Happy Monday, Camden Chatters! It was not a happy weekend for the Orioles, who limped out of Pittsburgh after being swept. That was after losing two out of three to the Rangers, making them losers of five of their last six. It\u2019s not really how any of us imagined the season starting.<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s game was particularly painful. Chris Bassitt pitched his second clunker in as many tries and exited after six runs allowed in just two innings. He may have stayed in longer if he hadn\u2019t been hit in the leg by a 112 mph line drive, certainly. The offense had eight hits, but just two runs. Poor Samuel Basallo struck out four times. You can get all of the grisly details in Paul Folkemer\u2019s game recap<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Last night, I was reading the comments in the game recap and in the game thread, and it got me thinking about letting a sports team make you totally miserable. Because if you read the comments, it seems that people are miserable and very angry. I get it. I have watched more bad baseball in my life than I have good, and I have been a very invested and very online fan for most of it. It\u2019s so easy to let what happens out there affect your mood.<\/p>\n No doubt many of you remember the 2010 season. Nobody expected the Orioles to be good that year, but also nobody expected them to start the year 2-16. Back in those olden days I was running Camden Chat before the current site manager, Mark, took over. He\u2019s much better at it than I ever was, by the way. Sometimes my game recaps wouldn\u2019t go up until like midnight because I got busy watching reruns of The Golden Girls or something.<\/p>\n I was so deep into the Orioles in 2010 that the 2-16 stretch of baseball made me entirely miserable. I turned on the game every night. I watched Ty Wigginton and C\u00e9sar Izturis and Corey Patterson stink up the basepaths. I watched Kevin Millwood give up a billion runs and Jake Arrieta underperform. I was deep into it. I could tell you everything about those teams. And I hated it. I hated the Orioles. And they weren\u2019t even supposed to be good!<\/p>\n Not long after that 2-16 stretch (maybe around 7-18 or so), I realized I needed to stop being so miserable about the Orioles. Why was I letting myself get angry? What was the point? There had to be something redeeming about being a fan of a bad baseball team. Otherwise, why do it?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I think the answer to what is redeeming is different for everyone. For me, there is community in baseball fandom. Does it suck to watch the Orioles lose and struggle? Of course it does. But we\u2019re all doing it together. Just like we\u2019re all doing it together when the Orioles play well and hit a bunch of dingers and have a lot of fun. Camden Chat has always been a place where the community matters and where people get together during a game to be happy or mad or whatever the situation calls for.<\/p>\n Also, for me, I find some meaning in the players themselves. A lot of internet commenters are quick to call players \u201cgarbage\u201d or ascribe some motivations (or lack thereof) to players, and it makes me uncomfortable. Those people will say they are just being fans, and I guess that is true. But how can you really be a fan of a team if you hate all the players? If you think they are all lazy or arrogant or stupid? When your first instinct is to trash them?<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying I don\u2019t have a lot of emotions about the Orioles. I have never been so high as I was after game two of the 2014 ALDS. I\u2019m dying to feel that again. And I felt incredibly sad about leaving Camden Yards after the 2024 Wild Card series. But I don\u2019t think you get to either of those places by spending six months being aggressive and angry. It\u2019s deeper than that.<\/p>\n I just wrote a lot of words that don\u2019t have much to do with the team the Orioles are fielding right now, so thanks for indulging me. But it does have to do with the nature of being an Orioles fan, and if they truly prompt you to be angry and mean, maybe that\u2019s something to examine. Or if you only want to shout into the void when things are going poorly but don\u2019t want to celebrate when they\u2019re not, why is that?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Anyway. The Orioles start a three-game series with the Chicago White Sox tonight at Guaranteed Rate Field. The starting pitcher is TBD but it\u2019s expected to be a bullpen game kicked off by Albert Su\u00e1rez. Not exactly what we hoped for in game 10 of the season, but here we are.<\/p>\n Links<\/p>\n O\u2019s turn focus to fundamentals & execution amid tough start to \u201926 \u2013 MLB.com<\/a>
Quick question: why weren\u2019t they already focusing on that?<\/p>\n