Not buying it

Lousy pitchers look credible, Surrender Sunday lineup hammers out runs, Twins win 3 of 4, trend or mirage?

Mirage is the answer, because the Baltimore Orioles are a terrible baseball team who should include an in-person visit from the owner offering an apology with every season ticket package.  Then again, anyone who's still buying season tickets to this team after a decade plus of fultility probably deserves what they get.  I get being a loyal fan and all that, but you're officially released from your obligation to follow a team under the Sterling-McHale Corollary after this many poor campaigns.

At this point opposing teams should be forced to play the O's with 8 guys on defense like an undermanned softball squad, just to make it interesting.  The Twins record on the weekend should be stated as 0-1-3, for Wins-Losses-Showing Up; because that's all it takes really.  On the positive side, Ty Wigginton officially made the list of guys who can play for my team any time when he flipped out over a close call at first base and needed to be restrained.  Your teammates, manager, fans, ownership and God himself have obviously quit on you, but you're still out there raging against the dying of the light.  That takes heart.  Or psychosis.  But that's a fine line anyway. 

Other thoughts that ran through my mind while watching his head turn red and veins bulge out while he was screaming:

The Steroid Era might not be totally over. 

If replay isn't going to happen, they should allow a team one open-handed slap to the face of any ump who blows a call.  Don't hurt the guy, just up his incentive next time around and get a measure of revenge for what he just did to you.  In fact let's let the bat boys do it, remove the risk of injury to a player while keeping the ump safe from serious harm.  Of course it would probably only be a matter of time before MLB had to start testing the bat boys.  Maybe this idea needs some work.

The Orioles suck, they suck totally and completely.

In fact they suck so much, I was hard pressed to come up with a list of things that suck more, in order from least to greatest:

Weak coffee
Newspaper getting completely soaked on a rainy morning
The last week of July when you're dying for NFL training camp to start
STDs (Non-permanent)
Not getting any
Any beer with fewer than 100 calories per can/bottle
The Versus-DirecTV schism
Testicular mutilation
WNBA games
STDs (Permanent)
The music of Maroon 5
Tarvaris Jackson

That's it, the entire list.  Kind of puts it in perspective, eh?

And yes, I wanted to include Scott Baker on that list, but he pulled himself together and shut down the Orioles over the weekend, he must've drawn inspiration from reading the blog.