Orioles Can Do No Right These Days

The Baltimore Orioles are at the point where a slump degenerates into a catastrophe, where a succession of little slips accelerates into a freefall.

Where they once did no wrong, they now do no right. Where they once cleared the bases with two-out hits, they now strike out. Where they once made daring plays that left opponents fumbling, they now fumble. Where they once pitched game after resplendent game, as though it wasn’t even a challenge, they now ask for one well-pitched game, start to finish. Just one. And don’t get it.

Not so long ago, it seemed they might never lose. Now it seems they might never win again. They are tense, always behind, their eyes suddenly full of the sad fear that overwhelmed them at the beginning of last season, when they lost 21 straight games. Now they have lost 13 of 14, and that old, spoiled-meat smell is back. Horrors! Stephen King has slipped in and started writing the script: Return of the Zer-O’s. Yes, they’re baaaaack.

That they still are in first place in the American League East is but an illusion. They are chasing the teams chasing them. The others are gathering their wits for a pennant race. The Orioles are at wits’ end, out of pitchers and answers. They have splashed about in the sunny happiness that is first place for 68 straight days, but unless they straighten their sagging posture, their tenure will soon end.

This hard truth became evident Tuesday at Fenway Park, where the Orioles played two games with the Boston Red Sox, one in the afternoon and one at night. Given two chances to lessen the pain of the bruises they have gathered on this Road Trip From Hell, they failed twice, accelerating their potato-sack drop from the heights.

Before the largest day-night doubleheader audience in Fenway history -- more than a total of 70,000 -- the Orioles first lost a heartbreaker, a drama that turned on a pop fly lost in the sun, a failed bunt that set up the winning run and a passel of blown scoring chances. The second game was a Mike Tyson fight. One punch -- Nick Esasky’s three-run homer in the fourth inning -- and down went the sucker.

And so the Orioles were left with hard numbers to study. Just 13 days ago, they left home with a 7 1/2-game lead, humming along as comfortably as a tuned-up roadster out for a spin on a new blacktop. Now, their lead is one game. If they lose to the Red Sox on Wednesday night, they will return home Thursday in second place.

“It hasn’t happened overnight, but it has been a very short period of time,” Baltimore Manager Frank Robinson said. “It’s tough to believe we’re playing the way we’ve been playing. Every game I think we’re going to go back to the way we’re capable of playing. Then after each game we come back and say, ‘Well, maybe the next one.’ It’s tough to believe it’s happening, but it is. I see it. And it’s not going to go away until we make it go away.”

It would not take that much. One well-pitched game. One clutch hit that turned a loss into a win, frowns back into smiles. One moment of improvised brilliance; something. But when losing hangs around, it becomes a habit. “The more it’s there, the more you know it’s there,” Robinson said. “The more you lose, the more pressure you feel. It becomes a harder cycle to break.”

When the cycle lasts this long, every mistake becomes magnified, for without it, perhaps, the cycle might have ended. The first game Tuesday was full of such very little, very big mistakes. It was a game that could have come close to righting the Orioles, and instead, it made matters worse.