Are the Baltimore Orioles for Real?

With Matt Wieters’ two home runs yesterday (including a grand slam), the Orioles moved back into first place in the AL East, half a game ahead of the Blue Jays. With that sentence, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the fifth dimension, a dimension of imagination previously unknown to man, where the Orioles, Nationals, and Dodgers all sit atop their divisions, and the Blue Jays, White Sox, and Mets all sit within striking distance. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

So Your Team Is Out of the Playoffs; Who Do You Root for? (And other thoughts)

As you may have figured out by now, I am a Cardinals and Orioles fan. So, I began planning this post about a month ago when it looked like both my teams would be done by now. I didn’t start it, but the idea was there.

Things have changed a bit since then. Wednesday night was unquestionably one of the greatest nights in baseball’s history, and it was definitely one of the greatest experiences of my life; sitting around with other baseball fans and my laptop, with four MLB Gameday tabs open and one ESPN3 tab that switched between whatever game was most interesting at the moment (although mostly the Cardinals-Astros game). Although technically, I guess it did keep me from doing actual work that needed to be done, but I feel that’s totally justified.

I could try and gush about how incredible Wednesday was; I’m still on a baseball high, the Cardinals made the playoffs* against incredible odds, and anywhere between two and four games that night might go down as classics. (Yes, I’m counting the Cardinals’ game, too; it capped an incredible run. And, just like in 2004, it will get overshadowed by what the Red Sox did.)

So this is going to be more of a collection of ideas.

Re-Run: Future Hall of Fame, Catchers

I'm a little busy still, and haven't quite finished the next installment of the Retired Numbers Series. Hopefully, though, by the time the one I'm working on goes up, I''ll have slight buffer again. Hopefully.

Until then, here's the catchers article for the Future Hall of Fame Series. I've mentioned this before, but I would really like to revisit these articles in the future to see how each player has planned out. But one topic at a time.

Retired Numbers Series: Baltimore Orioles

So, this is the first article in my Retired Number Series, so it’s going to be an experiment. And, it seemed that the most fitting choice for honorary first team would be the Baltimore Orioles.

In this series, I’m going to look at each team’s retired numbers, compare the standards of the different teams, and suggest possible future retired numbers.

The Orioles are one of my two teams: they are the first team I ever saw (back when I lived in Washington, D.C.), and even though I haven’t lived in an AL city since, and even though the Orioles have been pretty bad as of late, I’ve stayed faithful. In any case, that’s my reasoning behind starting my ambitious project with the Orioles: I know more about them than most teams.

But enough preamble; on to the analysis.

Don't Worry MLB, I Fixed the All-Star Rosters (Again)

So, we meet again, MLB All-Star rosters.

Just like last year: two enter, one a person with a red sharpie, the other an abstract list of baseball players; one leaves covered in red mark-ups (that would be the roster, in this case).

I tried this last year, and I think it really helped. Maybe not the roster, since MLB didn’t actually listen to me, but it made me feel a little better, so there’s that. And the rosters didn’t make me beat my head against the wall, so I’ll take the credit for that. Therefore, it can only help if I fix the All-Star rosters again.