Orioles Are Paying Dearly for Attempt to Buy a Contender

The only people who are confused about what’s wrong with the Baltimore Orioles are the Orioles.

You’re always the last to know.

Almost any neutral fan can tell you that the Orioles aren’t the Orioles anymore. They don’t play smart. They don’t play together. They don’t have very much confidence in each other.

The spark, the deep fellow-feeling, the sense of crusade that gets pennant contenders over the hump isn’t there.

And hasn’t been for 400 games.

To go forward, Baltimore needs to go back. A collection must be made into a team. How to do it is anguishing. Never have Manager Earl Weaver and General Manager Hank Peters seemed so at sea as now, with the team’s recent slump.

“I talked to (recently fired) Jim Frey and asked if he wanted my job,” Weaver said the other day. “He said, ‘You keep it.’ Frey’s got a year and a half left on his (Cub) contract and he’s happier than a pig in slop. He’s already finished playing 18 holes of golf today and he wanted to call and tell me he was playing gin.”

For the first time, Weaver is doubting himself publicly. “I’m trying to think of anything. I’m confused. The reason is, I like my ball club. I’m pleased with the effort, pleased with the feeling on the bench.”

In his search for firm ground, Weaver has gone back to basics: pitching. “Has my baseball judgment gone? No, I don’t think so. But when the team ERA is 4.1 and I think it should be 3.2--according to what my eyes tell me--then I gotta wonder if maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not seeing it the way it is.

“Everything hinges on the five guys (in the rotation) that we put our confidence in. I know they’re throwing good enough to win--in my eyes they are, anyway. I told them if they’d each just win two games in a row, that would be 10 in a row, and everybody’d be saying what a great team we got. . . . 95% of a team is starting pitching. They’ve all pitched well, but not well enough often enough.”

That is one theory.

Others, like Peters, have seen a general lack of intensity and mental alertness for two years. “There are Orioles and there are non-Orioles,” Peters says. “We have some of both.”

Just three years ago, the Orioles stood for almost everything that was most appealing in baseball. Team play. Collective intelligence. Hard-nosed professionalism. Genial temperament. The Orioles were a pleasure to watch and to be around; even when they didn’t win a flag, they stood for something.

In the wake of fifth place in 1984, the Orioles, led by owner Edward Bennett Williams, decided to try to buy their way back to the top. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But they didn’t do it by signing Orioles-type players. Instead, they went for the big names with the astronomical salaries and the tarnished reputations.

They got what they paid for.

A lineup speaks for a team, and the first three names in the order have a sad eloquence: Alan Wiggins, Lee Lacy and Fred Lynn--total salary, $2.5 million.

Wiggins is a chip-on-the-shoulder guy who falls asleep afield and on the bases. Because of bad instincts, he covers little ground as a second baseman. As a leadoff hitter, he’s a liability because his on-base average is miserable (.317). His steals distract Orioles sluggers more than they help the offense.

The addled tone Wiggins sets is even worse. Recently, he fell for the hidden-ball trick. Twice this year, infielders gave Wiggins the “Take-it-easy-and-don’t-slide” sign, then tagged him out when he came in standing. Last Sunday, with two men on, Eddie Murray at bat and the Orioles three runs down, he was picked off first--one of the worst blunders Weaver said he had ever seen.

Still, Wiggins acts like a star. When fans booed him recently, he ripped them, as though they were not entitled to critique a .253 hitter with no homers who earns $800,000 a year.

Juan Bonilla, a legitimate slash hitter, would make a better starting second basemen. Wiggins can pinch run.

Lacy is one of the most braggadocian players in the game. He talks so much that teammates call him “Cotton.” When he goes into a monologue, his teammates ask the clubhouse man for cotton to plug their ears. An erratic judge of fly balls, Lacy loves hot-dog one-handed catches and has butchered several this season, never touching the ball. Lacy seldom walks, and his .307 on-base percentage is a central reason for low run production.

Last Sunday, Lacy thought a fly ball had dropped foul, so he stopped and leaned on a railing for rest, not bothering to check the umpire. Result: A stand-up triple. Jim Dwyer and Juan Beniquez can handle right field better than Lacy. And they play like Orioles.

Lynn may be the most infuriating of all. On June 27, he returned after a 17-game absence because of a sprained ankle and flu. Last season, Cal Ripken had a badly sprained ankle and missed one game--an exhibition against Navy.

Lynn has missed more games with minor injuries in a season and a half with the Orioles (60) than Ripken and Eddie Murray have missed in their entire careers--a span of almost 2,500 games. Yet Lynn is the highest-paid Oriole--$1.35 million.

Lynn only plays when he feels perfect. Firemen go into burning buildings for $25,000 a year, but Lynn won’t go into center field for $8,333.33 a day if his ankle hurts. Asked recently to pinch-hit with the bases loaded, Lynn said he didn’t feel up to it.

A potentially serious injury is one thing. But sore ankles and sore throats are the things pros play through; that distinguishes them from amateurs who play for fun, not for a living.

When Lynn returned, he struck out four times, beginning a zero-for-11 streak that helped the Orioles get swept by Boston. Who says Lynn no longer plays for the Red Sox?

Lynn should not play at all against left-handers, and the general playing time of young home-grown talent such as Mike Young, John Shelby and Larry Sheets should take precedence over his.

Weaver certainly is right about the primacy of starting pitching. But a team’s sense of itself and how it goes about its business is vital, too.

If Baltimore is going to be a middle-of-the-pack team for the third straight year, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, then at least let the Orioles stand for something.

Besides, Weaver has always said “deep depth” was a key to winning. Wiggins, Lacy and Lynn would give the Orioles the best bench in baseball.