Baltimore Orioles
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The Baltimore Orioles are an American League ballclub, and a regular target of ridicule on Baseball Think Factory for their inept play and worse-than-inept decision-making.
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[edit] History
There were various Baltimore Oriole clubs in 19th-century baseball, most notably a National League entry that won three straight pennants in 1894-96. That team was famous for their aggressive style of play, led by third baseman and future manager John McGraw. One tactic they employed, purposefully pounding balls into the hard dirt of the Baltimore infield to produce slow, high-bounding grounders that often went for hits, is immortalized in the baseball cliche Baltimore chop, these days most often witnessed off the bat of Mariners All-Star Ichiro!.
When the Western League expanded eastwards in 1901 to become the American League, the Orioles were a charter franchise. Through a P2C2E those Orioles became the New York Highlanders (later New York Yankees), and Baltimore was left with an International League Orioles franchise for about a half-century. Another AL charter franchise, the St. Louis Browns, moved to Baltimore in 1954 and became the current AL Orioles.
After decades of outstanding play motivated by the prehistoric sabermetric genius, Earl Weaver (pitching, defense, AND the three run homer), owner Peter Angelos embarked on a noble effort to embarrass Bud Selig by showing that there was little connection between payroll and performance. While such unselfish behavior is much appreciated by fans of other teams, Oriole fans have grown weary of the grand experiment.
[edit] Fans
Notable Orioles fans/hecklers at BBTF include:
See Fans of my team for the rest.
[edit] Newsstand
- Official Site (orioles.com)
- Baltimore Sun
- Washington Post
- MASN Sports
- CBS Sportsline
- ESPN Clubhouse
- Fox Sports
- Yahoo
- USA Today
[edit] Blogs
- Birds in the Belfry - articles and discussion forum
- Camden Chat
- Roch Kubatko's blog -- former Baltimore Sun beat writer
- The Orioles Warehouse
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