After his team’s disastrous loss in the National Hockey League playoffs, a long-suffering fan of the Maple Leafs walked screaming onto a Toronto boulevard, laid down, made the sign of the cross and waited for a bus to run over him.
Not really, of course. It was a tragicomic video made for social media to express how Leafs fans felt after watching their team lose yet another Game 7 in the NHL playoffs.
“This team has now lost seven winner-take-all games in the past eight seasons and it’s been 23 years since Toronto has broken through to the conference finals,” reports Kristjan Lautens in the Toronto Star. The Maple Leafs have not won the Stanley Cup championship since 1967.
There are plenty of long-suffering fans in all professional sports. The difference with the Leafs is that their talented teams consistently skate to the edge of greatness, then fall off.
In Baltimore, the Orioles have been messing with our minds in a similar way.
The great teams of Frank and Brooks, the Hall of Fame Robinsons, played at a long-gone stadium between 50 and 60 years ago. The last World Series championship occurred in the Eddie Murray era, 1983. The Orioles moved to Camden Yards and had two playoff teams in the Cal Ripken era.
Then came lots of losing — for 14 straight seasons. In the 31 years of Angelos ownership, the team had 19 losing seasons. Oriole Park only saw big crowds when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in centerfield or whenever the Yankees and Red Sox came to town. New York and Boston fans gobbled up tickets that locals didn’t want. It was embarassing.
Our hopes were raised some when Buck Showalter managed the teams of 2012 through 2016. The Birds made the playoffs three times during that stretch, and while they did not bring the World Series back to Baltimore, they left us optimistic that things had finally turned around, that we might start to see consistently competitive teams again.
But that didn’t happen. The team slipped into the abyss again. There was a depressing fire sale of players, Buck left town, and the Orioles asked us to put up with even more losing as new management rebuilt the team.
The Birds lost 115 games in 2018, 108 in 2019; they lost 35 of the 60 pandemic games in 2020; and 110 games in 2021.
That’s a lot of baseball suffering, but you know what? Most of us believed in the rebuild. How could we not? It was exciting to watch what the new management did in drafting promising young players. And when they produced a winning season in 2022, putting up 31 more Ws than they did the year before, it looked like the Orioles would soar again.
They made the playoffs in 2023 and 2024, but didn’t get very far in either. Still, fans had the sense that the trajectory was good.
Look! Baltimore can have nice things, after all!
And when David Rubenstein, a wealthy Baltimore native and lifelong Orioles fan, bought the team last year, hopes that were already on the rise seemed to rise further. The grumpy Angelos era was over. Here now was Rubenstein, a big-time private equity guy who could spend millions to add some key players to an already promising lineup.
And the Oriole spent additional millions.
They just didn’t improve the team.
At this writing, the Birds had 15 wins against 31 losses. This is not just a temporary tumble to third place. This is a collapse into a Baltimore sinkhole. If nothing good happens, the pace of failure would leave the Orioles with 108 losses in 2025.
It’s hard to watch. It’s hard to fully understand. Baseball analysts are all over this, trying to explain the disaster like federal investigators after a cruise ship capsizes.
First blame went to the captain, Brandon Hyde, the guy who managed the team through the rebuild. I heard a lot of sympathy expressed for Hyde when I stopped to buy some beverages the other day: His players are not hitting; the team had too many injuries; the general manager spent too much money on mediocre talent during the offseason.
But, while it might look like desperation, a change in managers can help a team. It’s a way to unplug and reset. After the Orioles hired Buck in late July 2010, the team won 34 of the remaining 57 games. He had the Birds in the playoffs in 2012.
You see what I just did there?
I opened the drapes and offered a glimmer of hope. You probably felt a rise in your expectations, however fleeting, when I noted how a change in manager can make a positive difference in the performance of the Orioles.
Please pardon my lapse into mild optimism.
As a longtime fan who wants desperately to see the Birds in the World Series again — so that the two generations of Baltimoreans since the last championship can know that thrill — I learned long ago to keep expectations low or at least to myself.
In recent years, I violated that rule, and I’m not alone.
Since the Mike Elias rebuild, followed by the Rubenstein takeover, we’ve been watching the team improve and letting our hopes rise. And look what’s happened.
I’m going back to the land of low Baltimore baseball expectations, and you’re welcome to join me there. It’s comfortable, it’s safe, there’s ample parking and there’s no admission charge. BYOB.
