Lee Lowenfish

I'm must confess that this blog was originally gonna be another embittered rant about the disappointing Orioles who since the early summer of 2024 have been an under-.500 team and perhaps haunted by never winning a game in five tries during playoff action in 2023 and 2024. Last week's trade of switch-hitting catcher Adley Rutschman, 2019's number one overall draft pick, to the arch-division rival Boston Red Sox no less, was a harsh blow to the Oriole faithful who saw Adley's departure as the waving of the 2026 white flag. Pete Alonso dispelled that despicable thought with a two-home run game on Sunday Aug 9 that sparked a rare 10-3 outburst to salvage one game over the current AL Third Wild Card leader Texas Rangers. Still 4 games under .500 and behind Houston, Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland as well as Texas, there is a pulse, however flickering, left in my Birds.  

 

Having not lived in Baltimore since I returned in 1976 to my "home town" of NYC, the Rutschman trade hasn't affected me that deeply.  Adley had become injury-prone, winding up on the Injured List five times in the last two seasons. At the age of only 28, it does look like he is going into an enviable situation in Boston, providing experience to a speedy and talented young team that has rediscovered its offense but has needed a solid receiver.  If Adley finally realizes that he is a line drive hitter and stops swinging for the fences and fretting about his inconsistent "launch angle," he should be a great addition to a Red Sox team that roared from 14 under .500 at the end of June to more than 10 above .500 and the Second Wild Card position behind the Yankees. In the wonderful world of MLB where even the best teams lose at least 60 games a season and the worst ones win at least 60, the lowly Athletics (temporarily in Sacramento) punctured a little of the Bosox bubble by winning this past weekend the Sat and Sun games at Fenway. 

 

I must admit that I have a soft spot for the Tampa Bay Rays who are now loaded with a bevy of ex-Orioles including gritty center fielder Cedric Mullins, closer Bryan Baker, possessor of 35 saves, and Tyler Wells, a multi-purpose reliever who can also spot start. Another recent Oriole discard, veteran RHP Dean Kremer, is slated to pitch for the Minnesota Twins against his former team on Mon Aug 10. The Twins just lost the rubber match in an intense series against the Brewers, but the Brew Crew needed one of the best catches I've ever seen by rookie right fielder Luis Lara who robbed Koby Clemens of a second home run.  Koby, Roger's son who has found a home in Minnesota after not making it in Philly, had tied the game with a two-run shot off wunderkind Jacob Misiorowski who regularly brings 100 mph heat.  "Mis" seems to be pitching-wise beyond his young age - he understands that changing speeds is the key to sustained success.

 

It is barely mid-August and we are only at the top of the stretch with more than 45 games to play. Arizona just won its first regular season series since 2018 over the defending champion LA Dodgers. They needed a gritty 115-pitch 7-inning outing by LHP Eduardo Rodriguez in the Sunday rubber match - it was a resilient team effort after losing an extra-inning heartbreaker on Sat night.  With the Dodgers leading 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th, closer Edwin Diaz, just back from injury, gave up back-to-back triples to tie the game.  But the Snakes couldn't bring in the winning run and Shohei Ohtani broke the tie with a 10th inning single. Unheralded reliever Jack Dreyer got the save for LAD.

 

I do not believe that a three-peat is a shoo-in for LAD.  Age is creeping up on their roster.  Mookie Betts maybe is showing it the most, followed by Max Muncy, and Freddie Freeman a little less. I think Dave Roberts is a great manager because he understands the heartbeats of his players as well as anyone in his profession.  (In the late Scott Miller's marvelous book about managers SKIPPER, Roberts called his job two parts being a baseball man and one part being an emcee.) LAD still features the versatile grinding old pros Tommy Edman and Kike Hernandez, the latter just back from serious injury.They will be forces to reckon with but teams like the Cubs and certainly the Brewers and maybe even the Dbacks, Cardinals, and Phillies could give LAD a run for their money. 

