The 100 Most Significant Dates in Modern Orioles History

[SteveA]

42 minutes ago, OFFNY said:

o

 

In April 11th of 1979, my cousin Donnie (Yankee fan that lived in West Springfield, VA) took me to to my only game ever at Memorial Stadium.

And that was the night that "Orioles Magic" TRULY began.

 

 

o

You will be disappointed, I am afraid, for the date that will come along later in this series that I will designate as the beginning of "Orioles Magic".

[Moose Milligan]

19 hours ago, SteveA said:

Yep, in retrospect you are right.

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with the 100 dates.  I actually had about 105 ideas, put them in a spreadsheet.   I had a column for "weight" where I put numbers from 1 to 1000.   So for my initial cut I just kind of put "900", "800", ... down to "100" in the columns and sorted based on that column.   Then I refined it by changing some of the 900s to 870, 880, 890, 910, 920, 930, and sorting again.   I kept doing this until I felt I had the order I wanted.   I don't know what possessed me to put the Davis deal so low.

I gotta think that the top 25 dates or so are full of thrilling victories, pennant and WS wins, 2130, 2131, opening day at OPACY, etc.  

You wouldn't want to muck that up with the Glenn Davis trade.  It's something none of us like to think about, and, quite frankly, if it was left off the list I doubt anyone would say "YEAH BUT YOU FORGOT THE GLENN DAVIS TRADE."  

11 hours ago, Frobby said:

I can’t even imagine the effort that went into this list and the narratives.    They’re fantastic.  

I agree, this is really well done.  Something you'd see in a newspaper or a well respected baseball publication.

[OFFNY]

4 hours ago, OFFNY said:

o

 

In April 11th of 1979, my cousin Donnie (Yankee fan that lived in West Springfield, VA) took me to to my only game ever at Memorial Stadium.

And that was the night that "Orioles Magic" TRULY began.

 

o

 

 

4 hours ago, SteveA said:

 

You will be disappointed, I am afraid, for the date that will come along later in this series that I will designate as the beginning of "Orioles Magic".

 

o

 

No, I won't be disappointed.

I am aware of the "official" accredited date that Orioles Magic is given as the start of the magic ........ the Doug DeCinces walk-off home run against the Tigers on June 22nd.

That is why I capitalized and italicized the word "TRULY", in reference to when I felt that the magic actually began. The game that I attended a little more than 2 months earlier was actually a more unlikely/incredulous comeback win than was the June 22nd game that is attributed to the beginning of the magic ........ the Orioles were trailing by 3 runs entering the bottom of the 9th inning, and then after they tied it when they were down to their final out on a 2-run single with runners on 2nd and 3rd base, the fashion in which it was eventually won in the bottom of the 10th (on Rick Dempsey's 2-out, check-swing, game-winning single) augmented the amazing 9th inning comeback. 

 

o

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, OFFNY said:

 

 

o

 

No, I won't be disappointed.

I am well aware of the "official" accredited date that Orioles Magic is given as the start of the magic ........ the Doug DeCinces walk-off home run against the Tigers on June 22nd.

That is why I capitalized and italicized the word "TRULY", in reference to when the magic actually began. The game that I attended was actually more unlikely/incredulous of a comeback win than was the June 22nd game that is attributed to the beginning of the magic ........ the Orioles were trailing by 3 runs entering the bottom of the 9th inning, and then after they tied it when they were down to their final out on a 2-run single with runners on 2nd and 3rd base the fashion in which it was eventually won in the bottom of the 10th on Dempsey's 2-out, check=swing-game winning single augmented the amazing 9th inning comeback. 

 

o

It’s a little hard to see that April 11 game as the start of Orioles Magic, since they lost the next six games in a row.   But I’ve always thought citing the June 22 game as some sort of watershed moment was a bit overrated.   The team was 44-22 before that game was played.   

[OFFNY]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

 

It’s a little hard to see that April 11 game as the start of Orioles Magic, since they lost the next six games in a row. But I’ve always thought citing the June 22nd game as some sort of watershed moment was a bit overrated. The team was 44-22 before that game was played.   

 

o

 

I can understand that. 

The Orioles didn't heat up as a team that season until they won 15 out of 16 games later that month, several weeks after the game that I cited. 

But being that it was the only game that I ever attended at Memorial Stadium, and that my late mother had just converted from being a lifelong Yankee fan to being an Oriole fan the previous October (1978) and promised me that they would win the World Series the next year (she was off by one game), that moment ........ with hindsight ........ was as magical as any other solitary moment for myself that season (as well as for most of the 16,000-plus fans that attended that night's game along with me an my cousins.)

 

o

[Frobby]

26 minutes ago, OFFNY said:

o

 

I can understand that. 

The Orioles didn't heat up as a team that season until they won 15 out of 16 games later that month, several weeks after the game that I cited. 

But being that it was the only game that I ever attended at Memorial Stadium, and that my late mother had just converted from being a lifelong Yankee fan to being an Oriole fan the previous October (1978) and promised me that they would win the World Series the next year (she was off by one game), that moment ........ with hindsight ........ was as magical as any other solitary moment for myself that season (as well as for most of the 16,000-plus fans that attended that night's game along with me an my cousins.)

