CHARM CITY:With the unveiling of a statue honoring Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. and the Yankees in town,
CHARM CITY: With the unveiling of a statue honoring Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. and the Yankees in town, Baltimore fans had something to get excited about in September for the first time in years. (Getty; AP)
BALTIMORE — Maybe this is as good as it gets for this proud old baseball town, and for the 46,298 who crammed their way into Camden Yards last night. For weeks, the Orioles have been busily shaving games off the Yankees’ lead in the AL East, playing a brand of baseball quite familiar to Yankees fans with memories that reach back before 1996, doing most of that work in front of friends and family only.
“We’ve had a lot of ground to cover,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. “And we still have some left ahead of us.”
He was referring to this suddenly splendid race in the AL East, yes, but also to the credibility gap he inherited two years ago. The Orioles used to sell every seat here, used to draw 3 1/2 million fans from a city whose population is barely 600,000, and they squandered so much of that good will.
For a night, though, it was 1996 again, and not only because Cal Ripken Jr. was in the house, honored with a statue in the center-field picnic area and with standing ovations whenever his face flashed on the scoreboard. Yes: most of those 46,298 were here because of him, many wearing tattered old Ripken jerseys, orange faded to salmon thanks to the years.
But Ripken himself, an Orioles fan from birth, implored them to remember that if he was the reason they came last night, they now have an ever better reason to return.
“Being an Oriole,” Ripken said, “is about playing meaningful games in September.”
Then they played one, and they brought the people along for a death-defying joyride, racing to a 6-1 lead before watching the Yankees tie it at 6-6 in the top of the eighth … before watching Adam Jones, Mark Reynolds and Chris Davis crack homers in the bottom half to fuel a 10-6 victory that elbowed the Orioles back into a flat-footed tie with the Yankees.
“Biggest hit I ever had in my life,” Jones said of his tie-breaking homer that allowed Orioles fans to understand within the space of 10 minutes just how schizophrenic pennant-race baseball can be, how it can hit you in the jaw with a jackhammer and lift you to the stars all within the same breath.
Maybe this is the high-water mark for the Orioles, because without Cal Ripken Night on the schedule it’s likely Camden Yards will revert to its decade-long status as a Yankee Stadium satellite campus tonight. Maybe this is as good as it gets for the local nine, who have seen their territory shrink this year, a lot of border-state fans defecting to the Nationals, the regional sure thing as this baseball summer draws to a climax.
Maybe the Yankees will grind their way out of their months-long funk once Mark Teixeira returns to the lineup. The only two games the Yankees have won in the last eight have been gifts from the Orioles and Rays, and the Yankees ought to be better than having to rely on the kindness of strangers to muddle through. Maybe that starts to turn around tonight.
Or maybe not. At some point, the 1969 Mets stopped being a cute team and started being a dangerous one; same with the worst-to-first Twins of 1991, and the Rays of 2008, and last year’s Cardinals. Same with any of the teams who have tumbled out of the baseball sky across the years, some of them one-hit wonders, some more than that.
“I hope the fans liked what they saw,” Reynolds said.
Showalter said: “I remember coming here in the other dugout, how tough it was, the emotion that was in the air on every pitch.”
We’ll see. Before the game, in the cheek-by-jowl madness of the Eutaw Street concourse, four friends were chatting excitedly about their club as they rode the slow line toward Boog Powell’s barbecue pit.
“This is beautiful, isn’t it?” one Ripken jersey said to another Ripken jersey.
“Magnificent,” a third Ripken jersey answered.
“This,” said the rebel of the crew, wearing a Nick Markakis jersey, “is what it’s supposed to be about.”
For a night, it surely was. For a night, it almost felt, and sounded, like a fair fight atop the American League East.