Sweet Victories

The wins over the Red Sox the past two evenings have been especially sweet. I wanted to put the word “salubrious” in there, but figured I should save it for my geeky blogs I write on other subjects … but it is such a good word – meaning conducive of good health and well-being! You know – like beating the Red Sox just makes you feel good! It ends the day well, and it even carries over for a good start to the next day! Salubrious – yeah, that’s the ticket!

But what really made tonight’s 5-3 win and last evening’s 7-1 victory so sweet is the fact that every part of the team contributed. On both occasions the starting pitching was sufficient to battle along in such a way as to give the team a chance to win. The bullpen – appropriately being called “The Orange Curtain” these days by announcer Jim Palmer – has been rather flawless. And the RISP numbers have been good as the Birds put up back-to-back games with five-run 6^th innings! AND, the defense has been solid. A highlight reel could be compiled of fine plays being made position by position around the infield particularly.

Try also to imagine if you could have taken tonight’s lineup in a time machine back to, say, the end of March. Without knowing at that

point of all the injuries and issues involving so many Orioles, what do you suppose you would have thought about seeing Nate McLouth (who??) batting 3^rd, with Omar Quintanilla (who??) at 2^nd base, and Miguel Gonzalez (who??) pitching! And that does not even include the brow raiser it would have been at the time to see Machado in the lineup or to imagine J.C. Romero coming into the game. It has been quite an interesting year – with a lot yet to be determined.

Back in the early weeks of the season I wrote a piece called “A Tale of Two Clubhouses” … comparing the attitudes of the Showalter Birds as teammates to the difficulties of the Valentine Red Sox locker room. The gap of comparative differences has widened. The Orioles players, coaches, and manger show a genuine mutual respect and support; they clearly have a good time together and like being in this adventure with one another. However, the Red Sox clubhouse could not be much more different. They are not having fun, and they looked really poor this evening with Adrian Gonzalez and Bobby Valentine getting tossed for arguing a quick pitch that is not illegal in any level of baseball anywhere! The serious Boston baseball person has just got to be terribly embarrassed by this and a whole host of apparently true remarks and events surrounding that team.