Monday Bird Droppings: Orioles spring camp may empty out soon after all

Hello, friends.

There is nothing to count down to today because no one really knows when there will be baseball, or any other sort of organized activity at which you might find a crowd, again. Although officially the start of the season is only delayed by two weeks, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich reported that it’s more likely the season will not begin until May at the very earliest.

As of today, there won’t even be any sort of organized workouts among players who’ve chosen to remain at their spring training camps. According to MASN’s Roch Kubatko over the weekend, most of the Orioles had chosen to remain. Maybe that plan will change now if the postponement of the season is to extend and players won’t even get group workouts to keep some sense of normalcy among them.

The lack of normalcy will be hitting everybody - or at least, hopefully it will; the weekend’s stories about some people going out and packing bars were mighty discouraging. One thing that’s always been great about baseball, to me anyway, is it’s there with you every night for six months.

Sometimes when your favorite team is bad, that feels more like a curse than a blessing, as it did for Orioles fans over the last couple of years when the team lost 115 games two years ago and then a lot of front office people lost their jobs, and then they lost 108 games as part of a long-term rebuilding plan. I’d take another 115 Orioles losses or more to spare the world going through what it’s going through right now.

If you didn’t see it over the weekend, Trey Mancini shared a message with fans as he begins on his road to a hopeful recovery from having a malignant tumor removed:

It was nice to hear from him after what he’s had to go through lately. I’d like to echo his message: Stay safe and healthy out there.

Around the blogO’sphere

Coronavirus postponing baseball season hasn’t ended Roch Kubatko’s daily streak of posting at least one article - yet.

Latest on Orioles’ spring fleeing and roster decisions (School of Roch)
I salute him for even trying to bring up roster decisions at a time like this. He runs down where things stand whenever teams get back to the business of trimming the roster for some kind of baseball season.

Elias: Orioles going to ‘say on high alert’ (Orioles.com)
One thing about all of the coronavirus business is that things are changing rapidly, so who knows how long the state of affairs from when Elias talked to the media on Friday will last.

Compensating ballpark workers for lost time among Orioles’ considerations amid coronavirus delay (Baltimore Sun)
This would simply be the right thing to do, so I hope that the Orioles organization is able to work it out.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 1953, American League owners rejected an attempt by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck to move the team to Baltimore.

There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 1962-63 catcher Hobie Landrith, and 1954/60-61 catcher Clint Courtney. Today is Landrith’s 90th birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Constitution drafter and 4th president James Madison (1751), MRI inventor Raymond Vahan Dahamian (1936), former Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome (1956), journalist Jorge Ramos (1958), rapper Flavor Flav (1959), and comic and toy man Todd McFarlane (1961).

On this day in history...

In 1812, British and Portuguese forces began a siege of the French-held fortress of Badajoz in Spain. When the garrison was stormed three weeks later, the Allied forces had an open route to take the Peninsular War against Napoleon into Spanish territory.

In 1916, two regiments of cavalry led by John Pershing crossed the border into Mexico to hunt for Pancho Villa. The force did not locate Villa before the US joined World War I and Pershing was recalled to lead the American forces in Europe.

In 1958, the 50 millionth vehicle rolled off a Ford production line - a Thunderbird. The Ford company had averaged nearly a million vehicles made per year since its founding.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, an American infantry company killed 347 civilians in the My Lai Massacre. This did not become widespread public knowledge for more than a year. The only man found guilty from this massacre, platoon leader William Calley, served one day of a life sentence in prison before an order by President Nixon moved him to house arrest, from which he was paroled after about three and a half years.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on March 15. Have a safe Monday.