O's Sign Everth Cabrera

[MurphDogg]

What is the story with #7? Billy Ripken last wore it in 1988. Is there a reason why no one else has worn it since?

Cal Sr. I personally think it should be reissued, but the Orioles aren't going to do that while Cal Jr. is still in the Orioles sphere.

[El Gordo]

What is the story with #7? Billy Ripken last wore it in 1988. Is there a reason why no one else has worn it since?

How soon they forget. Unofficially retired.

[wildcard]

How soon they forget. Unofficially retired.

That's a very good reason. As far as I'm concerned they could officially retire Cal Sr's number. He meant so mean to the success of the O's over the years.

[Hank Scorpio]

How soon they forget. Unofficially retired.

This is a great picture.

Al Bundy-esque.

[MurphDogg]

That's a very good reason. As far as I'm concerned they could officially retire Cal Sr's number. He meant so mean to the success of the O's over the years.

If the Braves are reissuing Leo Mazzone's number then the Orioles should reissue Cal Sr's number.

There is only once coach in MLB history with a retired number, Jimmie Reese. Cal Sr. isn't even the most deserving coach in Orioles history to have his number retired, that would be Elrod Hendricks.

The Orioles only retire numbers of Hall of Fame players. If the Orioles are going to retire Cal Sr.'s number then they ought to retire the numbers of Belanger (hell, it's the same number!), Blair, Grich, and Powell as well.

Would his number be unofficially retired if he wasn't the father of an Orioles legend? I sort of doubt it.

[bobmc]

The second c is not capitalized.

Oh I knew that, of course. That wasn't meant as a "dig" on you. I was referring to Can_of_Cindy.....

But back to you, can ECab replace BRob in your estimation? :scratchchinhmm:

[Frobby]

When you hand out no. 1 to a guy, you are telling him you expect him to perform well. I hope he does.

The Orioles must have thought more highly of Jemile Weeks and Alexi Casilla than I did.

I think it just means that you are a middle infielder.

How does that theory match up with Janish having it this spring?

Ouch! I stand corrected (though I don't think Casilla ever had that number, because BRob was still on the team when he was on the ML roster and Weeks was on the 40-man roster last spring).

[MurphDogg]

Ouch! I stand corrected (though I don't think Casilla ever had that number, because BRob was still on the team when he was on the ML roster and Weeks was on the 40-man roster last spring).

According to Baseball Reference, Casilla wore #1`in his brief stint with the Orioles last year. He and Weeks were not on the 25-man roster at the same time and there is no holding of numbers for 40-man roster players in the minors.

[Can_of_corn]

Oh I knew that, of course. That wasn't meant as a "dig" on you. I was referring to Can_of_Cindy.....

But back to you, can ECab replace BRob in your estimation? :scratchchinhmm:

If he puts up a 232/272/300 line again he can.

[Frobby]

According to Baseball Reference, Casilla wore #1`in his brief stint with the Orioles last year. He and Weeks were not on the 25-man roster at the same time and there is no holding of numbers for 40-man roster players in the minors.

I'd forgotten that Casilla got called up at the end of the season (and played one game).

[wildcard]

If the Braves are reissuing Leo Mazzone's number then the Orioles should reissue Cal Sr's number.

There is only once coach in MLB history with a retired number, Jimmie Reese. Cal Sr. isn't even the most deserving coach in Orioles history to have his number retired, that would be Elrod Hendricks.

The Orioles only retire numbers of Hall of Fame players. If the Orioles are going to retire Cal Sr.'s number then they ought to retire the numbers of Belanger (hell, it's the same number!), Blair, Grich, and Powell as well.

Would his number be unofficially retired if he wasn't the father of an Orioles legend? I sort of doubt it.

Believe what you want. But you are missing the point. All those players you mentioned. The guys that came through that O's system in the glory years. Senior was their manager in the minors and their coach when they got to the majors. He wrote the Oriole Way. How the minors were supposed to teach everything through all the levels of the minors and into the majors. He means a lot to those players and a lot of the fans that remember him for what he did. That was before Cal Jr was a major leaguer. Senior spent his whole life as an Oriole. And he has many sons. Only a few of many has Ripken as their last name.

[MurphDogg]

Believe what you want. But you are missing the point. All those players you mentioned. The guys that came through that O's system in the glory years. Senior was their manager in the minors and their coach when they got to the majors. He wrote the Oriole Way. How the minors were supposed to teach everything through all the levels of the minors and into the majors. He means a lot to those players and a lot of the fans that remember him for what he did. That was before Cal Jr was a major leaguer. Senior spent his whole life as an Oriole. And he has many sons. Only a few of many has Ripken as their last name.

But lots of organizations have guys that stay in the organization for their entire career and none of them get their numbers retired. Gary Kendall has been in the Orioles organization for 15 years. If he manages in the minors for another 5 years and then comes up as an MLB coach for 15 years should he get his number retired?

I'm not trying to diminish Cal Sr's accomplishments, he is certainly an Orioles Hall of Famer and a great asset to the organization for his decades of service. I'm just saying that there are other people like that around baseball and none of them have their numbers retired.

Also, just to be a pedantic jerk, Paul Blair was never managed by Cal Sr. at the minor league level and Boog Powell was never managed by him at the minor league level OR coached by him at the big league level. Grich spent 63 of his 485 minor league games managed by him. Belanger spent the most of those four with Cal Sr. in the minors, as he spent 117 games with him in his 2/3rds of a season in Aberdeen in '64.

