Looks like the Orioles won’t be going to the World Series in October. That will make 43 years since the last one.
In the 18 seasons from 1966 to 1983, the Orioles reached the World Series six times, winning three of them. Baltimore was spoiled with consistently contending teams back then.
But, in baseball, that’s ancient history.
There has been a lot of dreary failure since those days — 21 losing seasons in one 30-year span — and long-time Orioles fans long ago grew sick of the organization’s bobble-headed commemorations of the good ole days.
“Nostalgia is death,” Dylan said.
This season, even as the team teeter-tottered along, there was still hope the Birds might be able to scratch out a post-season wild-card spot. Just the other day, after Gunnar Henderson snapped his malaise with a triple in a win over the Phillies, I thought about buying a few tickets for upcoming games. This might be interesting, I thought.
But then came two bad losses to the Phillies, then the trade deadline, and the Orioles general manager Mike Elias sent the face of the franchise, All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman, to the division rival Red Sox for some of Boston’s top prospects.
I defer to baseball geeks as to whether this was a good, bad or mediocre idea.
ESPN rated the Rutschman-Red Sox trade a C-plus for Boston and A for Baltimore.
CBS Sports, on the other hand, gave the surging Red Sox an A for the deal while giving Baltimore a C.
Both ESPN and CBS gave Elias an F for what they said the Rutschman trade and others Elias made represent: Either “a deep sell despite being very close to playoff position” or “the end of an era that has ended in disappointment.”
Either case shows disregard for Orioles fans.
The “deep sell” look of Elias’s actions is a strong signal that, despite the hopes of fans, the GM considers the 2026 season to be over. (But hey, August 22 is Pete Alonso Bobblehead Night!)
The “end of the era” refers to the disappointing end of the team rebuild Elias was hired to undertake after the awful 2018 season.
Five summers later, the Orioles were division champs, and we all got excited. But, they didn’t win a single playoff game in 2023 or 2024, and tumbled to last place in 2025.
This season, though close to a wild-card spot, the team has a losing record again, a fact amplified in the team’s two crushing shutout losses to the Phillies on Saturday and Sunday. The experts rate Elias’ 2018-2026 rebuild a bust: Good drafting of young players but inadequate player development, not enough solid pitching.
Sensing another rebuild afoot, Orioles fans were merciless in their comments in social media after the Rutschman trade, with many saying team owner David Rubenstein should have fired Elias instead of expressing confidence in him.
Rubenstein has taken some licks of late, too, with fans knocking him for posting on X about his new book in the midst of the Orioles’ great July 29 win over the Tigers, the team’s biggest comeback in 17 years.
“Excited to announce my new book ‘Speaking of America”’, published by @DukePress and @librarycongress, is coming out October 6, 2026. If you love history, innovation, and America you’ll love these interviews I conducted with noted historians and innovators . . .”
Rubenstein’s post hit X at 2:57 pm, just as the Orioles started to overtake the Tigers during their afternoon game at Comerica Park in Detroit. Wasn’t the boss watching? Hadn’t he caught the buzz?
This response to Rubenstein’s post was typical: “Completely tone deaf to post this in the moment. Unreal.”
When private-equity billionaire and Baltimore native Rubenstein got the team away from the Angelos family, we felt hopeful — new money, new attitude and an ambition to actually get back to the World Series. Rubenstein’s presence among fans at Oriole Park was refreshing, a far cry from the joyless John Angelos who, in the midst of the team’s 101-win 2023 season, warned us that, eventually, the Orioles would not be able to afford to keep Rutschman and other exciting young players. In other words, it was a way of saying in Baltimore we can’t have nice things.
And never mind another World Series.
With the Orioles, it’s always been wise to keep your expectations in check. But, held too long, low expectations become no expectations, and no expectations lead to perpetual mediocrity.
The Rubsenstein ownership should reverse that cycle.
I’m sick of the two-bit reality that Baltimoreans and Marylanders should maintain low expectations after footing the bills for a great ballpark and upgrades, and after putting up with higher ticket prices, so many losing seasons and a depressing fire sale and rebuild.
Maybe it varies for different age groups, but most of us are sick of waiting for the Orioles to be consistent contenders again. We are beyond impatient with rebuilds. Forty-three years is a long time.
A wild-card spot might not have meant much to Mike Elias, but it gave O’s fans a reason to keep the faith and hope for the best in the next couple of months. Pulling that possibility away, and sending a popular player to a division rival, while asking us for more patience for another rebuild — it’s exhausting, and many of us are beyond exhausted.
Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached via danrodricks.come
Spot on Dan.
As a Brooklyn gal who grew up a beleaguered-but-diehard Mets fan, I watched the Mets win the WS in 1986 as a freshman at JHU. I remember running screaming from Levering Hall across the quads back to my dorm where I knew I’d be met by the one other Mets fan who lived a floor below.
It didn’t take me long to grow to love my new hometown Os. After all, back then, they never played the Mets so no threat there, and both fan bases hated the Yankees, right? And both teams have this impressive compulsion towards self-sabatoge.
You can take the Mets fan out of New York, but you can’t take the masochism out of the Mets fan. Or something.
Very fun read, Mr. Rodricks.
Baltimore natives look back at the photo of the great Brooks Robinson leaping into the air after the last out of the 1966 World Series, and that almost feels like more than 100 years ago.
Cal, Eddie, Dempsey and Palmer are nice old folks who last rode down Charles Street as baseball kings back in 1983, back when Mayor William Donald Schaefer, Hyman Pressman, and Clarence Du Burns were the city’s political titans.
Baseball fans in Baltimore find ourselves in a twilight zone of zero world championships since the beloved Birds moved into Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
How ironic to experience this!
It very well might have something to do with the “curse of Joe Altobelli”.
When former owner Edward Bennett Williams gave his manager the shove and returned Earl Weaver to the dugout, the Oriole Way, the mystique, the magic evaporated. That was 1985.
Fast forward to now: What will Orioles leadership offer as hope to its dejected fan base?
Every time we get close –1989, 1997, 2012, 2014, 2023– it happens:
another slip into oblivion.
It will probably take a voyage behind the moon to end this pronounced hoax.
I’m 45 years old, with no memory of the ’83 WS win. The Orioles have been a bush-league organization since then. Rubenstein made his money in private equity, an industry that maximizes return by cutting expenses and wringing every ounce of value out of a business before selling its remaining husk for parts. His regime is just more of the same. Maybe we should have let Angelos take the team to Nashville.