Here we go. The Baltimore Orioles have had thirteen, count them, 13 consecutive losing seasons. This year the "meat" of the batting order is, or was supposed to be: 2. Markakis, RF; 3. Jones, CF; and 4. Wieters, C. Markakis is hurt and will be out for another month, give or take. Before being injured he was hitting .255 with 8 HR and 26 RBI's in 199 at bats. Jones is making a run at an All-Star berth for the second time in three years. He is hitting .307 with 18 HR and 39 RBI in 251 AB. Wieters was in a slump until a week ago. Currently he is at 9 HR and 32 RBI in 218 AB. While none of the three is having a bad year, only Jones is having a good year. And yet the Orioles begin play today one and one-half games behind the Yankees. They are in second place in the hellish AL East.
There are many reasons why. Start, first, at the top. Ever since Baltimore attorney Peter Angelos purchased the team in the mid-1990's he has had an irresistible urge to jerk around with the roster and front office. It started at the outset of his tenure when he hired Hall-of-Fame GM Pat Gillick to run the team. Gillick immediately made a number of deft moves to improve the team but even he knew they weren't yet a champion. At mid-season that first year they were about five games out and tripping all over themselves. Worse yet, they were not a young team. Gillick wanted to parlay some of the vets into a crop of younger players. Bobby Bonilla was one of the vets and he went to Angelos and convinced him the current team would make the playoffs. Angelos refused to allow Gillick to do what he planned to and the vets did pull together and win the wild card berth. That sealed to Orioles fate for over a decade. Angelos took the playoff berth as "proof" he knew as much about baseball as so-called baseball people. Gillick was gone at the end of the season and other decent and even good baseball people followed him. Mike Flannagan, a legendary Oriole from the Weaver-Palmer-Brooks and Frank Robinson years, was one whom Angelos chose. But none ever got a chance to turn the team around. Time after time a trade was nixed, a signing turned down, a scout fired.
It appears, finally, after a bakers' dozen of feeble failures the asbestos attorney has finally learned to mind his own business and let somebody else run the team. Dan Duquette was hired last winter. Two years earlier Buck Showalter was hired to manage. These two chaps fit the mold of great baseball people. The most important thing Duquette has done is stock the pitching staff with good strong and mostly young arms. Jason Hammel is the best example. He came to the Birds from Colorado, where he had never pitched a complete game. Last night in Atlanta he took a no-hitter into the seventh before winning with a complete-game, one-hit shut-out. Hammel is now 7-2 with a stunning 2.87 ERA. The other huge surprise is Wei-Yin Chen, the Korean rookie pitching for the first time in these United States. He is only 6-2 in 12 starts and 73.1 innings. He is giving up less than a hit an inning (barely), which, to me, is just about the most revealing pitching stat in the game. The bullpen has been even better. The closer is Jim Johnson. For years everyone in the game has known that Johnson has the kind of stuff to be a killer closer. But everytime the Orioles would slip him in there, he'd starting pitching poorly. Then, at the end of last season when hardly anyone was paying attention, they tried it again, and this time it worked. Right from the git-go this season he has been superb. As I write, he has 19 saves and a 1.26 ERA. In 28 games and 28.2 innings he has surrendered only 15 hits. In that number of innings he has struck out 17 and walked only five. An even bigger surprise is Pedro Strop. The first time this season he pitched for the Orioles, those who didn't pay attention in spring training had their jaws dropped. He throws in the upper nineties and has a breaking ball that takes your breath away. The issue with Strop in the past has been control. This year, in 31.1 innings he has walked 18. This isn't superb, but it isn't a deal breaker either. He has become an outstanding set up man and his ERA is a Johnson-like 1.44. Add these two together with side-winder Darren O'Day (1.72 ERA in 31.1 innings) and Luis Ayala (1.74 ERA in 31 innings), and a picture begins to emerge. Not only has the back of the bullpen been extremely effective, there are enough successful arms to spread the work effectively. No one is being overworked. Even Johnson has been spared, explaining why Strop has three saves to complement Johnson's 19.
