A question for those who remember 1989

[Slappy]

'89, '12, and '22 are all pretty comparable.  All of those teams had extremely low expectations coming off of multiple losing seasons in a row. All 3 had 2 things in common that were really key to turning things around:  vastly improved defenses and shut-down bullpens. And all 3 featured the debut of players that would be key long-term contributors to the franchise: Olson in '89 (he pitched a little in '88 but not much), Machado in '12, Adley in '22. 

 

[Remember The Alomar]

This is very cool and exactly what I was hoping people would weigh in with. Thanks, all!

[pdiddy]

1 hour ago, Remember The Alomar said:

This is very cool and exactly what I was hoping people would weigh in with. Thanks, all!

Fun walk down memory lane.

[Aristotelian]

1 hour ago, dtk9119 said:

I was sophomore in college in 89. The thing I remember about that season was the final TOR series. We were 1 GB heading into it. Didn't our starter for game 1 have a freak injury right before the series started? I remember watching the first game and we lost. Then watching on Sat knowing we had to win 2 just to tie them. Disappointing ending but a great season with a lot of no names besides Cal.

I think the 2022 team compares much closer to the 2012 team. 

All I remember of that game was Phil Bradley got us on the board with a leadoff HR, then we didn't score the rest of the game, ultimately losing 2-1. Extremely frustrating game.

[foxfield]

1989 was weird. 1988 was an embarrassment beyond anything you recall about the last 5 years....or the 30-3 Texas game or the Boston Massacre.  The Orioles really were not winning at the rate we had become accustomed to either.  We didn't know we hit the wall in 1983.  

But the '89 Orioles were competing to win a division coming back from a horrific start in '88 that got Cal Ripken Sr. fired in about a week.  During the streak, I was driving around in my first car purchase after college and I taped the newspaper headlines to my windows. (It was an 86 Chevy Blazer).  So, I am 23 and I get pulled one afternoon because I have so much stuff on my side glass inside the vehicle.  The cop starts reading all of this stuff and just starts belly laughing.  (I lived at the time near Charlottesville, Virginia). Anyway, he ultimately says something like your'e an Oriole fan...you've been punished enough and let me go.

'22 we are barely over .500 but we were expecting to be completely uncompetitive.  So competing for a WC is tremendously exciting even if we never actually catch anyone else.  But being excited about being above .500 isn't going to hold.  We are eventually going to want more.   That is where I am.  To me, this season is more like 2011, when we spoiled the Red Sox on the final day and helped complete a brutal collapse for them.  We are competitive and we may yet compete for playoff time.  But no one seriously believes we can do anything once there.  

So '89 was very special, but to me not the same as '22 and I am very hopeful for a strong finish, I think we are playing with house money and I am more excited about lifting expectations going forward.  Anyway, that is how this fan (since '68) sees it.

 

[Remember The Alomar]

9 minutes ago, foxfield said:

1989 was weird. 1988 was an embarrassment beyond anything you recall about the last 5 years....or the 30-3 Texas game or the Boston Massacre.  The Orioles really were not winning at the rate we had become accustomed to either.  We didn't know we hit the wall in 1983.  

But the '89 Orioles were competing to win a division coming back from a horrific start in '88 that got Cal Ripken Sr. fired in about a week.  During the streak, I was driving around in my first car purchase after college and I taped the newspaper headlines to my windows. (It was an 86 Chevy Blazer).  So, I am 23 and I get pulled one afternoon because I have so much stuff on my side glass inside the vehicle.  The cop starts reading all of this stuff and just starts belly laughing.  (I lived at the time near Charlottesville, Virginia). Anyway, he ultimately says something like your'e an Oriole fan...you've been punished enough and let me go.

'22 we are barely over .500 but we were expecting to be completely uncompetitive.  So competing for a WC is tremendously exciting even if we never actually catch anyone else.  But being excited about being above .500 isn't going to hold.  We are eventually going to want more.   That is where I am.  To me, this season is more like 2011, when we spoiled the Red Sox on the final day and helped complete a brutal collapse for them.  We are competitive and we may yet compete for playoff time.  But no one seriously believes we can do anything once there.  

