Sports Then and Now

Late game celebrations have been a regular occurrence for the Baltimore Orioles is 2012.

If you are under the age of 35 you may find it hard to believe, but for nearly two decades, the Baltimore Orioles were the class of Major League Baseball and terms such as “The Oriole Way” and “Oriole Magic” were just as familiar to baseball fans as “Red Sox Nation” is today.

With the 2012 season now nearly a third of the way complete, it is way too early to declare Baltimore “back” among the upper echelon teams in baseball, but for the first time in quite a while the future in Baltimore does appear to be promising.

Following back-to-back extra inning victories over the Philadelphia Phillies, the Orioles sport an impressive 34-26 record and are right in the mix of the highly competitive American League East.

The hot early start is definitely a reason for fans of a franchise that hasn’t posted a winning record since 1997 to be excited, but this is not the first time in the last 15 years that Baltimore has teased fans into June.

In 2005 the Orioles had a 42-28 record on June 21st and a two game lead in the AL East. A 3-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays the next day started a stretch in which Baltimore lost 11 of 14 games and 60 of their final 92 games to end with a 74-88 record and 21 games out in the standings. Read the rest of this entry →

Mark Belanger

The Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Week for April is a former Major League shortstop who was never known for his offensive production, but was one of the best ever at fielding his position and was a key reason that his team was baseball’s best during his era.

Mark Belanger was such a valuable player for the Baltimore Orioles in the late 1960s and 1970s that he knocked a future Hall of Famer out of the Baltimore lineup and twice finished in the top 30 in the American League MVP despite hitting below .230 for the season.
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Jackie Robinson made his Major League Baseball debut on April 15, 1947.

Editor’s Note: In honor of today being the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier I am reprinting an article I originally published in recognition of the anniversary a year ago.

I am learning that one difficult challenge of being a parent is explaining to our children pieces from past history that are inconsistent with how we want them to think and experience daily life.

Recently my five-year-old son and I were watching a section from the wonderful Ken Burns Baseball documentary. The section first focused about baseball during World War II and then about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947.

Because he is growing up in a time and culture where racism isn’t a noticeable part of daily life and he has been fortunate in his short life to meet and regularly interact with many people from all backgrounds and races, it was very difficult for him to grasp that there was a time in our country when discrimination was part of the norm in certain places and where not everyone was given the same opportunities.

While trying to give him enough information to explain why Jackie Robinson was a special person and should be celebrated, I found myself focusing on how great Robinson was as a player, rather than simply focusing on his crucial role in breaking racial barriers. Not that I was trying to shield him from the ugly elements of America’s past, but rather because it was easier for him to understand and because what I want him to know as he moves forward with his own life is that people are judged and celebrated for their achievements, performance and success and that skin color isn’t an important part of that equation.

When you think about it, that is probably one of the greatest components of Jackie Robinson’s legacy. He paved the way for us to be able to judge greatness not based on ethnicity or race, but instead on how someone performs in whatever area in which they participate.

There are certainly still racial issues within our country, but while it is important for my son and all children to know and understand our history, things will continue to change as more generations of youngsters live through times where, to quote Martin Luther King Jr., “they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”

It was 64 years ago today that Robinson played his first game as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The future Hall of Famer didn’t get a hit that afternoon, but his mere presence forever changed professional baseball and American society.

During his rookie season, Robinson hit .297 and was named the National League Rookie of the Year.

Despite being 28 years old at the time of his major league debut, Robinson played 10 seasons for the Dodgers and helped them reach the World Series six times and claim the World Series title in 1955. He had a career batting average of .311 and was named the NL MVP in 1949.

In honor of Jackie Robinson Day across Major League Baseball, we are including several Youtube videos that celebrate his greatness both as a baseball player and as the man who paved the way for baseball to truly become the American pastime.

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Tim Wakefield ended a great career in Boston last week.

The night was October 16, 2004 and a game, and another season was slipping away from the Boston Red Sox. Already trailing the New York Yankees two games to none in the American League Championship Series, the pitching in Game 3 was serving up batting practice fare to Yankee hitters. Tim Wakefield watched it unfold. He was scheduled to start Game 4, but stepped up and told manager Terry Francona that if need be, he (Wake) would give up his start and try and save the bullpen. Francona took him up on the offer.

Wakefield’s final line score showed that went 3 1/3 innings and gave up five runs in an 18-9 loss. A cynic might say his act of teamwork in giving up his start for a lost cause was pointless. But the innings he worked were the most of any Red Sox pitcher that night. It meant Francona got through the game without using Mike Timlin or Keith Foulke, while Alan Embree faced only a handful of batters. The core of the Sox bullpen was rested.