Other wonderful things have happened to the Orioles, none more wonderful than the return early last week of Brian Roberts. The former All-Star second baseman had not played since the first month of the 2011 season because of continuing complications from back-to-back concussions. In 22 at bats since rejoining the line-up Tuesday, he is batting .318 with four RBIs, including three last night in Atlanta. Showalter has thrown Roberts right into the fire, batting him leadoff in his first game and keeping him there. But far and away the biggest offensive surprise for the Orioles is Chris Davis, the former Texas Ranger. A left-handed hitter with great power, Davis has put a dent in his old bugaboo, strike-outs, without compromising his power. To date he is hitting a strong .310 with 12 HR and 31 RBI. He still leads the team in strike-outs with 59, but it isn't by the wide-margin his previous campaigns would predict. Because he is a regular now he seems very relaxed and focused. In a key win in Fenway Park, he pitched two scoreless innings in a 17-inning victory and earned the win. With the Orioles outfield overwhelmed with injuries (of the four outfielders who began the season, three are on the DL), Showalter started Davis in LF one game last week, and he looked totally at ease and even contributed a magnificent running and diving catch.
Supposedly Bill Clinton said at the outset of the obama term that America would - or was it "should?" - give obama's far left policy package two years, and if it wasn't working by then, America would, or should, kick him out.
Consider this: How many Americans would have voted for obama if he told them in advance what he was going to do. If obama said he would push so hard for his far left family control act (health care) that nothing would stop him, not even the certainty that a large majority of Americans wanted nothing to do with the plan, not even the certainty that the mid-term elections would be a disaster for his party. Would America have voted for obama if he told America before the election that he would spend more and create more red ink than the rest of America's leaders combined? How many would have voted for him if they thought he was serious about redistributing the country's wealth? How many would have voted differently if they knew he would abandon his stated view that gay marraige was wrong? Would even half of the people who voted for him repeat that step if they knew he would say that America has "never worked?" When people voted for him four years ago, if they knew how really awful the economy would be leading into this year's election, even as obama is out saying day after day that his total inability to turn things around was Bush's fault. We were told back then that Bush was a moron. Now, we are told he was so diabolical that lo these many years later the greatest far left uberleftist minds cannot undue his diabolical scheming.
President Kennedy was only able to complete three years of his first term before he was shot and killed by a far left murderer in Dallas, Texas. I was very young when that tragedy hit us. And yet I do not recall, and no historian has recalled that President Kennedy ever blamed his predecessor for anything. Three years and obama hasn't begun to turn things around. His initiatives the first two years were guaranteed to become law because he controlled Congress, and that control was total and absolute. He humbled anyone who opposed him. Even the Democrats in Congress knew that obama's hellish health debacle was the death knell for many of them. But obama and pelosi had such control that no one dared to step out of line. The country had begun to get the picture by 2010 and began the process of booting the leftists out. Even Edward Kennedy's seat went to the GOP. Ever the totally arrogant leftist, obama pushed on, totally disregarding what the electorate was telling him. He managed to push the thing through Congress by changing rules, making new rules in the middle of the game, and making blatant "trades" with reluctant Democratic Senators to get their vote. One such politician believed it when obama told him there would be no abortion money in the plan. The same guy was about to plunk some money down on this bridge across the Hudson in Brooklyn, N.Y., but, well....
This story is being told again and again in every conservative outpost across the nation, so desperate are many "mainstream" Americans to relieve obama of his duties. But it isn't just conservatives. It's longtime Democrats like myself, who get a sick feeling every time I contemplate the state of my country. It is so hard to believe somebody could be President who says in an election-year speech that America has "never worked."
It has worked for 236 years. In fact, until obama, it kept getting better each year. Faults that were there at the outset have been purged. Sometimes the purging is so painful that it hurts for years. By this, I mean, of course, the embarrassment of slavery and the cure brought about by the Civil War. But what country has been better since the founding of these United States. Immigrants want to come in. Virtually nobody wants to leave. President Reagan put it best when he said we were the shining light for a tired world.