 

I also don't think a lockout that wipes out a big chunk of the 2027 season is inevitable either. But at this point in time, neither the MLB owners nor

the MLBPA leaders feel like negotiating.  So I'm all for enjoying the intense action that will intensify as we approach the climactic days of late September.

As an Oriole fan living in NYC but with a heart still bleeding Orange and Black, I just hope that when the Yankees come into Camden Yards Aug 18-20 and the

Bosox the four days before Labor Day, there are enough Oriole fans in attendance to hold their own against the invading hordes of winnite Yankee and

Red Sox fans.   

 

The big TCM tip of this post is the Marx Brothers marathon including of course Margaret Dumont - it runs from 1030A W Aug 12 through a 245A Th Aug 13 showing of "Go West"

1030A "The Big Store" (1941) haven't seen it in decades.  Recall Tony Martin singing the "Tenement Symphony" and Groucho singing "Sing While

You Sell" with such lyrics as "Sell that birdie with some Verdi"

12N "At the Circus" (1939) with Eve Arden and "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"

130P "Room Service" (1938)

3P "A Day At The Races" (1937)

*5P "A Night At the Opera" (1935) with hilarious Sig Rumann as Gottlieb the impresario who Groucho tangles with.  And Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones.  Never

met Kitty but her advice on the secret to her long active life was a beaut:  "Every morning before my yoga, I look in the mirror and say, 'I forgive you.'"

Watch for the brief "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" scene.

*645P "Horse Feathers" (1932) The college football spoof is memorable 

*8P "Duck Soup" (1933) with Louis Calhern as Sylvania foreign minister tangling with the Fredonians 

915P "My Favorite Duck" cartoon short

930P "Animal Crackers" (1930) from whence cometh Groucho's theme for his 1950s "You Bet Your Life" quiz show, "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" ("the African explorer/did someone call me schnorrer?/Hooray, hooray, hooray!")

1120P Bugs Bunny cartoon

*1130P "Monkey Business" (1933) the last one with the doomed Thelma Todd

*1A "The Cocoanuts" (1929) the first one, fresh from the NY stage

230A "Go West" (1939)

 

One other film of note for sports lovers:

Fri Aug 14 3P "The Fortune Cookie" (1966) Billy Wilder directs Walter Matthau as a cunning lawyer trying to win Jack Lemmon a big legal award for injury

incurred on a football sideline. Some of it filmed at Municipal Stadium, then-home of the Cleveland Browns

 

That's all for now.  Always remember:  Stay Positive Test Negative and Take It Easy But Take It! 

 

 

  

 

 

 

    

Once it became clear that the 2025 Orioles lacked the pitching and any consistency in other aspects of the game, it became inevitable that 31-year-old center fielder

Cedric Mullins would be traded by the July 31 deadline.  After all, he is a free agent after the season and his salaries have gone up through salary arbitration for the past

four seasons and he was likely to want a bigger (but not extravagant) longer free agent contract.  I guess it didn't help when it became known that Mullins recently was voted to the Players Association executive board. The storm clouds for another owners' lockout before the 2027 season are definitely forming.       

 

It is still a sad day for Oriole fandom because the 13th-round draft pick from Campbell University had emerged as a versatile player, quiet team leader, and fan favorite.. In 2021, he hit 30 homers and stole 30 bases on a bad Oriole team. He had the courage earlier to abandon switch-hitting and even accepted demotion to the minors to get his act together as solely a left-handed hitter. In a personal note, he did make a public admission that he was dealing with Crohn's disease but he kept it low key at a time when teammate Trey Mancini was dealing with a life-threatening cancer.  (Mancini played Triple-A ball this year but has no clear route back to majors.) 

 

Mullins used his great speed to become a stolen base threat and an often-spectacular fielder.  The analytics geniuses - who have an algorithm for everything and a limited feel for baseball itself - downgraded Mullins' arm and maybe criticized some of his routes to fly balls, but he sure went out with a bang this past weekend with timely hitting and two spectacular catches as the Orioles narrowly missed a 4-game sweep of the first-place Blue Jays.  

