No Disguising Their Effort

BALTIMORE The Boston Red Sox' team bus didn't break down. The umpires arrived on time. And it didn't rain. So, the Orioles had to play again last night. Who says there's no crying in baseball?

After being clubbed, 17-2, on Wednesday in Tampa Bay by the worst team in baseball, the Orioles returned to Camden Yards in disguise last night, no doubt hoping that Boston, the best team (.603) in the game, would not notice that the club in the '32 Baltimore Black Sox replica uniforms was actually the same Oriole flock that's been mauled 149-66 in its previous 15 games. After all, when you've given up more runs in a fortnight than any team in history -- losing by 30-3, 11-3, 15-8 and 10-0 (while being no-hit), as well as that 17-2 drubbing, why advertise your true identity?

The baggy uniforms, with no mention anywhere of the word "Baltimore" or "Orioles," probably were a wise ruse. If ever a team needs to forget itself, erase the memory of its recent past and simply approach the game with bemused disregard, it is this mortified $96 million bunch. However, the old Baltimore Black Sox were a first-place bunch. Laymon Yokely and Crush Holloway never suffered indignities, between the white lines, like these Orioles.

Even playing semi-incognito didn't help as the Orioles lost again, 7-6, performing like a team in full brain-cramp mode -- trying too hard while appearing not to try at all.

In the third inning, rookie Garrett Olson allowed a Red Sox runner, trapped halfway home on a tapper back to the mound, to score easily when he inexplicably tossed to first base as Manager Dave Trembley held his head in disbelief. "It looked like he panicked," Trembley said. "He looked right at the runner and didn't see him."

When the O's had their main chance, with the bases loaded and no outs in a 6-6 game in the sixth, Miguel Tejada grounded into a 5-2-3 double play and Kevin Millar fanned. So the Red Sox got something from nothing, the Orioles got nothing from something and the Orioles swallowed their 14th loss in 16 games. To complete the contrast, Boston is so loaded that it bypassed rookie Clay Buchholz, who no-hit the Orioles five days earlier, as a starter, yet used him in relief. And he got the win.

Only a sadist could enjoy what has happening to the Orioles since the day Trembley, who managed for 20 years in the minors, was elevated from interim to full-time manager on Aug. 22 with a contract for '08. At lunchtime that day, he was the happiest man you've ever seen, saying: "This is above anything I ever could hope, wish or dream for. . . . Finally, what you worked your whole life for."

By dinnertime, he was in misery, watching his team allow the most runs in a game since '97 -- 1897. By midnight, both games of a doubleheader had been lost, the Orioles were a stock joke on national TV and a nine-game losing streak had begun. The Orioles' problem in their 30-3 loss, comedian Jay Leno said, was that after they took a 3-0 lead, "they got out the 'Mission Accomplished' sign." What is remarkable, though barely noted, is that the Orioles have continued to play hard throughout this disaster. Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, maybe because so many Baltimore seasons in the last 10 years have ended with teams quitting on the manager, I've watched this slump closely. Since '97, Baltimore has had 10 straight losing August records and only two winning marks in September. The disgraceful '02 team completely quit and ended the season 4-32. This train wreck has been different.

Orioles veterans have been distraught both in the dugout and in their post-rout comments. It could be faked. But, far more likely, players are ashamed that, after getting one first-rate gentleman fired this season (Sam Perlozzo), they are torturing a man who has paid as many low minors and winter ball dues as any manager in the game.

The primary source of the Orioles' misery has been a devastated pitching staff. The injuries to starters -- Kris Benson, Adam Loewen and Jaret Wright -- started in spring and have continued with ace Erik Bedard currently sidelined. The bullpen has been a snake's nest of expensive incompetence all season, with the seventh and eighth innings pure poison. Now, the Orioles have three rookies in their "rotation," as well as 14-game loser Daniel Cabrera and his 5.06 ERA.

However, the team's desire to compensate for these failings has incapacitated them at crucial times. "For the most part, the players have been very strong mentally," Trembley said. "But for goodness' sakes, your focus has got to be somewhere else in some of those games."

Sympathy for Trembley has been so widespread that it actually bothers him. Owner Peter Angelos, who'd never met Trembley until last week, invited him to the office to say, "Dave, don't look so dejected." That was appreciated and needed, Trembley said. He also was moved to find, on returning to Orioles Park, his mailbox and e-mail jammed with supportive messages. "I've had calls from managers" in both leagues, he said. "It has been a tough stretch. But nobody should feel sorry for me."

Nonetheless, the weight of such a gargantuan slump even surprises a lifer like Trembley. "Going to the supermarket or stopping where I get a cup of coffee, that isn't easy," said Trembley, standing by the batting cage. "It isn't easy for my guys. Put yourself in their shoes. People talk about 'they make millions.' It isn't about that. Everybody has a sense of integrity and pride about how they play the game. For us, those two things have been tarnished.

"Sometimes they try too hard. You can't play the game by putting your foot all the way to the floorboards," he said. "I told [rookie pitcher] Jeremy Guthrie: 'You looked like you were trying to win all eight games we just lost. I appreciate that you'd try to do that for us. But just be yourself. That's enough.' "

Yet nothing is harder to give than what baseball demands -- something just slightly less than your very best effort. The game demands both relaxation and concentration. Too much of either is toxic. Slumps blow the proper mixture sky high.

"It's times like this, with adversity, you're backed up against the wall, that you find out who's real and phony," said Trembley, whose undermanned team faces a brutal schedule that includes three more games each with the Red Sox and Angels and six with the Yankees. "These guys are giving all they have. I don't see anybody hiding."

As the Orioles head toward their 10th straight losing season, some Baltimore fans, who have had a bitter beef with Angelos for so long, may watch this consummate Oriole debacle and feel a bit of what Mark Twain expressed when he said, "I did not attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."