Last week obama decided that the laws passed by Congress and having to do with immigration would be violated by his administration. He and previous presidents have all declined to vigorously enforce these laws. But obama has gone so much further. He has sued states trying to protect themselves by enforcing the Federal Law themselves. Now, he has told Federal INS people not to deport teenage illegal immigrants, but to instead give them a work permit and do whatever else is necessary to allow them to stay. This step with immigration is in keeping with other steps he has taken to circumvent other laws he doesn't like. He created a firestorm when he intimated that he would not abandon his obamacare mess even if it was thrown out by the courts. He has not adhered to federal district and federal appellate decisions to this effect, in contrast to what other presidents have done when a federal court declares a law unconstitutional. In fact, he has continued to order the spending of millions of federal dollars implement obamacare even though it may be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the next weeks. He sees the Presidency as a sort of imperial position, which, to my humble way of thinking, is in keeping with the manner in which he gussies up to third world dictators like Chavez and Castro.
If, heaven-forbid, he gets re-elected, the things he will certainly do will include unilateral nuclear disarmament, virtually open national borders and the removal of any vestige of a "wall" on the southern border. The third certainty is a doubling and tripling of the amount of taxes paid by middle-class Americans. It will be Katie-bar-the door.
In the last six months I've read two books which ended up being wonderful and rewarding. I was glad because it was hard to believe either writer could pull it off.
The two books of which I speak are Danielle Trusonni's "Angelology," and Christina Haag's "Come to the Edge." I had read Trussoni's first book, which her acclaimed personal memoir of growing up with a father who was a Vietnam Vet, individualist and, sadly, alcoholic. I was completely stunned when her second book was a novel based upon some of the most mysterious and least-understood parts of the Bible, the verses in Genesis 6 which speak of the "sons of God" mating with human females and producing offspring, called Nephilim. It would be hard for someone just on the scene to keep her serious credentials while tackling such a subject, which is instantly controversial in today's politically correct secular world. The book opens with a small group of scientists standing around the corpse of an angel. Just to contemplate how such an event would turn our world upside down hooked me right away. But many would be instantly angered that a so-called serious writer with a serious book already to her enduring credit would abandon it to write a novel which, if not pro-Christian in the usual sense, is certainly written with the idea that the Christ of the Bible and the World he created is both alive and doing well. Ms. Trussoni is a fine fine writer and a serious writer, both before and after the publishing of Angelology. Her ability to draw upon what the world knows and thinks it knows about Angels kept me fully attentive throughout the 452 page hardcover edition. Her characters are beautifully developed and seductively real. She draws upon the writings of Boethius, the fifth-century Christian philosopher and martyr, in setting the stage for some of the books most thrilling sections. If I have to confess to a disappointment - and I presume it will only be temporary - it is the fact that the ending is not an ending but, in reality, the beginning of the second book.
Ms. Haag had a similar obstacle to overcome as did Ms. Trussoni. The average reader will doubt that she can write a book on her selected subject without delving into sensationalism and glitter. In the case of Come to the Edge the subject is the writer's long love affair with the late John Kennedy, Jr., the son of the late President. And yet, as many reviewers have concluded, that is exactly what she did. It is boring, I think, to call her book "tasteful," but those who do are trying to say that Ms. Haag gives a poignant and first-hand glimpse at a potentially great man without resorting to "Entertainment Tonight" revelations. What we get is a very real look at two gifted and, admittedly, very-well-off young people making their way in our world and overcoming a tremendous amount of disappointment in the process. obama might learn something from the book: money does not corrupt automatically. Mr. Kennedy and his famous mother deal daily with questions of humility, conceit, and public appearances. They grapple with keeping themselves grounded when the public wants to know your every thought and inclination. Ms. Haag, while not famous to the same degree, nevertheless fights similar battles and maintains dignity and grace throughout. Her battle with breast cancer is told with an honesty and realism that would give assistance to anyone who has or is fighting a similar war.
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