So '89 was very special, but to me not the same as '22 and I am very hopeful for a strong finish, I think we are playing with house money and I am more excited about lifting expectations going forward.  Anyway, that is how this fan (since '68) sees it.

 

This is awesome—thanks for writing it up. The cop story is hilarious. I guess I never thought about it before, but I realized I've underrated how much the trauma of '88 framed the joy of '89. Obviously I knew about 0-21, etc., but I never considered how truly miserable that must have been to witness. 

[DrungoHazewood]

14 hours ago, Remember The Alomar said:

I was a few months away from being born so, sadly, I missed the '89 season. But, for those who have vivid memories of it: How does the 2022 season compare to it thus far? When did you start to believe that team was special? 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, as this current team could still collapse. But, for some reason, tonight's win really gave me a jolt of excitement and appreciation for this squad. Curious if/when that hit for the people who experienced '89.

Completely different because the Orioles were in first place much of the year (May 26-August 30, plus a few days in April), while the '22 Orioles haven't been within 10 games of first since early May.

Also, if I'd known then what I know now I would have predicted the 1990-91 Orioles regression, as outside of Olson and Harnisch the pitching staff was a bunch of junkballers with by far the lowest K/9 in the league.  The '22 Orioles don't have Cal, but they have a much better foundation and deeper base of young talent to build on.

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, ExileAngelos said:

I was 18 for the Why Not season.  Nothing compares to it.  Was a different time.  It was my first year at college.  Freshmen had to park about a mile from campus.  There was no internet and no way to watch on TV.  I would make that walk to my car to barely pull in WTOP and hang on Jon Miller's every third word or so I could make out lol.  I came home for the Toronto weekend and watched that Gregg Olson curveball hit the dirt.  That 18 year old fell to the ground and cried. 

 

 

I was a freshman in college at Virginia Tech, and I had to "watch" the Olson curveball game on Headline News because it wasn't on Blacksburg cable and I couldn't pick up an Orioles radio station there.

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, Just Regular said:

1989 Milacki compiled more than half of his career WAR that season.   His career was below replacement level after age-26.    Milacki is someone I think of a lot watching Clubs try to maximize their Prior's, Strasburg's, Grayson's, etc.

Milacki averaged 4.2 K/9 in a league that was at 5.5.  Ballard was at 2.6, Dave Schmidt 2.6, Dave Johnson 2.6, Holton and Thurmond under 4.0 out of the pen.  Today we'd see that as a giant red flag that none of them would be long for the majors, which turned out to be 100% true.

Also shows you how much baseball has changed.  While Ballard struck out 2.6 per nine, in Norfolk this year DL Hall has averaged 1.6 K/inning.  In 1988-89 Ballard struck out 103 batters in 368.2 innings.  Hall has 118 strikeouts in 72.1 innings this year.

[Frobby]

15 minutes ago, Remember The Alomar said:

This is awesome—thanks for writing it up. The cop story is hilarious. I guess I never thought about it before, but I realized I've underrated how much the trauma of '88 framed the joy of '89. Obviously I knew about 0-21, etc., but I never considered how truly miserable that must have been to witness. 

It was terrible, but the truth is that the 2018 and 2021 teams did worse, and the 2021 team was just as bad.  I can’t say the 1988 team was any more embarrassing than those, though the 0-21 start drained any enjoyment of that season before it had even gotten started.  

I’d say one difference though between 1989 and 2012 is we hadn’t been in some deliberate long term rebuild.  The fans now had reason to expect the team would turn a corner at least somewhat this year, though nobody expected this big a turnaround.   But I don’t think anyone was expecting a big change in ‘89.   We didn’t have a Rutschman everyone had been pinning their hopes on (until we drafted Ben McDonald that summer).  The young guys who played a big role in ‘89 hadn’t gotten much attention. And — I say in all candor — there was no Orioles Hangout or other forum for fans to get excited about how our minor league players or young players who hadn’t quite blossomed yet might do in the future.  We knew whatever Chuck Thompson told us, and not much more.  And that wasn’t a lot. 
 

