By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/08/22/6555baltimurder-remembered/
Ten years ago today, the Texas Rangers and the Baltimore Orioles played a game in Camden Yards. It
was more like police brutality—the final score was the Rangers 30, the Orioles 3. Even the Rangers
couldn’t believe what they’d just accomplished no matter how badly either team’s seasons were going
at the time.
I wrote this essay the following day for a journal that no longer exists; I republish it here on the sad
anniversary of the game about which Rangers reliever Wes Littleton—who got credited for a save
despite protecting a 24-run lead, because he pitched the final three innings of the massacre—now
remembers, “I got a lot of crap the next day. ‘Nice save, Wes.’ ‘Easiest save in the world’.”
And it didn’t do the Rangers all that much good—they finished the season on a 19-17 run and dead
last in the American League West. But here’s what I wrote the day after . . .--------------------------------------------
BaltimurderIn the newspaper world, of which I am a lapsed citizen, the number thirty is the traditional code that
ends a perfect piece of copy. In baseball world as we knew it Wednesday night, thirty is the number
that represents the worst night of human rights violations in the long enough and, once upon a time,
glorious enough history of baseball in Baltimore.
If that city has seen any crime wave equal to Wednesday night’s mass murder in Camden Yards, I’m
willing to bet the the newspaper morgues (no pun intended) and the police records don’t show it.
You’d have thought the Texas Rangers took it personally that Daniel Cabrera opened the proceedings
with three shutout innings, while the Orioles jumped Kason Gabbard for a swift first-inning run (a
leadoff double by Brian Roberts, a prompt RBI single by Corey Patterson) and a two-out, two-run third
(an RBI ground rule double by Nick Markakis, a followup RBI single by Miguel Tejada).
Because the Rangers brought their guns to bear in the fourth. Specifically, Jarrod Saltalamacchia
with a two-run single and Ramon Vasquez with a three-run bomb. And the Orioles managed nothing
but an uncashed leadoff bunt single in their half, and a likewise uncashed one-out single in the fifth,
before the Rangers fired again in the sixth.
It made the Texas fourth resemble target practise. And it only began with Saltalamacchia ripping
one over the left center field fence to roust Cabrera out of the game. Then, the Rangers shot the
Oriole bullpen full of holes. The line for Brian Burres: single, wild pitch, walk, force at third, and
single, Marlon Byrd going salami into the left field seats, strikeout, and five straight singles for
three more runs. Enter Rob Bell, up the pipe went another RBI single (Ian Kinsler), and it must
have seemed as though Michael Young had taken pity on the home team by flying out to right
to end it.
Gabbard in turn may have been merciful in his way when he walked Tejada to open the Oriole
sixth and threw out Kevin Millar at first to let Tejada have second before wild pitching him to
third. Then it was strikeout and ground out, and the Rangers cut them a break by going three
up, three down in the top of the seventh, but the Orioles returned the favour against Wes
Littleton in the bottom.
That’d teach them. The Orioles made three defensive switches for the top of the eighth (Tike
Redman to center, Freddie Bynum to left, and Jay Payton to right). And the Rangers had three
baserunners to open (single, two walks) before Frank Catalanotto and Kinsler rapped back-to-
back RBI singles keeping the bases loaded. And Travis Metcalf, fresh up from Oklahoma [AAA],
in the game at third, and batting in Young’s lineup slot, hit one into the left field seats, before
Byrd’s followup walk put Bell out of his misery at last.
The good news for Paul Shuey—the veteran and former Los Angeles Dodger setup sentinel,
who’d come out of retirement earlier this year—was that he punched out the side. All looking.
The bad news was that between punchouts one and two came Nelson Cruz doubling Byrd to
third, David Murphy singling Byrd home, and Saltalamacchia hitting another bomb, this one
over the right center field fence.
And that was a mere warmup for the punishment rained onto the veteran in the top of the
ninth. Shuey’s inning only began with the bases loaded and nobody out. (Back-to-back walks,
base hit.) It continued with Botts doubling home Kinsler and Metcalf and, after Cruz’s swishout,
Murphy singling Byrd home once again. This time, Saltalamacchia swished out but Vasquez
hit his second three-run bomb of the night.
Five in the fourth, nine in the sixth, ten in the eighth, six in the ninth. It got to the point where
the home audience practically demanded curtain calls any time the Orioles got the Rangers out.
(Littleton got a save?!? What the hell was he saving?)
Never before, even in the worst of times, have the Orioles been disemboweled like this.
Not in their maiden Baltimore season, when they merely picked up where they’d left off as the
St. Louis Browns the season before, going 54-100, with the worst beating they’d suffered on
the year a 14-3 flogging from Bob Feller and the Cleveland Indians in game one of a double-
header.
