in Miami by then and the Pirates were in a free fall that shows no sign of ending anytime soon. I think Pittsburgh is a great town, I always enjoy myself up there and love going to the ballpark. But it is depressingly empty these days and there is no sign that there will be any reason for it to be filled again anytime soon.

Which is truly a shame.