Christmas Bird Droppings: 108 lumps of coal in the Orioles stocking

Hello, friends.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Hanukkah to those celebrating a holiday today. To those who are celebrating neither, a pleasant Wednesday to you, and may you get to enjoy a bit of relaxation along with something that you find fun.

This Christmas Day marks 92 days to go in the countdown to Orioles Opening Day 2020. It’s been a couple of weeks now that we’ve been at a smaller number of days than the number of games the 2019 Orioles lost. I think it is fairly safe to say that the 2020 Orioles are going to lose more than 92 games.

Did Santa Bird leave any O’s-related gifts under your tree? Feel free to tell us down in the comments. It’s probably not a good time to receive a player’s jersey as a gift, but there is always... I don’t know, the pet calendar? Chris Davis is in the “we’re putting a couple of months of the previous year on this calendar” portion, but does not appear on a 2020 month. So that makes it official, he’s lost a current year calendar spot before losing a roster spot.

Around the blogO’sphere

Hess hopes copying Means’s offseason leads to similar results (School of Roch)
Christmas is no cause for Roch Kubatko’s streak of days with at least one post to be broken. And hey, good luck to David Hess. What John Means did worked out well for Means.

Orioles past and present give back for holidays (Orioles.com)
Some individual players have charitable initiatives in the works around the holidays. Good for all of them.

As 2019’s worst teams make improvements, Orioles bounding toward a rough 2020 (Baltimore Sun)
Yeah. Merry Christmas.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

A few past Orioles were born on Christmas Day. They are: 1985-86 reserve infielder Tom O’Malley, 1956-58 pitcher Charlie Beamon, and 1954 reliever Mike Blyzka.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: physicist Isaac Newton (1642), American Red Cross founder Clara Barton (1821), Chevrolet co-founder Louis Chevrolet (1878), early jazz trombone legend Kid Ory (1886), actor Humphrey Bogart (1899), The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling (1924), musician Jimmy Buffett (1946), actress Sissy Spacek (1949), musician Annie Lennox (1954), Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson (1958), and current Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (1971).

On this day in history...

In 336, the first documented Christmas celebration took place in Rome.

In 1000, the Kingdom of Hungary was founded, with Stephen I serving as its first king. 66 years later, William the Conqueror took the opportunity of Christmas to be coronated as King William of England, and 100 years after Stephen, Baldwin of Boulougne was crowned the first King of Jerusalem.

In 1758, astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch spotted the returning Halley’s Comet. Halley, who died in 1742, had predicted the comet’s 1759 return in a 1705 treatise. This was the first arrival of a comet whose passage was accurately predicted beforehand.

In 1776, George Washington led the Continental Army across the Delaware River ahead of the next day’s surprise attack in the Battle of Trenton.

In 1950, some Scottish students stole the Stone of Scone, the traditional coronation stone for British kings and queens, from Westminster Abbey. Though it was recovered the next year, the stone has stayed in Scotland since 1996.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on Christmas Day. It’ll probably stay that way. Have a safe Christmas!