I know there is a hagiography around Cal Sr, but I just don't think he would be a household name if his son wasn't a Hall of Fame player. He is a baseball lifer who spent his career with one team. That is awesome and he is a part of Orioles history, but it wasn't completely unique during that time period, and I hesitate to name him next along with the 5 most important people in Orioles history.

[Frobby]

Believe what you want. But you are missing the point. All those players you mentioned. The guys that came through that O's system in the glory years. Senior was their manager in the minors and their coach when they got to the majors. He wrote the Oriole Way. How the minors were supposed to teach everything through all the levels of the minors and into the majors. He means a lot to those players and a lot of the fans that remember him for what he did. That was before Cal Jr was a major leaguer. Senior spent his whole life as an Oriole. And he has many sons. Only a few of many has Ripken as their last name.

Do we even know if Cal Sr. typically wore no. 7 when he was a minor league coach and manager?

I'm a believer in keeping retired numbers to a minimum, and a nice, bright, "he's in Cooperstown" test is a very easy line to apply.

While I think Cal Sr. played a very important role in our MiL system, it is probably an exaggeration to say he "wrote the Oriole way." Here's an excerpt from "Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles," which was co-edited by an OH poster:

Richards and McLaughlin had created the player development scheme that came to be known as “The Oriole Way.” The team established a minor league spring training base in the piney woods at Thomasville, Georgia, on the grounds of a rest home for war veterans. It had eight military-style barracks with thirty cots in each. Uniform numbers rose into triple digits—pitcher Steve Barber drew number 285 in his first camp. That was about 100 more players than could fit on the rosters of the eight farm clubs. Minor league managers and coaches graded the prospects and suspects on a scale of 1 (the best) to 4 in hitting, running, throwing, power and pitching. In the evenings the staff met in a conference room called “The Bird’s Nest” to cut the ones who didn’t measure up. A 30-year-old minor league manager, Earl Weaver, became director of the Thomasville camp in 1961. When he delivered the painful verdict, ending a young man’s dream, he said, “Some of them cry, others get mad, a few go crazy. One pulled a knife on me.”3

Richards prepared a small manual for instructors in the Orioles’ system explaining how he wanted them to teach the game’s fundamentals. It was a condensed version of his 1955 book, Modern Baseball Strategy, a catalog of the nitty-gritty: how to execute cutoffs and pickoffs; how to defend against bunts with a runner on first, runner on second, runners on first and second; how to stop a double steal. Richards once wrote, “The simple things in baseball number into the thousands. The difficult or esoteric? There is none.”4

Every spring he brought minor league managers and coaches to the major league camp and indoctrinated them in his system so the techniques would be taught the same way from the top to the bottom of the organization. Dick Williams, an Orioles utilityman and future Hall of Fame manager, recalled how Richards opened spring training by taking players to the on-deck circle: “This is what we do going up to the plate as far as looking at the coaches and getting the sign is concerned.”5 Richards made a circuit of the bases, explaining offensive and defensive plays at each stop. The lectures went on for about two hours a time; it took him three days to cover the entire field. Teaching baseball was Richards’ passion,”24 hours a day,” Orioles scout Jim Russo said.6

* * *

[After Earl Weaver became manager,] Weaver thought the organization had strayed from the fundamentals of the Oriole Way. With Dalton’s support, he brought the philosophy back to the forefront. Richards’ little manual had been expanded into a bigger book that told a player what to do from the moment he walked into the clubhouse. “It was a detailed, position-by-position, definitive system of how the game should be taught and played,” farm director Lou Gorman said. “Every player in the organization had to read and absorb the manual, at every level, and play the game on the field the Orioles way.”8 There was another manual for instructors and a third one for scouts. This was not an original idea; Branch Rickey had standardized instruction in the Cardinals and Dodgers organizations. But the Orioles stuck with their way through a succession of owners, front-office executives, and managers.

“The Oriole Way was ‘never beat yourself,” catcher Elrod Hendricks said. “And that’s why we won so many close games. We let the other team make mistakes and beat themselves, and when the opportunity came we’d jump on it.”9 It was the gospel according to Paul Richards: Most games are lost rather than won.

As important as the techniques were the men who did the teaching. Many of the Orioles’ instructors were career minor league players like Weaver, but they made up a roster of future major league managers: George Bamberger, Billy Hunter, Clyde King, Jim Frey, Darrell Johnson, Joe Altobelli, and Cal Ripken Sr. The front office was a farm system for future general managers: Dalton, Gorman, Frey, Frank Cashen, Hank Peters, John Hart, and John Schuerholz.

http://sabr.org/latest/1970-baltimore-orioles-oriole-way

[BohKnowsBmore]

Do we even know if Cal Sr. typically wore no. 7 when he was a minor league coach and manager?

I'm a believer in keeping retired numbers to a minimum, and a nice, bright, "he's in Cooperstown" test is a very easy line to apply.

While I think Cal Sr. played a very important role in our MiL system, it is probably an exaggeration to say he "wrote the Oriole way." Here's an excerpt from "Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles," which was co-edited by an OH poster:

http://sabr.org/latest/1970-baltimore-orioles-oriole-way

Well it's currently an "unofficially out-of circulation" number, correct? Not retired.

[sportsfan8703]

Angelos law firm came through for us yet again. Just so happens he officially signs with us then the next day gets a gravy plea deal. Angelos is a beast.