[DrungoHazewood]

13 minutes ago, Frobby said:

It was terrible, but the truth is that the 2018 and 2021 teams did worse, and the 2021 team was just as bad.  I can’t say the 1988 team was any more embarrassing than those, though the 0-21 start drained any enjoyment of that season before it had even gotten started.  

I’d say one difference though between 1989 and 2012 is we hadn’t been in some deliberate long term rebuild.  The fans now had reason to expect the team would turn a corner at least somewhat this year, though nobody expected this big a turnaround.   But I don’t think anyone was expecting a big change in ‘89.   We didn’t have a Rutschman everyone had been pinning their hopes on (until we drafted Ben McDonald that summer).  The young guys who played a big role in ‘89 hadn’t gotten much attention. And — I say in all candor — there was no Orioles Hangout or other forum for fans to get excited about how our minor league players or young players who hadn’t quite blossomed yet might do in the future.  We knew whatever Chuck Thompson told us, and not much more.  And that wasn’t a lot. 
 

Hey, I subscribed to The Sporting News, and they published some minor league stats.  I forget if that was weekly?  I think weekly.  So I at least had some inkling that Finley won the IL batting title in '88, and Worthington was the IL MVP (despite hitting .244-16-73).  And I'm quite sure I took Milacki's 1988 debut (three starts, 25 innings, two earned runs, and a 10 strikeout shutout of the Yanks) as indisputable evidence that he was the next Jim Palmer.

But, no, no one expected anything.  When they beat Clemens on opening day the Sun put something like "First Place Orioles" in big type on the front page (I don't recall if it was the sports section or the whole paper) and everyone knew it was 100% tongue-in-cheek.

[foxfield]

Yes Frobby, the teams in 2018 and 2021 were horrible and worse than the "88 team.  But then, it was easier to believe even if they were not the Orioles of 1966-1983 and in those days, with Earl finally gone and having already won with Altobelli, we didn't feel like we were headed into the darkness...although in hind site we were.

We have been bad for so long...cut out 89, and then 96-97 and then 2012-16.  Other than that it has been pretty painful no matter who was in charge.  For me the 2017, team that was "going for it" trying to keep a window open and holding on instead of trading Machado...was the most painful and the worst of it.  2018 and 2021 may have looked worse but the effort and dysfunctional pieces from everywhere was just practically unbearable.

Very much enjoy winning and like the idea that we can expect more.

[jabba72]

 The other night in New York City, security personnel at the Grand Hyatt were called to a room at 4 a.m. to investigate a disturbance. In the room they found Olson and Traber shouting over a video game. "It's called Gauntlet," says Olson. " mental training for the pennant race."

SI article from 1989 about the 89 Orioles.

https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/06/19/o-you-beautiful-birds-a-year-after-setting-a-record-for-futility-the-orioles-are-sitting-pretty-in-the-al-east

 

[Roll Tide]

16 hours ago, Remember The Alomar said:

I was a few months away from being born so, sadly, I missed the '89 season. But, for those who have vivid memories of it: How does the 2022 season compare to it thus far? When did you start to believe that team was special? 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, as this current team could still collapse. But, for some reason, tonight's win really gave me a jolt of excitement and appreciation for this squad. Curious if/when that hit for the people who experienced '89.

I was a senior in high school…As I remember Jeff Ballard led the pitching staff. It was an exciting season but, for the most part people knew we didn’t have enough to go all the way. That’s pretty much how it turned out.

[Uli2001]

I wasn't an Orioles fan yet in 1989, so I cannot comment. I can say that 2012 was very enjoyable. And so has been this year in the last two months. Unpopular opinion here, perhaps, but I think it was disrespectful to the team by the FO to trade Mancini and the closer during this season. Were they going to win the world series if no trade? Very likely no. But you just don't mess with this kind of mojo. You just want to let it roll and see how far it can take you. You never know when you are going to get it again.