With the baseball season getting underway, and Orioles fans relieved of the worry about getting the money to pay for home playoff tickets, we still have a lot to look forward to with the local nine.
The team has been putzing around for the last few years since winning the American League East pennant in 2014, and the time has come to see if the old saw about having to hit rock bottom before things get better is true. There are fewer bottoms rockier than when you lose 115 games out of 162, and that's the sad state of recent Orioles history.
Just like a motel on Rte 40 with a hastily scrawled sign on the front desk reading "NOW UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT," the O's have new management, new players, and, one hopes, a new spirit of trying a bit harder than recent teams seem to have. There will be plenty of rookies and plenty of rookie mistakes, but let's see...
And it also seems that a new radio voice will be calling the play-by-play. I was very sad to read that Joe Angel, longtime announcer, decided to retire, but he is 71 and deserves not to sit through rain delays in Cleveland any longer.
The picture up top ^ shows engineer "Tiny" Tim Jones in the back, with Joe (l) and Ben McDonald (r) in front. Ben was a pretty fair pitcher back in the '89-'95 glory days, and now all 6'7" of him flies up from Louisiana to join the radio broadcasting team on some games. He does what the best of the radio sidekicks do - he shares experience from the vantage point of a player, with a little humor thrown in. It just might be an interesting season with the Orioles this year.
Speaking of interesting things, and Louisiana, that's where a would-be crook made a rookie mistake.
The Sulphur Police Dept down there responded to a call for a subject acting in a suspicious manner. Sulphurians (Sulphurites?) called 911 to say that a man was prowling through yards and looking into houses, both of which activities add up to crimes about to occur.
The callers added that it wouldn't be too hard to spot the peeper, as he was wearing a gorilla costume.
Jeremie Moran is the name of the ALLEGED ne'er-do-well, and when police arrived in the neighborhood and told Moran to stop, he pranced right on in through the front door of one of the houses. Three steps behind came the law. They searched the house and found no Moran. (Spell check, save me!) When they got to the back of the house, the back door was wide open as well, leading officers to deduce that Moran had gone sailing off into the night.
But NO! He wasn't outside anywhere!
So they circled back and check the house a little more thoroughly, and you know all those dustballs and empty McWrappers that you find under the bed when you turn the mattress? Well, among all that detritus, they found Moran, wearing a gorilla suit and a black eye. He was arrested and booked on several charges, including resisting an officer, unauthorized entry and meth possession.
As of this writing, it is unclear if Moran has a lawyer, or a dentist or a barber.
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