To Hell With the O's

Derek Zumsteg

I used to hate Oakland - a team that featured Jose Canseco taking money from kids in the stands and pushing his own 1-900 number ("I'm striking out now...") along with a supporting cast of equally annoying winners (who beat my Giants). I recently gave that up. Despite myself, I find I'm cheering for A.J. Hinch and Ben Grieve, products of an organization that believes in many of the same things I believe (control the strike zone, take walks). Now I hate the Orioles. I despise them all. Peter Angelos and Pat Gillick have hand-picked a team just to annoy me.

I once respected Angelos, back in 1994 when he said he would forfeit every game rather than field replacement players. Maybe he was being greedy in protecting Ripken's streak, but there must have been enormous pressure on him, and he stood up. But now he uses his beautiful ballpark to spend outrageous amounts of money on players who should have hung up the cleats years ago, like Joe Carter.

I hate Joe Carter. I hate his reputation as a clutch hitter, despite obvious evidence that he's no better with runners on than any other time (that is, he stinks). He's an out machine, in his best years an average hitter lucky enough to have an RBI reputation, and therefore to always bat third or fourth to maintain it (thank you, Cito Gaston).

I hate Rafael Pamiero. I hate his whiny ways. I hate that he's considered interchangeable with Will Clark, who is clearly a superior player. I hate Robbie Alomar, who has a fearsome defensive reputation he hasn't deserved for years.

I despise Mike Bordick, another reputation player who would have difficulty fielding a well-hit beach ball, and couldn't hit one in a pepper game. And yet he's paid $3M, which could buy you a good shortstop like Kevin Elster. I hate the replacement-level Cal Ripken, colossally undeserving of his reputation. He stinks. He's solid defensively, but so's every other major league third baseman. But because of the streak, he never sits. That lead bat of his is in the lineup every day.

In 1989, Cal hit .257, his OBP was a terrible .317, and he slugged a laughable .417 (on the other hand, that'd be a good year for Joe Carter). Nearly any shorstop in AAA could have done that, but Cal never sat. In his career year of 1991 he was just good. Now, don't get me wrong, Cal seems like a great guy, we all love him, and all, but there's no way he should have been out there every day.

Lou Gehrig deserved his streak. In the last full year he played, his offensive worth measured by his OBP and his SLG were 33% above an average first baseman, and only in his first year was he below that (127%). In all other years he was at least 154% above average (which is awesome), reaching 213% once, and three times he was the most valuable offensive player in the game. In Cal Ripken's best season, he was 164% of a normal shortstop (1991), but for his career he's barely above average. His streak is the product of hype and reputation, not of ability. Now that he's at third base he's far below average for his position.

And he should have stopped when he tied, shown the ultimate respect for one of the greatest players ever, one who fought debilitating illness to excel. It would have been one of the greatest, most powerful gestures ever made in all of baseball, and in keeping with his career of putting the Streak over his team, he passed the opportunity by.

I kind of like Hoiles and Mussina, so I'll skip over them quickly. Surhoff and Hammonds, despite being slightly below average, aren't given much playing time over the rest of the truly sucky outfield, redeemed only by Brady Anderson, who once had his body inhabited by an alien but is now still one of the top center fielders in the game.

And to round out their roster of scrubs, the Orioles signed the three major leaguers I would least like to have on my team: Ozzie Guillen, Norm Charlton, and Doug Drabek, all of whom should be run out of the game by angry fans with torches and pitchforks. In Baltimore, they're given juicy contracts.

I hate them all, more than I hate the Yankees, who I work on hating. The Yankees are paid killers, with a Mafica cash roll that allows them to screw up all they want and buy their way out of the hole. They make blind transactions - trade for Chuck Knoblauch to replace Luis Sojo, then pick up the terrible Scott "Atrocious" Brosious to play third, stick it to Jeter-Rivera and then throw $6M at another Cuban gamble, and yet they're adored by the East Coast media.

But the Yankees are just annoying. The Orioles are despicable, a team assembled by Peter Gammons and the East Coast hype machine of lazy reputation-based journalism and paid for with money generated by the East Coast hype machine TV dollars. If the Orioles get lucky, especially if they get lucky on the scale the Giants got lucky last year, they'll set rational baseball thought back a year, and that would be even more tragic than the kind of players who find their paychecks on the well-manicured grounds of Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

When Derek Zumsteg isn't making Joe Carter fans cry, he's a sushi chef at Sushi 'N' Garlic, where we suspect they still need to tweak the menu a bit. Offer recipes to dmz@strikethree.com.