Category: Sports

An Orioles fan’s view of their 2021 season

This will be another long year for the Orioles. I predict they will go 65-97. The team is not trying to win at the major league level. If a veteran player does well, the Orioles will trade him for prospects.

The Orioles will allow 11,000 fans into the stadium but attendance won’t be an issue. Published game attendance is based on ticket sales but I went to several games in 2019 and think the actual number of people there was in the 5,000-6,000 range. The only games that would draw well would be opening day, Yankees and Red Sox games, and games with good promo giveaways or events. This year, I expect fewer fans to come from Boston and New York because of the pandemic.

The biggest problem is the starting rotation. Number one starter John Means pitched extremely well in the opener yesterday in Boston but the Red Sox stink, too.

It’s not all bad news. There are some good young position players and the minor leagues have much more talent than in the past. The Orioles have expanded their presence in foreign player development and caught up with the times on analytics.

Still, this is going to be bad. At least I am old enough to have been to two World Series in Baltimore (1979 and 1983) and will always have great memories of the era when the Orioles were among the best teams in baseball.

Songs about sports

The start of major league baseball season tomorrow has prompted me to post about songs about sports including those sung (being generous there) by athletes.

For baseball, I’m posting “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again” from 2000’s Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. Billy Bragg and Wilco took unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics and set them to new music. The music for this song was written by Bragg and it is sung by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

I saw DiMaggio at a baseball autograph show in Atlantic City around 1990. He was not memorable. There was a long list of stuff he wouldn’t sign which included Marilyn Monroe-related items and The DiMaggio Albums (2 book set). The books included commentaries by DiMaggio so I thought it was odd and disappointing that he wouldn’t sign them,

Obviously, the best-known baseball song is “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” but I’ll post about that another time

For cricket, I have to go with “Cricket” by the Kinks from 1973’s Preservation Act 1. I don[t know much about the sport but I have always liked the song.

For football, I’ll go with “The Super Bowl Shuffle” by the 1985 Chicago Bears. Fortunately, these Super Bowl champions were better at football than music.

For hockey, here’s “Penalty Box” by Dave Schultz who was the highly-penalized enforcer for the Philadelphia Flyers in the early 1970s. He holds the NHL record for most penalty minutes in a season. I doubt this song was played much outside of the Philadelphia area.

Basketball is represented by Cheech and Chong’s 1973 “Basketball Jones”. I also included the 1996 Space Jam version by Barry White and Chris Rock.

7/22/22 – several videos no longer available and I removed them

More tweets from Gritty, the Flyers mascot

Pat Dobson

Bill Nunn

Bill Nunn was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame yesterday. He deserves a lot of credit for the great Steelers draft picks that built the four-time Super Bowl winners in the 1970s. In addition, he was the father of Bill Nunn who played Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing.

This is a great article about him:

Henry Aaron

Henry Aaron, who died last week, is one of the all-time best baseball players. Aaron still has the lifetime record for RBIs and held the home run record before Barry Bonds tainted it. Think of that – two thirds of the lifetime triple crown. He’s third in hits all time, too. In addition to his great baseball achievements, he fought racism. Aaron’s career reminds me of Walter Payton. They were rarely regarded as the best in any season but they played at an extremely high level forever. In addition to his great baseball achievements, he fought racism.

I saw Aaron at a book signing in Washington for his 1991 autobiography I Had a Hammer. Many years after his playing career ended, he still drew a huge crowd.

Aaron in the minor leagues.

Earl Weaver – 1982 final game

Earl Weaver was a great manager. Weaver knew that most players couldn’t do everything and he found the right spots to maximize the skills they had. Look up the careers of John Lowenstein, Gary Roenicke, Wayne Garland and Mike Torrez among others. They never did as well for other teams as they did for the Orioles. Do you remember Sam Horn, a low-average power hitter who played for the Orioles after Weaver’s era? Earl would have known what to do with him. He would have gotten 350 at bats, hit .250 with 25 home runs and 70 RBIs. He would have had a long career. One of Weaver’s greatest moves from switching Cal Ripken from third base to shortstop. It took extra nerve because the Orioles had traded their third baseman, Doug DeCinces, to make room for Ripken. Ripken certainly didn’t look like a shortstop but Weaver knew he could do it.

Earl’s last game with the Orioles (until he came back in 1985) was the final game of the 1982 season. I had tickets for a game in June but traded them in for the final game since I figured it wouldn’t be crowded. I was certainly wrong.

The Orioles had been chasing the Milwaukee Brewers for first place in the American League East. The Brewers finished with four games in Baltimore and came here with a three game lead. The Orioles won the first three so the teams were tied on the last day. The starting pitchers were Jim Palmer (Orioles) and Don Sutton (Brewers). It was like a playoff atmosphere. Unfortunately, the game was bad as the Brewers crushed the Orioles. After the game, the fans stuck around to give Weaver an emotional farewell. It’s one of the most memorable moments I have seen as a sports fan.

Here are two pieces of memorabilia which I later got signed by Weaver. There was a “Thanks Earl” Day on September 19, 1982. I think both the small poster and the program are from that day. I had the program framed with my ticket stubs from September 19th and the final game.

More Earl Weaver stuff:

Roger Angell turns 100

Roger Angell, longtime fiction editor at the New Yorker, also wrote excellent books about baseball. He just turned 100.

update: Roger Angell passed away in 2022

Some of his work:

I agree – my favorite piece