ORIOLES CLINCH POST-SEASON BERTH
WITH 1st WINNING SEASON SINCE 1997
UPDATE (Friday October 12th @ 2:01 a.m.):
ORIOLES AND NATIONALS MOVE TO GAME FIVE of their respective division series as both teams win Game Four Thursday night. The Birds defeated the Yankees 2-1 in 13 innings; the Nats beat the St. Louis Cardinals by the same score, winning the game in the bottom of the ninth. On Wednesday the O’s lost their first extra-inning game since April but returned to form Thursday night, beating the Yanks in 13 innings. Game Five Friday night will determine which teams go to their respective league’s seven-game Championship Series.
UPDATE (Friday October 5th @ 11 p.m.):
ORIOLES DEFEAT RANGERS! in single-game Wild Card Playoff, 5-1, go to five-game American League Division Series against Yankees beginning Sunday in Baltimore for right to play winner of Oakland-Detroit matchup for the American League pennant (seven-game Championship Series beginning Saturday October 13th).
It was written in heaven. Baltimore Baseball Heaven.
With a three-game home season-ending sweep of the much-despised Boston Red Sox, assisted by a Los Angeles Angels’ loss to the Texas Rangers in the nightcap of their double-header in Arlington, the newly beloved Baltimore Orioles clinched their first post-season playoff berth Sunday since 1997 as the team prepared to finish out its first winning season in 15 years.
With three games yet to go, the Birds’ goal now is to win the American League East division title. They’re in a first-place tie with the New York Yankees; and the Rangers’ double-header split with L.A. dropped the Texas team into a tie with the Orioles for the league’s best record.
It’s a far cry from the worst record in baseball the Orioles owned a year and a half ago when manager Buck Showalter took the reins.
The regular season ends Wednesday for the O’s with the third of three games against the Tampa Bay Rays. Wild Card games are scheduled for Friday, with the playoffs culminating in the 108th World Series, set to begin Wednesday October 24th in the ballpark of the National League champion.
Voice of Baltimore has asked nearly every Orioles fan we know, the reason for this miracle year. And nearly everyone we talked to gave the same answer: Buck Showalter, who took over as manager in July 2010, after having managed the N.Y. Yankees (1992-1995), Arizona Diamondbacks (1998-2000) and Texas Rangers (2003-2006).
A two-time American League Manager of the Year, William Nathaniel Showalter 3rd, 56, left the Yankees and Diamondbacks just prior to seasons when they won the World Series.
UPDATE: NATS WIN NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST TITLE
Despite losing the first game of their season-ending home stand against the Philadelphia Phillies by a shutout score of 2-0, the Washington Nationals made baseball history Monday night as they became the first Washington, D.C. team to finish first in nearly 80 years.
The Pittsburgh Pirates did the job for them, eliminating the Atlanta Braves from contention in the National League East by a score of 2-1 in Pittsburgh.
The last team from the nation’s capital to win a baseball title, the Washington Senators, finished first in the American League in 1933, winning that year’s pennant, but then lost the World Series in five games to the National League’s New York Giants.
— VoB Staff report
For a somewhat befuddled yet insightful analysis of the Orioles’ “miracle” season — actually more perplexed than befuddled — check out the Wall Street Journal’s Sept. 20th story, “The Baltimore Orioles Miracle Continues,” a business publication’s attempt to explain the unexplainable success of a team nobody at the beginning of the season expected much from (click here).
