Because I am a mere Baltimore Orioles fan, I had no stake in this past weekend's Fenway Park "showdown" between the superpowers Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. I just liked watching the games as pure theater, without the psychological baggage of fandom that brings more pain than pleasure. The games were instructive.
For starters, they reminded me of how far the Orioles have fallen. Though once a baseball empire, the Orioles have been reduced to using castoffs while waiting for their minor league system to produce the next generation of cannon fodder. The team has a shortstop who can neither field nor hit and a third baseman who dogs it but, because he's paid too much, can't be "fired" and no other team wants him. They have starting pitchers so bad they change their names between starts, and a bullpen so exhausted that arms have been known, literally, to fall off on the ground.
None of these things were hallmarks of the Orioles back in the day. Then the team was the ultimate in baseball fundamentals: great starting pitchers, solid defense, smart base-running, timely hitting and the ability to maximize every single break. In short, they respected the game and played wisely enough to stay ahead of the pack. Now the Orioles franchise is like an empire that stretched itself too far, ran out of money, and shrank back to its original state, like England, Holland and Spain. Opposing teams enjoy visiting Baltimore for the nice park, the harbor, crab cakes and victories. It's like invading a small defenseless country under the pretense that WMDs are buried near second base.
What happened to reduce them to this pitiful state? It started with unfathomably bad leadership. Team owner Peter Angelos is more reviled than the entire Steinbrenner clan, a despot whose intractable style has spawned an insurgent "Free the Birds" movement among longsuffering fans. Yet unwise leadership preceded his arrival in 1993. The nadir was reached in 1991, when the team made one of the worst trades in history, sending Steve Finley, Pete Harnisch and (yes) Curt Schilling to Houston for Glenn Davis, an injury-prone slugger. Finley became an all-star outfielder, Harnisch stayed consistent and Schilling—misused by the O's as a reliever—rescued the Phillies and the Red Sox, broke the Curse of the Bambino and is a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Davis, meanwhile, turned into Enron. The Orioles rewarded him with a huge longterm contract, and Davis essentially went bankrupt within days of arrival. The Houston golden boy claimed to have a neck injury but wouldn't let team doctors examine him; he traveled separately from the team, fans loathed him and he eventually got his jaw broken in a bar fight. After three miserable years Davis left, taking the team's wealth with him and never once taking responsibility for his failings. The Orioles, like the once great Pittsburgh Pirates—whom they met in a classic 1979 World Series—are teams without futures because they refused to learn from the past. The Yankees and Red Sox are, on the other hand, the superpowers with nukes aimed at each other. Every other team is required to stand back and let them have their way.
This was made abundantly clear in spring training, when the upstart Tampa Bay Rays and Yankees got into a brawl in an exhibition game. The brawl started when a Yankee, in alleged payback for a hard slide, slid hard into the Rays' shortstop.
Yankee owner Hank Steinbrenner imperiously noted, "I don't want these teams to forget who subsidizes a lot of them, and it's the Yankees, the Red Sox, Dodgers, Mets. I would prefer, if teams want to target the Yankees, that they at least start giving some of that revenue sharing and luxury tax money back." Translation: Superpowers can do what they want without consequences, and all you other peons had better learn your place.
Did I forget to mention that major league baseball is the only profit-making enterprise in America exempt from antitrust laws?
