Thursday Bird Droppings: All baseball eyes turn to the LAD-SFG series finale

Hello, friends.

After a day of no baseball due to neither of the ALDS matchups going the distance to five games, the game we love, if not always like, is back in action tonight. The Giants and Dodgers will settle their series with a decisive fifth game. There’s guaranteed to be at least one game every day between now and Wednesday, and after that it depends on how long the best-of-seven LCS round goes on.

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to muster a lot of excitement for that final game. The context of a 107-win team playing a 106-win team in a best-of-five series that’s gone the distance is interesting, but as for the Giants and Dodgers themselves, I don’t have strong feelings. The Giants last won in 2014, which at that time was their third win in five years, and the Dodgers were the champions just last year. It’s time to let someone else have a turn.

This attitude pretty much leaves me rooting for the Braves by default. The cheating Astros won in 2017. The cheating Red Sox won in 2018. You have to go back to 1995 for a Braves win. That’s 26 years ago now. No, really. They’re the most due of any remaining postseason team - not that “due” matters in any way towards who wins the World Series.

Yesterday did have some non-playoff baseball happening, actually, as it marked the beginning of the Arizona Fall League schedule. The Mesa Solar Sox team that houses the Orioles prospects lost its opener, 5-0, with outfielder Kyle Stowers taking an 0-4 with four strikeouts. Nowhere to go but up from there, right?

One other bit of Orioles-connected news yesterday concerns the health of David Hess:

All the best to Hess as he undergoes treatment. I hope that he can have as quick a recovery as possible.

Around the blogO’sphere

Ryan Mountcastle is a longshot for Rookie of the Year (Baltimore Baseball)
Though there are others on the Birdland media beat who treat it as a given that Ryan Mountcastle should be the AL ROY, Rich Dubroff wants to remind everyone that it’s probably not going to happen. I appreciate him for that.

Fry on struggles, confidence, why Rays had his number, and more (School of Roch)
Jim Palmer was rather pointed about Paul Fry’s decline coinciding with the MLB sticky stuff ban. Not that you would expect Fry himself to agree, but he certainly does not bring that up in his assessment of what went wrong this year.

Adley gives back to hometown kids via camp (Orioles.com)
I never get tired of little stories like this one.

Birdland hopeful that wins start trending up next season (Steve Melewski)
If you really want to get into the wildly optimistic weeds, you can imagine that maybe the 2022 season will bring the first winning month of Orioles baseball since August 2017.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 1969, 1971, and 2014, the Orioles lost postseason games, so let’s not spend any more time thinking about it.

There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2005 two-gamer Midre Cummings, 1986-88 reserve catcher Carl Nichols, 1976-80 infielder Kiko Garcia, and 1976 backup Tommy Harper. Today is Harper’s 81st birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you as well! Your birthday buddies include: early Maryland antagonist William Penn (1644), 34th president Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890), poet e e cummings (1894), political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906), designer Ralph Lauren (1939), Dixie Chicks vocalist Natalie Maines (1974), and singer-songwriter Usher (1978).

On this day in history...

In 1066, William of Normandy’s invading army defeated the English in the Battle of Hastings. The Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, was killed in the battle, after which William conquered the country and became king.

In 1322, a later English king, Edward II, was defeated in the Battle of Old Byland. The Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, forced the English to recognize Scottish independence as a result of the victory, which lasted until the 1707 Acts of Union.

In 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt was shot and wounded prior to delivering a speech. The would-be assassin’s bullet passed through Roosevelt’s glasses case, the folded up 50-page speech, and lodged in his chest. Roosevelt delivered the speech before seeking medical attention; the bullet was never removed.

In 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier by hitting Mach 1 while flying a Bell X-1 test plane at an altitude of 45,000 feet.

In 1962, American recon flights over Cuba took photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles being set up on the island, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on October 14. Have a safe Thursday.