Opening Day 2008
Another baseball season begins as hopelessly as the last one ended. With the losses of arguably our best two players, and the fact that we are no longer even a mid-level player in free agency, our eyes and hopes rest on the youth of the team. Adam Jones and Luke Scott will no doubt form an upgraded outfield with blossoming star Nick Markakis, but the lineups still lacks a real power threat to make the team competitive on any level. Kevin Millar is an okay bench player who would have a hard time cracking the roster of a contender, yet we have to hope he triples his homerun total from last year.
Looking across at the Devil Rays dugout, Carlos Pena and his 40 homeruns would have fit in nicely at a cleanup spot that is currently vacant. Just as I start to get jealous at Tampa Boay’s acquisitions, I see Cliff Floyd batting fifth and I gain a small ounce of faith in the Orioles. A thirty-five year old Floyd is the type of acquisition the Orioles pre-McPhail would have gotten before lauding his productivity of five years ago. Ironically, this year I think that sort of player would make sense to give us some pop, but I’l take the avoidance of accumlating middle-aged “bargains” as a good sign for the club.
Well, the Orioles lost 6-2 and even though this could be as close to first place as we’ll be all year, opening day was a helluva a lot of fun. Plenty of drinking, bratwursts at two for $5 and a good social environment of pleasant ORIOLES fans. It’s hard to remember sometimes how much fun Orioles games used to be. There were a couple Yankees and Red Sox hats, but they were drowned out by a happy group of true Baltimore fans. Not to mention, I got my picture with local celebrity Rob Roblin. As my father told me, “you could see a no-hitter, and this will be3 the best moment of your day.”-it was
