With the Orioles opening their 2017 baseball season this week, here are some things to anticipate over the course of the coming months:
A ground ball will make its way through the Orioles infield, and old-time fans will inevitably remind youngsters, “Brooksie woulda ate that up” – even if the ball was hit to right field.
Mike Bordick will tell an anecdote. The former Orioles shortstop spent 14 seasons in big league dugouts, and he’s been doing TV color for nearly five full seasons – and we’re still waiting for him to attempt a single amusing behind-the-scenes story to liven a telecast.
Play-by-play broadcaster Jim Hunter will navigate his way through an entire sentence – is an entire paragraph too much to ask? Or an entire at-bat? – without mentioning a statistic. Hey, Mike and Jim — baseball is more than numbers. It’s about personalities, it’s about tears and laughter. Have you never noticed?
As the ball club marks the 25th year of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, someone will remark, “All these years – and the stadium still hasn’t produced another Wild Bill Hagy to light up the nights like Memorial Stadium.”
Adam Jones will refrain from swinging at a curve low and away – and they’ll stop the game and give Jones the ball as a keepsake.
Chris Davis will once again strike out more than 200 times, and a statistics maven will point out that Joe DiMaggio struck out 369 times. Of course, that was 369 times over 13 full seasons.
Zach Britton, virtually perfect last year, will finally blow a save sometime in mid-August, and cynics will complain, “He’s just not the same pitcher as last year.”
Washington fans will discover what Baltimore fans discovered over the last five summers: despite all the buildup, Matt Wieters is no Johnny Bench.
Many wishing to buy a beer at the ballpark will first need to negotiate a line of credit from their bank.
The first time Manny Machado gets a base hit, fans will commence worrying aloud about his contract – even though he’s still got two full years of guaranteed playing time here. Let’s enjoy Manny as a player – and let the front office pros work out the money details.
The O’s will be picked as an also-ran in the American League East – but they’ll make the playoffs for the fourth time in the last six years.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
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