 

o

I know how that goes.   My personal favorite game that year was this one on August 10:  https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL197908100.shtml.   It was the day before I left the East Coast to go to  law school.    It wasn’t as dramatic as yours, but the O’s erased a 6-4 Yankee lead in the 7th inning on an Eddie Murray two-run double followed by a Lee May RBI single.   Eddie’s at bat — punctuated by deafening “Ed-die” chants — was interrupted by a long Earl Weaver tirade that was (in my opinion) completely calculated to disrupt the pitcher, following which Eddie lined his game-tying double.    It was a classic Earl/Eddie moment.  

[SteveA]

It's 74 days until pitchers and catchers report to Sarasota.   Here is the 74th most significant date in modern Orioles history:

#74  August 6, 1986

The Orioles had 18 consecutive winning seasons between 1968 and 1985, and 25 out of 27 from 1960 through 1985.  The team that won the 1983 World Series had a lot of age, but to replace the departed veterans the Orioles had taken a deep dive in the free agent market, signing Fred Lynn, Lee Lacy, and Don Aase.

And it was working.  Earl Weaver had come out of retirement in mid-1985, and on August 6, 1986, the Orioles record stood at a solid 59-47.  They had won 21 of 33 and had pulled to within 2.5 games of first place.  And everyone knew that Earl Weaver Oriole teams finished strong.  The Red Sox were a formidable team with their young ace Roger Clemens, but there was no reason to expect that Oriole Magic wouldn't at least keep the O's in the race late into September.

The Orioles faced the Texas Rangers that night, after a 73 minute rain delay highlighted by Rick Dempsey's Babe Ruth imitation on the tarpaulin, with Ken Dixon opposing Bobby Witt, a pitcher the Orioles had hit hard throughout his career.  But after a scoreless first inning, Dixon gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases, another walk to force in a run, and a grand slam to Toby Harrah and suddenly Texas led 5-0. Dixon was headed to the shower without ever getting an out in the 2nd, replaced by Odell Jones.

Texas had a 6-0 lead and Witt was working a no hitter into the 4th, but then, as Witt often did, he lost the plate and walked the first three batters.  Larry Sheets connected with a grand slam and suddenly it was a ballgame again. A Tom O'Malley single chased Witt.  Jeff Russell came in and walked a couple guys while recording two outs.  Cal reached on an error to make it 6-5, and then Jim Dwyer hit the Orioles second grand slam OF THE INNING and suddenly we led 9-6!

It was only the 4th time in baseball history that a team had hit two grand slams in one inning.  (It has since been done four more times for a total of 8, including by Nolan Reimold and Steve Clevenger of the Orioles in 2015, once even by a single player -- St Louis' Fernando Tatis -- off the same pitcher (Chan Ho Park).  This was also the first game in the history of major league baseball with three grand slams (it has been done 3 times since).

In the 6th inning, Lee Lacy hit a 2 run shot to give the Orioles a 11-6 lead, which they took into the 8th.  The Rangers' Steve Beuchele homered off Rich Bordi to start the top of the 8th, and Bordi gave up a couple singles and a Pete O'Brien home run and suddenly it was 11-10.  Two more hits chased Bordi and Nate Snell came in to try to stem the Ranger onslaught.

It's worth noting at this point that Oriole closer Don Aase, an All Star, had strained his back playing with his four year old son earlier in the day.  And this was 1986, not 2017.  Closers routinely went more than one inning (Aase pitched more than an inning in 28 of his 66 games that year).  So Aase would likely have come on in the Ranger 8th to quash the rally if he had been available.

Snell gave up a 2-run double, with Pete Incaviglia just beating a bullet throw from T-Bone Shelby in right field, and suddenly the Rangers led 12-11.  Snell gave up another run in the 9th and the Rangers wound up winning 13-11.

As bizarre a loss as it was, hitting two grand slams in an inning but losing, it was still just a loss.  Earl said after the game that it was the same as losing 1-0.

Maybe that was true.  But that loss started a 5 game losing streak, a 5-22 stretch, and a horrific 14-42 stretch to end the season.  The Orioles stretch of winning years had come to an end, Earl Weaver went back into retirement, the team got even worse the next year, and then the year after that (1988), they had the worst start in baseball history at 1-21 and put up the worst record in modern Orioles history.  From August 6, 1986 through the end of the 1988 season, the Orioles went 135-244, a horrible stretch that was so bad that it was never matched even during the 14 year losing stretch from 1998-2011.

Looking at one game in a 162 game season as having any special meaning is always problematic, but if ever a game qualified as a turning point, this would be it.  A team that had won consistently for nearly two decades and was red hot and having a winning season, loses one game in historic fashion, and immediately began a collapse unmatched in the history of the franchise.  And the loss might have been avoided if not for a fluke muscle strain suffered by the closer earlier in the day.

