Soccer Dad: Dribs and drabs about the drubbing

August 29, 2007

Dribs and drabs about the drubbing

So a week's gone by since the disastrous 30 - 3 drubbing the Orioles suffered at the hands of the Rangers. What's happened? The Orioles have lost every single game since then including last night's 15 - 8 drubbing at the hands of Tampa Bay. And not only did Tampa Bay set a franchise record for runs scored in an inning, they also set a season record for most runs scored in a game. Nice to know.

So that Orioles fans needn't suffer alone, ESPN gathered sports 20 greatest beatdowns.

Baseball Musings presents some post-mortem material. As does O by the way. Roch around the Clock is still finding something to laugh about. Oriole Post has more on the not-so-lovely totals.

Ken Rosenthal calls it another embarrassment for the Orioles. I was going to argue that it was just one game and not something to draw larger conclusions from. However, it's starting to look like it was just The Start of the Fall for the Orioles this year. Dan Connolly and Roch Kubato write about how poorly the Orioles have been doing in August and September during the past decade.

Since the end of the 1997 season, the Orioles have compiled a 227-309 record - a .424 winning percentage - from Aug. 1 until the end of the baseball year. That includes an 8-16 run this month, highlighted by a six-game losing streak heading into tonight's series opener against baseball's worst team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Incredibly, the terrible late-season numbers aren't skewed by one or two bad seasons, such as 2002 when they lost 32 of their final 36.

Of the Orioles' 19 Augusts and Septembers dating to 1998 (including this August), the team has managed just two winning months: a 20-8 September in 1999 and an 18-10 September in 2004.

The don't mention 1986 when the Orioles went from 59 - 47 in second place on August 5, to finish 73 - 89 finishing last for the first time in franchise history, by going 14 - 42 in the last third of the season.

Pillage Idiot shares his sentiments with ouch and expresses his sympathy for Peter Angelos.

A couple of Texas bloggers chimed in. Hey guys haven't you heard of piling it on? Rhymes with Right observes that it looked like a football score. And the Fireant Gazette is happy that the Rangers have given the Cowboys something to shoot for offensively.

Thomas Boswell looks at it through the lens of the hiring of Dave Trembley as manager.

Still, Trembley knows the score. When you've been hit in the head with tomatoes in Navajoa and escaped the banditos in Magallanes, realism and baseball are bound together by second nature. Almost as a reminder, in his first game as next year's manager, the Orioles lost the opening game of a doubleheader to Texas, 30-3, the most runs scored in a big league game since 1897. Then, after coming back to lead in the second game, they lost that one, too. It's never a fairy tale, not even for a day.

Interestingly this is how Trembley described himself

No one doubted his words on Wednesday when he said: "This is above anything I ever could hope, wish or dream for. . . . It's like being a little kid. Finally, what you worked your whole life for. . . . I want to thank my wife [Patti]. This is a tough business. I can say I've made it because of what she's done for me."

"little kid"

This is how Boswell described Sam Perlozzo, when, two years ago, Dave Trembley's predecessor got the coveted job of Orioles manager

Long ago in Little League, Sam Perlozzo would be in his uniform at 9 a.m. for a 1 p.m. game. "Then I'd go to the candy store so everybody could see me," Perlozzo said. "I'd take a nickel and spend an hour in that store in my uniform deciding what to buy."

In a sense, Perlozzo has stood in uniform, face pressed to the candy store window, ever since. Now, at 54, in one of those moments of pure baseball justice, Perlozzo is being allowed inside. The candy's all his now. He's manager of the Baltimore Orioles, at least for the last 55 games of this season. Nobody ever deserved a turn at the wheel more than Sam.

A little kid too. At least implicitly.

The Loss Column, somehow, found some good - Orioles magic, no less - in the disastrous loss.

baltimore orioles.