Baltimore summer

 Let's hear it out there today for cranky old Earl Weaver, and for Jim Palmer, and for Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell and his mighty bat. And for Camden Yards and crab cakes and, hell, Edgar Allen Poe, too, while we're at it.

The Balimer ("Baltimore" in the local dialect) Orioles are a real baseball team again. How about that, boys and girls?

This morning they're 68-42 and clear of the Tampa Bay Rays by two games atop the AL East, the best record in the American League and the second best in all of baseball. Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees are bringing up the rear in the division -- proving you really can stand the world on its head, even if it's round and looks exactly the same no matter how you pose it.

This is a hell of a thing for both Balimer and baseball in general, because it proves no one gets the soiled end of the stick forever in America's former pastime. (With the possible exception of my Pittsburgh Cruds, who are not quite as Cruddy right now only because the Cardinals, of all people, are Cruddier). Redemption is just an Elly de la Cruz or an Adley Rutschman away. Pitching helps, too.

And so suddenly the O's have Rutschman and Anthony Santander and Gunnar Henderson swinging the bat, and Dean Kremer and Kyle Gibson and Kyle Bradish blowtorching on the bump. And you can almost forget that just five summers ago they went 47-115 and finished an astounding 61 games out of first in the East.

That kicked off a four-year stretch in which they lost 115. 108 and 110 games, a streak bottomless futility interrupted only by the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. And was it only two years ago they were 52-110 and finished 48 games out of first?

You bet it was. 

Now, though, homegrown talent and astute market choices have stirred echoes of the last time the O's were a contender, which was eons ago in baseball years but only seven or so in real time. Remember 2016, when the O's lost in the wild-card round to the Blue Jays? Or 2014, the last time they reached the ALCS?

Sure you don't.

All that subsequent, epic losing tends to wipe the memory, after all. And so you can be forgiven for thinking it's been, like, eleventy-hundred years since the O's were any good -- or, for that matter, the Kansas City Royals, who swept Baltimore in that aforementioned ALCS and went on to lose to the Giants in seven games in the World Series.

And now?

Well, now they're 36-75 and 21 games out of first in the sad-sack AL Central, the worst team in baseball not named the Oakland A's. And the Washington Nationals, who won the World Series just four summers ago, are dead last in the NL East, 24-and-a-half games adrift of the first-place Atlanta Braves.

The lesson: In baseball, the sun doesn't shine on the same dog's hindparts every day, modern player movement being what it is. Nor does the dog pee on the same teams forever, unless they're my Cruds.

Which makes all that corny hope-springs-eternal stuff coming out of spring training every year a bit less corny. And far more true.