 

Word came just after my ode to Cedric that two more Oriole mainstays, first baseman/outfielder/DH Ryan O'Hearn and first-year-Oriole outfielder Ramon Laureano. had been traded to San Diego.  O'Hearn is a free agent after the season who revived his career in Oriole orange and black and was the team's only representative in the 2025 All-Star Game.  Laureano had a two-year contract and had so many big hits and outfield assists this year that his trade even surprised many analysts.

 

Last night (Wed July 30), we also said goodbye to infielder Ramon Urias, one of GM's Mike Elias' earliest and best pickups as a Cardinal farmhand. He was a Gold Glove winner at third base and could acquit himself well at any infield position.  He had surprising power, too. And at the Thursday deadline, the Tigers picked up RHP Charlie Morton, the 41-year-old curve ball master who rebounded from a terrible start to 2025 to become a reliable starter again.    

 

I haven't even mentioned most of the bullpen has been traded and perhaps the saddest news of all came in late July when closer Felix "The Mountain" Bautista suffered a serious shoulder injury, still not fully diagnosed, that could well keep him out for the rest of the season. The only somewhat good news is that starter Kyle Bradish is pitching in minor league games after missing over a year. (I'm happy to report, too, that Isaac Mattson who came from the Angels in the same trade for the now-retired Dylan Bundy has been working well in the Pittsburgh bullpen and with their closer Dave Bednar now traded to Yankees Mattson might get a shot of that role.)  

 

What shocks the system of this Oriole loyalist for over a half-century is that the Orioles have received no major league ready players but only "prospects," most of whom will likely become "suspects" before too long.  Many of the pitchers seem to be 6' 5" up to 6 8" which likely means they'll take extra time to develop if they ever develop. Attendance was way down in Baltimore for the Toronto series which featured some of the best baseball played by the Orioles all season with O'Hearn and Laureano as well as Mullins contributing mightily.  But the decisions to break up the team and save money were obviously made earlier.     

 

The only two people that mattered in the decision were "President of Baseball Operations" Mike Elias and new owner David Rubenstein who is finding out in his second full year at the helm that it is not easy being held accountable in an industry that operates in the fishbowl of public passion. Maybe Elias and Rubenstein felt lucky that Arizona outbid them for Corbin Burnes last winter and Burnes now is out through next year with Tommy John surgery. Maybe they felt glad that Toronto outbid them for former Oriole Anthony Santander who has been unproductive and now injured for his new team. I'd like to see him contribute in Toronto before too long. Team is doing fine without him

but another big bat never hurts.

 

The trick in baseball management is to keep on trying and be willing to spend if you know the makeup of the player and not just what the new-fangled algorithms tell you.

The 2025 Orioles were obviously a flawed team inundated with injuries - even announcer Ben McDonald fell 35 feet out of a tree while deer hunting! - and hampered by underperforming younger players.  I have always understood that evaluating players is the hardest job in baseball but you always need some veteran stability in a successful organization. 

 

I have no idea where such leadership will be coming from on the Baltimore current roster.  For the rest of the season, as someone who needs to root for someone not simply against a certain historically arrogant team in pinstripes, I'll have a lot of players to root for in different unis: Cedric in Queens, Urias in Houston, venerable Charlie Morton now in the Motor City, and O'Hearn and Laureano in SD where the Padres start August only 3 games behind the EEW (Evil Empire West) Dodgers who were relatively quiet at the trade deadline. 

 

And here's a shout-out to a couple of new baseball names that have entered the MLB universe: WARMING BERNABEL corner infielder for the Rockies who arrived in Colorado when Ryan McMahon was traded to the Yankees and already has two homers, and RYAN GUSTO, pitcher for the Houston Astros.

 

Happy August to all and stay positive, test negative & take it easy but take it.