2012 Game of the Year: #5 at Seattle Mariners – September 18

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t like missing Orioles games – especially if I can avoid it. It is not exactly convenient to stay up for 10:10 ET starts when the Orioles are on the West Coast during the week but I would much rather deal with the fatigue the next morning rather than miss a pitch. It’s a small price to pay. With the Orioles one game out of first place in the AL East and a mere 15 games left in the season, I didn’t have to think too hard about foregoing sleep to watch the Orioles play the Mariners in Seattle on September 18th.

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2012 Game of the Year: #6 vs. Detroit Tigers - July 14

I was not in the best of moods around 8:20 PM on Saturday, July 14th. We had been at Camden Yards for over five hours. That alone is not necessarily a bad thing, but this particular afternoon had been your typical hot and muggy Baltimore July afternoon. The Orioles unveiled Eddie Murray’s statue in an afternoon ceremony before the 4:15 nationally televised game. The statue unveiling meant more fans than usual at the Yard, which meant I was squeezed into my upper deck seat between Tim and a teenager who had real boundary issues. Despite being about my size, he felt it was perfectly fine to have his arms and legs flow over into my seating area for the entire game.

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2012 Game of the Year: #7 vs. Tampa Bay Rays - September 12

The three game series against the Rays to finish the first September homestand was the first time the Orioles ran the 1992 ticket prices promotion for lower left field and center field seats. Cheaper seats equals more fans but does more fans automatically equal a better crowd? At the first game of the series, on September 11, the usually sparce lower left field seats were filled, with a lot of casual fans coming out to follow the pennant race. The casual crowd lead to lots of Ravens fans (definition of a “Ravens” fan - a Baltimore sports fan who abandonded the Orioles during the down years and still wears their football gear to baseball games, while also bemoaning anything negative that happens to the O’s during a game.)

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2012 Game of the Year: #8 vs. New York Yankees - July 31

The scene was a familiar one to long suffering fans of the Baltimore Orioles. A game in the Bronx in July and the Orioles were already down 5-0 as the second inning began. The game was effectively over before it had even truly started. Sure, this team – this season – had been different from the teams and seasons of recent memory, but we had seen this particular scene play out far too many times to believe the script could really be all that different this go around. A big lead for the Yankees in New York and a struggling young pitcher on the mound for the Birds – this game had “we’ll get them tomorrow” written all over it.

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2012 Game of the Year: #9 vs. Boston Red Sox - September 30

September 30 was a beautiful Sunday. The final home game of the year is always a little bit of a drag but 2012 was different, since we fully expected to be back at Camden Yards within a weeks time for at least two more playoff games. When you go to so many games in a single season, the need to be there early goes away. Prior to 2012, Paul and I would arrive at absurd times, mostly to secure a t-shirt give-a-way. This was mostly my doing, since I always anticipated demand being higher than it was in reality. This past season we changed things up and often arrived just in time for line up’s.

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2012 Game of the Year: #10 vs. Tampa Bay Rays - September 13

This was a rare game.

Series finale
With a win, the Orioles sweep the series and increase the lead between the two teams
12:35 pm start time
Extra innings
13th inning for the Orioles: bases loaded, no outs… but no runs
Orioles rookie 3B Manny Machado singles home the game winner in the bottom of the 14th for another walk off and another extra inning win.

How is that rare?

Nothing that happened on the field was rare, especially for the 2012 Orioles.

What was rare was I was in attendance by myself, with Paul at work.

Paul decided, rightfully so, that missing a 12:35 game after winning the first two games of the series against the Rays, was worth skipping so come playoff time, there wouldn’t be any issues getting off for potential day games in the playoffs.

I had season tickets for this game, so instead of sitting in lower left field, I was up in 336, where the “resurgent” fans who didn’t get in on the $8 lower left field pricing were sitting. This lead to lots of grumbling and moaning on every missed opportunity by the Orioles. It doesn’t surprise me that these fans wouldn’t know that just because one opportunity is missed that another won’t open. This is especially true with this Orioles team.

The 13th inning, bases loaded, no out situation was the height of this and I shook my head every time someone moaned and complained. I knew the O’s don’t lose in extra innings but these people haven’t a clue.

The 14th lead to Manny dumping a single that Rays left fielder Matt Joyce dove for but couldn’t come up with. “O-MAZING” flashed on the scoreboard and fans got treated to another “Orioles Magic” song and moment.

Just under six hours is a lot of time to spend by yourself, especially at a sporting event, which is more social than most sports. It was well worth it.

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Texas Road Report - Part 4

While writing the road report, I sat at my desk for ten minutes trying to think of a way to describe the feeling I had while watching the game unfold. I came up with nothing. And maybe that’s the best way to describe what I was feeling – nothing. You’d think I would have been nervous, but you’d be wrong. You might think I was excited or worried, but I wasn’t. As the game entered the 6th inning, I found myself watching it like it was a random June game back at Camden Yards. I certainly expected to feel a little more emotionally involved than I did. Maybe it was the fact that being in Texas and watching the O’s in a playoff game just didn’t feel real. I don’t know. But the first five innings came and went and I felt oddly numb to the entire ordeal.

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Texas Road Report - Part 3

Batting practice ends and I’m starting to feel the adrenaline in my body. Paul and I talk about how the game in Atlanta will get restarted after the showering of beer bottles on the field after the blown infield fly rule call. In typical MLB fashion, there is no explanation for why the call was made and its just restart the game. If I were the Braves, I would have held the team off the field. A forfeit loss for that egregious of a call would be much better in my eyes than running the team back out there. MLB didn’t even apologize after the game. They just made excuses for why the “right” call was made, even if the spirit of the rule was completely abandoned by the umpires. This harkens back when the “right call” was made in 1996 in New York in right field, a moment that O’s fans still remember all to well.

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