Orioles Offense Again Quiet in 4-2 Loss
Channeling 'Major League,' the Orioles Snuff Out a Losing Streak
Burning sage, a few homers off Shohei Ohtani and an 8th-inning rally were all it took to end Baltimore's losing streak at 19 games. Wait out, A.L. East: They've won two in a row.
Sitting in his office at Camden Yards ahead of Wednesday's game, Brandon Hyde, the director of the Baltimore Orioles, smelled something unusual. Over the by three weeks Hyde had been consumed with ending his team's ignominious losing streak, which had reached 19 games.
So Hyde hopped upward and stepped into the hallway connecting his part to the players' clubhouse. There he ran into first baseman Trey Mancini, 29, the longest tenured Oriole.
"Are we smoking some different type of cigarettes?" Hyde said. "What's happening in our clubhouse?"
His players weren't smoking cigarettes or annihilation stronger than that. They were burning sage, and parading information technology through the clubhouse, the dugout and the field in hopes of, as Mancini put it, switching up the mojo.
"It smelled kind of weird," heart fielder Cedric Mullins, the Orioles' solitary All-Star this year, said in a postgame video conference with reporters. "But the sage kicked in."
It certainly did, as the Orioles, the worst team in baseball game (38-86 entering Wed'due south game), finally ended their misfortune. Non only did they boom three home runs off the Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani, the forepart-runner for the American League Near Valuable Actor Award, only they mounted a stirring comeback. At one signal abaft by six-ii, the Orioles scored five runs in the eighth inning on the style to a x-6 victory that felt similar so much more.
"Information technology'southward electric in there," Mullins, 26, said of the scene in the clubhouse later on the victory. "I know information technology looked like the big ii-0 today," he added later, referring to the possibility of a 20th straight loss, "but nosotros fought back."
The Orioles oasis't had much to gloat this season — or really over the last several years. Their concluding winning flavor was in 2016. They are on a pace to lose 111 games, and may become the kickoff team since the expansion Mets in the 1960s to lose at least 108 games in three consecutive nonabbreviated seasons. They are deep into a total rebuild that withal feels years away from netting a contender.
The players and coaches on the team know that, but that doesn't make 19 consecutive defeats, many in lopsided fashion, whatever easier to stomach.
"We're tired of hearing it and tired of seeing it on Idiot box," Hyde said. "Everybody is tired of it."
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So a few days ago, Mancini said he and his teammates vowed to find something, anything, that could help change their free energy. Bearded all flavour, Mullins had recently shaved. Mancini tried a variation of that tactic: He got rid of everything except his mustache, which his girlfriend doesn't similar and he hates.
"It was kind of a form of cocky-punishment, just also trying to continue things a petty lighter," Mancini said. "I told all the guys that I was going to shave information technology off whenever we won."
It was catcher Austin Wynns, 30, who came up with the thought of burning sage, which is used equally a cleansing ritual in some cultures. So, co-ordinate to Mancini, Wynns bought some online and had it shipped overnight. They lit it on Wednesday afternoon.
"I thought information technology was like a Pedro Cerrano movement out of 'Major League,'" pitcher Chris Ellis said, referring to the superstitious slugger in the 1989 comedy moving-picture show. "Information technology was pretty funny. I was merely sitting at my locker but going over the lineup for the mean solar day and I saw Trey Mancini walking through there with a bunch of sage and everybody was getting a whiff of it."
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Mancini said he and Wynns "walked around the ballpark and simply saged everything nosotros possibly could." He added: "Nosotros took a adept xv minutes to just walk around and fabricated sure that nosotros took our fourth dimension and did it right. And yeah, it worked."
At first, it didn't seem equally though it had. Right fielder Anthony Santander and Mullins smashed solo domicile runs off Ohtani in the outset inning, but Baltimore's porous pitching staff coughed up the lead and the Orioles trailed, 6-2, in the fourth.
The Orioles chipped away, however, with two runs in the lesser of the quaternary and another in the seventh. Along the way, the Orioles became the only team to hit multiple home runs off Ohtani in a game this season.
Down past vi-five in the eighth inning, the Orioles scored five times against the Angels' bullpen. Ramon Urias walked with the bases loaded to tie the score, half dozen-6, and Kelvin Gutierrez did the same to send in the become-ahead run. Austin Hays delivered a 2-run double that put the Orioles comfortably ahead.
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"It felt similar postseason force per unit area. I've never experienced a middle-of-August game with a couple teams that aren't in the postseason hunt with so much," Hyde said, his vocalization trailing off as he tried to observe the right words. "There was tension in our dugout."
A off-white number of the fifteen,867 people in omnipresence remained and cheered, happy to meet their lowly team's losing come to an finish for at least one night. "NOBODY BEATS THE ORIOLES 20 TIMES IN A ROW!!! NOBODY!!!" a fan at Camden Yards wrote on Twitter. (Of grade, in reality, the Orioles lost a franchise-record 21 straight games in 1988.)
After the terminal out, the Orioles celebrated for the first time since Aug. ii. In the clubhouse, Mancini kept his word and buzzed off his mustache. Hyde said the loud postgame locker room was full of people who were excited and relieved. "It's good to hear our guys feel good most a game they but played," he said.
As far equally the burning plant that set up the stage for the win, Hyde admitted he actually liked its scent. He added, "Sage tomorrow?"
Whatever they did, it worked. The Orioles' offense exploded on Th afternoon, beating the Angels, 13-ane, and giving Baltimore something it couldn't have dreamed of ii days ago: a winning streak.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/sports/baseball/baltimore-orioles-losing-streak.html
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