On a personal note, I was at this game. I remember Dempsey's Babe Ruth performance, and of course the craziness of the three grand slams and the blown lead.  I remember as the long rain delayed game approached midnight and many of the original 19,519 fans had left, ushers rebuffing my friend and I as we tried to move into lower box seats right behind the 3rd base dugout.  I remember thinking it was an epic game I would never forget, but I certainly didn't imagine that the team I had watched win year after year since I was 4 years old would almost immediately turn into the worst team in baseball for the next 2+ seasons.

[Frobby]

The day after this game, Eddie Murray came off his first-ever DL stint after missing 24 games.    Somehow, his return got associated with the losing streak, fans started booing him and his relationship with the Orioles soured.    It still makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.   

[SteveA]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

The day after this game, Eddie Murray came off his first-ever DL stint after missing 24 games.    Somehow, his return got associated with the losing streak, fans started booing him and his relationship with the Orioles soured.    It still makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.   

I didn't realize the timing of that.

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I didn't realize the timing of that.

Several days after Eddie got hurt, the O’s called up Jim Traber, who hit .313/.373/.716 with 8 homers and 22 RBI in 18 games in Eddie’s absence.   He became kind of a cult hero, and when the O’s started losing when Eddie returned, somehow a group of vocal fans decided that was Eddie’s fault.   Never mind that Traber (who continued to play regularly as a DH/OF) hit .240/.274/.340 the rest of the season, while Eddie hit .320/.409/.486.

[OFFNY]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

 

The day after this game, Eddie Murray came off his first-ever DL stint after missing 24 games. Somehow his return got associated with the losing streak, fans started booing him, and his relationship with the Orioles soured. It still makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.   

 

o

 

I remember when I used to call sports phone when I was a kid for updates, they once talked about Eddie Murray having a consecutive streak ending because of an injury in 1980.

I did some searching and sure enough, I found an article about that phone call that I remember making 37 years ago.

At the time, Murray's streak was the 2nd longest active one in the Majors at 444, with only Steve Garvey (who would go on to pass Everett Scott for the 2nd longest streak ever) before getting injured trying to score at home plate on a wild pitch in 1983) having had one longer.

 

The injury didn't land Murray on the Disabled List, but your post in regard to Murray's endurance/durability reminded me of that.

 

 

Royals Drop Orioles 8-4, as Murray Streak Ends

(By Michael Wilbon)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1980/07/15/royals-drop-orioles-8-4-as-murray-streak-ends/4406d6d6-4049-4a53-b310-c847937be6d6/?utm_term=.413393ee7a4e

 

o

[Number5]

6 minutes ago, OFFNY said:

o

 

I remember when I used to call sports phone when I was a kid for updates, they once talked about Eddie Murray having a consecutive streak ending because of an injury in 1980.

I did some searching and sure enough, I found an article about that phone call that I remember making 37 years ago.

At the time, Murray's streak was the 2nd longest active one in the Majors at 444, with only Steve Garvey (who would go on to break Everett Scott's National League record before getting injured trying to score at home plate on a wild pitch in 1983) having had one longer.

 

The injury didn't land Murray on the Disabled List, but your post in regard to Murray's endurance/durability reminded me of that.

 

 

Royals Drop Orioles 8-4, as Murray Streak Ends

(By Michael Wilbon)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1980/07/15/royals-drop-orioles-8-4-as-murray-streak-ends/4406d6d6-4049-4a53-b310-c847937be6d6/?utm_term=.413393ee7a4e

 

o

I thought Billy Williams had the NL record before Garvey.

[OFFNY]

11 minutes ago, Number5 said:

 

I thought Billy Williams had the NL record before Garvey.

 

o

 

He did.

I meant to say that Garvey surpassed Scott for 2nd on the All-time list, and that Garvey would also break the National League record.

Thanks.

 

o

[Redskins Rick]

48 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Several days after Eddie got hurt, the O’s called up Jim Traber, who hit .313/.373/.716 with 8 homers and 22 RBI in 18 games in Eddie’s absence.   He became kind of a cult hero, and when the O’s started losing when Eddie returned, somehow a group of vocal fans decided that was Eddie’s fault.   Never mind that Traber (who continued to play regularly as a DH/OF) hit .240/.274/.340 the rest of the season, while Eddie hit .320/.409/.486.

I never got the Eddie criticism here from some of the fan base. I thought he was a highly skilled an fantastic player.

I get the media didnt care for him, because he didnt care about giving interviews, and I get that.

I think Eddie was such a great athlete, he didnt always look like he was going full speed, for him, it was effortless.

 

[Beef Supreme]

On Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 8:00 AM, SteveA said:

Meanwhile, the 3 guys the Orioles traded away (Finley, Schilling, Harnisch) all had successful careers, putting up a total of 241.4 WAR after leavint the Orioles.  241.4 WAR for 0.7 WAR makes this possibly the most lopsided trade in the history of baseball. 

I get 142.1 WAR for their combined careers -- including their time in Baltimore -- by using bbref's calculation. Finley 44.0, Schilling 79.9, Harnisch 18.2.
Still might be the most lopsided trade using that formula. But I am thinking something went awry in your calculation.