Not in the following season, when they’d finished seventh once again, with three less losses, and
the worst beating they took was a 20-6 tattooing, in game two of a doubleheader, by the New
York Yankees, who went 20-20 on the day (twenty runs, twenty hits) and whose oft-wild starter
Tommy Byrne could have let the Orioles fungo and gotten away with it for the most part.
Not in 1956, in which the worst beating they took was a 12-0 thrashing from the Chicago White
Sox, on a day they couldn’t solve Dick Donovan with a code breaker and a book of Cliff Notes.
Not in their first season at .500 in Baltimore, 1957, in which their worst beating was a 16-5
smackdown by the Boston Red Sox—on a day Ted Williams wasn’t in the lineup but Jimmy Piersall
was, going 4-for-6 including a two-run bomb off that legendary relief ace Bill (The Isle of) Wight.
Not in 1988, during the absolute depths of that season-opening 21-game losing streak, which
began with a 12-0 rout by the Milwaukee Brewers—on a day no individual Brewer drove in more
than two, and Paul Molitor and Robin Yount went 1-for-4 each—and continued with, among others,
losses of 12-1 (to Tom Candiotti and the Indians) and 13-1 (to Mark Gubicza and the Kansas City
Royals, with Bo Jackson and Jim Eisenreich driving in three each).
Not even in 1996 when the Rangers opened a 26-7 can against them, and the Rangers needed
(read carefully) a sixteen-run eighth inning against Armando Benitez, Jesse Orosco, and Manny
Alexander to do it after building a 10-7 lead. And those Orioles ended up in the American League
Championship Series, only to watch Jeffrey Maier win the series MVP.
And the Orioles picked just about the worst time, or the most embarrassing time, at least, to allow
this kind of Baltimurder. The contract extension removing “interim” from Dave Trembley’s job title
the night before probably hadn’t reached the commissioner’s office before the Rangers began firing.
If there’s a more humiliating way to congratulate the boss on his official initiation, it doesn’t exist
in the Oriole archive.
“Finally, what you’ve worked your whole life for happened,” said Trembley Wednesday afternoon.
Before the game.
“I’d say whatever we threw, they hit it. It’s that simple. They say hitting is contagious, and that
certainly was the case in the first game. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said Wednesday night.
After the evening’s doubleheader. (It was precipitated by a Monday rainout; the Orioles lost the
second game by a mere 9-7).
Was there anything the Orioles could have taken from the game, or the night, that was good for
even a modest smile?
Well, they have bragging rights on the Rangers. The Rangers accounted for one more run than hit
while committing Baltimurder. The Orioles actually kept the Rangers from becoming a 30-30 club.
So there really is no such thing as the perfect piece of crime.
———————————————————————————
Maybe the saddest story from that game could have involved Orioles pitcher Rob Bell, a reliever in
2007 after a few seasons as a back-end starter whose once-promising fastball and (especially)
curve ball were compromised by assorted elbow injuries. Bell was charged with seven earned runs
on five hits including the grand salami to Travis Metcalf, plus three walks.
His career ended after the 2007 season, as did those of several players in that game, but Bell was
in his own private sorrow—he’d struggled with an anxiety disorder in 2006, and had no major league
takers after signing a minor league deal with the White Sox for 2008, prompting him to retire at 31.
He struggled as many athletes do after that, going job to job and battling with alcohol abuse, until
he sobered up. The happy recap: Since 2013, Bell has worked for the Tampa Bay Rays in the front
office of their Hudson Valley Renegades affiliate. He has told Sports Illustrated
the 30-3 game now
means just one game compared to others, particularly the better ones: I’ve had to overcome a lot
of different things in my life, and it’s a matter of putting things in proper perspective. But baseball
brought me so much joy and had opened up so many opportunities to be part of so many different
things I wouldn’t have had a chance to do. But if I’d had my choice, I’d have been on the other
side of history.
Bell’s career included a stint with . . . the Rangers, five seasons before Baltimurder.
Dave Trembley, whose managerial career began with such a disaster on the day he lost the “interim”
tag, managed the Orioles from 2007-2010, when he was canned after what was first seen as a
proper fundamental emphasis, as the team rebuilt, came to be seen as lax team discipline style
while mismanaging and overworking his bullpen.
After a few years as an Astros coach, Trembley went to work for the Braves—where he’d been a
field coordinator in 2011-12—in player development, where he remains today.
Travis Metcalf’s career never really took off following the slam off Bell. Known as a defense-first
third baseman, he finally ended up shuffling between the minors and independent leagues, with
exactly eleven major league home runs to his credit for two major league seasons through this
writing. Since 2011, he’s been with the Lancaster Barnstormers of the Atlantic League.
