Monday Bird Droppings: The biggest Orioles news is still the Paul McCartney concert

Hello, friends.

You did not miss anything. The baseball lockout continues. The owners of MLB teams could end it any time they wish and they have not done so. The result is that the 2022 season calendar is delayed and no one knows when that will change.

Officially, the league has announced there will be no spring training games until at least March 5. I have a feeling that will not be the last delay issued for 2022 MLB games. I guess we’ll see. The two sides are expected to have daily bargaining sessions starting today, so perhaps that will start to do the trick.

The league has reportedly told the players that the last date for an agreement without a delay to the regular season is February 28. That’s one week from today. The players have reportedly told the league in response that if there are any missed games in the regular season, then the players will not agree to have an expanded playoff schedule for 2022. It seems like an expansion to 12 teams is inevitable; the league is seeking 14 in the bargaining.

In the meantime, the one thing you can currently look forward to at Camden Yards in the coming months is the Paul McCartney concert that the Orioles announced on June 12. After this concert was announced, I put up a poll on Twitter asking whether people thought that McCartney would play at OPACY before any 2022 Orioles games were played there. It went 58-42 in favor of the Orioles playing a game first.

There might be a lot of lockout pessimism out there, but two months of pessimism isn’t the majority, yet. Or maybe the Twitter voters feel differently than you?

June 12 is a long time from now. It would be catastrophic if the league is still locking out the players at that point. This does not mean the league will not pursue that path, but I sure hope it gets figured out by then.

Around the blogO’sphere

Elias waiting for new CBA before detailing spring training plans (School of Roch)
General managers like Mike Elias are stuck with nowhere to go while waiting for the lockout to end. You can only do so much planning for something that you don’t know when it will happen.

Elias discusses Shed Long, free agents, left field changes, and Paul McCartney (Baltimore Baseball)
Whatever happens with the big league spring training, Elias is predicting “a very exciting year, up and down the organization.” I hope he’s right!

John Angelos isn’t ‘here, there, and everywhere,’ but Paul McCartney announcement puts him in the spotlight (The Athletic)
Dan Connolly notes that we haven’t seen any extended public remarks from John Angelos since Elias was introduced as the next GM. “Hire someone good and get out of the way” was a lesson his dad did not learn for a long time, but it seems Connolly has a different take on the “get out of the way” part than me.

It’s been busy during prospect ranking season (Steve Melewski)
Melewski rounds up a few top 100 prospect lists, including the most recently unveiled one at ESPN, where the Orioles had SIX guys listed. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel is already on the Coby Mayo hype train rather than waiting to see what 2022 brings for him.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Of all the players to ever play for the Orioles, only one has ever had a birthday today. Happy 77th birthday to Tom Shopay, a reserve outfielder who was on the O’s in 1971-72 and again from 1975-77. He finished with one home run in 234 Orioles at-bats.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: writer Anais Nin (1903), poet W.H. Auden (1907), philosopher John Rawls (1921), actress Rue McClanahan (1934), civil rights activist John Lewis (1940), actor Alan Rickman (1946), baseball Hall of Famer Alan Trammell (1958), author David Foster Wallace (1962), and movie man Jordan Peele (1979).

On this day in history...

In 1885, the Washington Monument was dedicated, although the interior of the monument didn’t open to the public for another three years. It had been under construction, but not continuously, since 1848.

In 1916, the German Army launched an offensive on French positions near the Meuse River. This launched a nearly ten-month long Battle of Verdun, which eventually ended in French victory with around 300,000 soldiers killed across both sides and a million or more total casualties.

In 1947, New York City saw the first demonstration of the instant Polaroid Land Camera developed by Edwin Land.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on February 21. Have a safe President’s Day.