Orioles Victory Card Number 22: That one took awhile

Baltimore Orioles Victory Number 22: 8-4 over the Seattle Mariners

1982 Topps Jim Palmer


It's hard to find any positives in a ten game losing streak. I guess it does free up some of my time as I don't have to sit in front of a computer and write a post about the Orioles winning. Also, it gives readers time to check out the other 21 posts in this series. Let's see...yup, up to dozens of page views on my previous posts. Huh, who knew that most of my traffic came from Twitter? Oh, well, still not enough of a valid reason to go back to that platform.

The Orioles snapped their latest losing streak by staking their starting pitcher (Andrew Cashner) to a big enough lead that even  their struggling bullpen couldn't blow it. They also played some pretty nifty defense along the way highlighted by a Richie Martin play that makes you hope he can hit at least .230 in the majors to justify playing him every day.

To add to the "fun" the Orioles put one of their lone bright spots in the rotation, John Means, on the Injured List and saw our lord and savior Trey Mancini miss a few games after getting hit on the elbow. Luckily for our sanity, Mancini only missed a few games and was back in the line-up for the victory.

Dwight Smith, Jr. was also back following his stint on the Injured List after he was hurt in Texas just as the losing streak was getting underway. In the three games Smith has played since his return the Orioles have scored 8 or more runs in two of them so it's obvious that he is the key to their offense.

While this may be the darkest of timelines for Orioles fans, it looks like the franchise is at least starting to make decisions on players. Joey Rickard was designated for assignment recently and eventually signed by the San Francisco Giants thus ending his tenure with the Orioles. The Dan Straily experiment seems to have ended with his DFA

The Straily signing back in the spring made sense. He was a veteran coming off an injury who could soak up some innings, maybe build a little value and return a fringe prospect in the summer.  That was the plan. The plan didn't work. Straily gave up five runs in 1.1 innings of work in his debut against the New York Yankees and somehow things got worse.

A couple of decent outings got his ERA down to 6.75 by the end of April, but since then it steadily rose regardless of if he was pitching from the bullpen or as a starter. In his last two outings he pitched a total of 3.2 inning and gave up a staggering 7 home runs and 13 earned runs.

The experiment was a failure, but in a year like this not everything is going to work out. There are going to be some successes (Pedro Severino, Hanser Alberto and John Means) and there are going to be some that blow up in the Orioles faces. They are still in the breaking down phase of this rebuild, and it's going to be a while until there are more good days than bad.

The goal of this season is to survive it. Maybe find a couple of diamonds in the rough, but more importantly buy time for the kids on the farm to get better. Hopefully there aren't too many more 10 game losing streaks on the way, in fact a two or three game winning streak may be nice even if it does require me to log into this site on a more frequent basis.

Why the card of Palmer? Well, because it's not too often you hear him get a little choked up like he did last night after some members of the team had a replica 1969 jersey made up and presented to him. Nice gesture from the players to one of the greats.

Two New Cards For the Collection

Last week I mentioned that I didn’t see any personal cards on e-bay that I felt like bidding on. Well that might have been a little white lie, a minor distortion of the truth if you will. I actually had just won a bid, but didn’t have the card in hand.

The card in question is my first relic for the Eddie Murray collection. Here it is:




A 2006 Upper Deck Epic Materials Jersey.

Orioles Uniform – check
Shiny – check
Numbered – check (88/145)
Uniform matches card - err no.

As any Oriole fan knows they’ve never sported pin stripes in their history (orange pin stripes, hmmm, maybe that will bring the winning). If I had to hazard a guess I would say it was from his days as a New York Met. He played two seasons in the Big Apple and hitting 43 home runs and drove in 193 runs. Not too shabby.

Despite the Mets association I still like the card. It was the right price and hey – he rocks the O’s uniform in Cooperstown and that’s the most important!


Card number two was an impulse buy. I was looking for more “Steady Eddie” cards and stumbled across one of his teammates from the good ol’ days (you know when the O’s were the pride of the American League?)




A 2003 Topps Fan Favorite Jim Palmer (1975 Topps design).

I really like the Fan Favorites concept. Topps took alternative photos of iconic players and put them on their most recognizable sets. Let’s compare it to the original card:




The original is definitely from the 70’s, I mean look at those side burns! I’m not sure how the card collecting public would receive this card, what with the dark shadows covering 90% of his face. Jim is also showcasing the best hat in the history of the franchise. Now that they finally put Baltimore back on the road uniforms let us start a campaign to bring back the bird logo!

I didn’t notice it when I bought the card, but the photo used for the Fan Favorite is definitely not from the70’s. Palmer is lacking the side burns and his face is a little bit weathered. He kind of reminds me of Sam Malone in this photo.

Upon further review I’m pretty sure this is from his aborted comeback in 1991. After being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990, “Cakes” showed up for Spring Training the next year. His comeback lasted two innings in which he gave up two runs and five hits (which would probably get him a spot in the bullpen this season).

So two more cards for the ol’ personal collection!