No one could have predicted what happened next. That not only would the Red Sox win the next four games in succession, but Games 4 & 5 would go a combined 26 innings, requiring every last bit of will from the bullpen and that Foulke would be needed again in Game 6, already running on fumes. But because Tim Wakefield put the interests of his team ahead of the interests of himself, even when it seemed like an act of futile martyrdom, the Red Sox were in position to pull off the miracle comeback. That’s why as he goes into retirement now, at age 45, that single act of selflessness should be his crowning memory.

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Gary Carter spent the first 11 years of his career with the Montreal Expos.

It was sad news out of the baseball world this week with the passing of Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter at the age of 57 following a battle with cancer. While many best identify Carter with helping the New York Mets win the 1986 World Series, it was during his initial 11 years as a member of the Montreal Expos that Carter became one of the elite catchers of his era.

Selected by the Expos in the third round of the 1972 amateur draft, it took Carter just two years before he made his Major League debut as a September call-up in 1974.

Carter hit .407 with a home run and six RBI during nine games in 1974 and the next season finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting and made his first All-Star appearance while hitting .270 with 17 home runs and 68 RBI. Though he struggled the next year with a .219 average, by 1977 it was obvious that he would be one of the key lynch-pins of future success for the Expos.

In 1978 Carter blasted 31 home runs and drove home 84 runs while hitting .284. Two years later, Carter began a string of 10 straight All-Star appearances as the Expos posted the first winning season in team history while winning what still remains a franchise record 95 games. Unfortunately, in an era before the wild card, the Expos were unable to earn a postseason bid as they finished two games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Carter finished second in the National League MVP race in 1980 as he hit 29 home runs with 101 RBI. The Expos nearly won the NL East, but dropped two of three games to the Philadelphia Phillies on the final weekend of the season. Read the rest of this entry →

It appears that the prayers of baseball fans will not be answered as Bud Selig is sticking around for at least another three years.

Like a veteran player who doesn’t know when to hang up his jersey, looks like Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is determined to stick around as long as possible. Though it was originally announced that 2012 would be his final season as commissioner, Selig has now changed his mind and will remain in his role until at least the end of the 2014 season.

Shockingly (or maybe not), major league owners voted 29-1 to extend Selig’s contract for two additional years to ensure that Selig will be commissioner at least past his 80th birthday at a reported salary of $22 million per year.

Given his hubris, it seems very likely that Selig will do everything he can to remain in control of the league at least through the 2016 season as that would ensure he passes Kenesaw “Mountain” Landis for the longest tenure as commissioner in league history.

What seems strange is that while ownership considers Selig to be a great commissioner, many outside the owner’s boxes look as Selig as the epitome of all things bad about baseball.

While football had already started to eclipse baseball as “America’s Pastime”  when Selig took over as interim commissioner in 1992, he seemingly has spent the last 20 years doing everything he can to ensure that baseball never gets close to retaking that title.

At the time, Selig was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and like the other owners in the game had tired of a commissioner whose focus was on the integrity of the sport, rather than supporting the owners and their desires.

When the owners fired Commissioner Fay Vincent, they installed Selig on an interim basis and within two years he was spearheading a battle with the players union that would eventually ensure that the World Series would be missed for the first time in 90 years.

While both sides can certainly take some of the blame for missing the World Series and the subsequent agreement that ensured that teams willing to over-spend would have a significant advantage over other teams moving forward, the fact that Selig was running the show for the owners makes him culpable for that disaster.

Between 1950 and 1994, only four teams (two of which were expansion squads) registered 10 or more consecutive losing seasons (1953-1962 Chicago Cubs, 1953-1967 Kansas City Athletics, 1969-78 Montreal Expos and the 1977-1990 Seattle Mariners). Since 1994, five teams have reached that dubious plateau (1993-2011 Pittsburgh Pirates, 1993-2004 Milwaukee Brewers, 1994-2005 Detroit Tigers, 1998-2007 Tampa Bay Rays and the 1998-2011 Baltimore Orioles). In addition, the Kansas City Royals have been below .500 in 16 of 17 seasons (2003 being their only exception), the Cincinnati Reds have been below .500 in 10 of the last 11 seasons (2010 being their only winning season when they won the NL Central) and the Colorado Rockies have had a losing record in 10 of the last 13 seasons.

Yes, there have been small market teams like the Minnesota Twins and Oakland A’s that have enjoyed occasional success, but the A’s have not had a winning record since 2006 and the Twins lost 99 games last season to illustrate that even small market teams that are able to build winning programs do not have the same ability to reload that is afforded to teams with greater revenue streams. Read the rest of this entry →