2001 Orioles Are Second Coming of the Senators

For 30 years, Washington fans have begged to get the Senators back. Now we finally have them. They’re called the Orioles.

If you want to know what Washington baseball was like for more than 50 of the 71 seasons that the Nats played here, just trek up the parkway to Camden Yards or turn on your cable TV. They’ve merely traded red-white-and-blue for orange-and-black.

This spring, while watching the Orioles, I’ve been having deja vu all over again. The night Mike Bordick batted No. 3 -- the slot of Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth -- I felt like I was having a flashback. “What kind of team has a guy with 72 homers in 12 seasons batting in its Best Hitter hole?” I thought. When Jeff Conine batted cleanup, I thought, “I’ve seen this all before.”

Then, last week, third-string Orioles catcher Fernando Lumar brought everything into focus. It is very difficult to throw out a man running to second base on “ball four” to the batter. In fact, it’s impossible under the rules. But Lunar, experiencing a brief mental eclipse, tried anyway, pegging the ball to an amazed Bordick who was standing, quite appropriately, at a considerable distance from second base. The grateful Yankee on third base trotted to the plate -- stealing home -- without even a slide.

Suddenly, I was taken back to my youth and the bizarre windup of a Senators submarine pitcher named Horacio Pina. In my memory at least, it was Opening Day with the President watching. A sudden gust of wind caught Pina in mid-delivery and blew him sideways off the mound into a tangled heap of twisted arms and legs. The ball dribbled toward home plate. Everyone looked away.

He was a Nat. So, we forgave him. Though, for years, whenever a Senator did something brilliantly incompetent or earnestly inept -- something that combined a complete lack of talent with an adorable doomed spunkiness -- a family member would intone, “Horrracciiiio Pina.”

Now, thanks largely to owner Peter Angelos and his hand-picked “baseball people,” we have an Oriole team (currently in a brief sub-.500 slump over its last 520 games) that’s worthy of the memorable creations of Bob Short or Calvin Griffith. Angelos deserves more credit. Short lacked money and Griffith wits. Angelos has both, and has overcome them.

In Syd Thrift, Angelos may’ve identified the perfect Nat general manager, a man who is able to gaze deep into a rival’s farm system and pluck out the one prospect with a suspicious birth certificate or an as-yet-undetected elbow malady.

Everything makes sense to me now. Watch Orioles, think Nats. For example, did you see Brook Fordyce’s catch this week? The bumptious Oriole catcher, in pursuit of a foul pop up near the box seats, tripped over a bat, a small table, a weighted ring and a large white bucket. Chevy Chase couldn’t have topped it. As Fordyce crashed to earth, but held the ball, I said, “Hmm, he’s either Jim French or Clint (Scrap Iron) Courtney.”

The crewcut French once was the subject of an award-winning Post photo by Dick Darcey. French made an amazing catch of a foul pop while doing a kind of back flip. What links him to Fordyce’s Mir-like landing was that French’s grab would never have been possible if he hadn’t first misjudged the ball by 20 feet.

In Baltimore these days, you can see veterans past their prime, journeymen who never had a prime and rookies who dream of a prime. All are bonded together out of need -- a band of baseball brothers. Like generations of Nats, these Orioles are all in fervent pursuit of a goal that’s always just beyond their grasp: mediocrity. Oh, if we could just get to .500 -- the promised land.

In the Nats’ last 25 years in Washington, which were my first 25, the Senators finished last 11 times, next-to-last five times and only had two winning seasons. Their honorable but doomed pursuit of being average was what defined a Nat. You could have a few good players and even some team spirit. You hire and fire managers. But, somehow, the Natness of it all carried the day. Just as Orioleness seems to have become entrenched.

The Nats had Diego Segui. The Orioles have his son David. The Senators usually had one star worth seeing, whether it was Mickey Vernon, Roy Sievers or Frank Howard. The Orioles have Cal Ripken. The Nats had Eddie Yost, the Walking Man. The Orioles have Brady Anderson, the Hit-By-Pitch man. Yost’s forte was not swinging. Brady’s is not moving out of the way.

The Nats tried to see if they could corner the market on Cubans. The Orioles have this thing for Arubans. (What but a Caribbean incantation could get a team to bring four players to the major leagues from an island smaller than Fells Point?) Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez was signed by the Indians in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. The Orioles go to the ends of the earth to ink Radhames Dykhoff.

In Washington, Claude Osteen had a losing record. But as soon as the Nats traded him to the Dodgers, he became the third man in the World Series rotation behind Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Remind you of Armando Benitez, Jeffrey Hammonds, Curt Schilling, Kevin Brown, David Wells, Jamie Moyer and every other player who improved radically the day he left the Orioles.

To be a Nat is to have Whitey Herzog--as your center fielder, not your manager. Or to have Moose Skowron--after he’s washed up. Or Hawk Harrelson--just before he wins the home run title in Boston. A Senator once hit home runs in eight consecutive games. But he did it as a Pirate.

That’s how it feels now in Baltimore. Albert Belle was an historic slugger wherever he played. Except for the Orioles. Pat Hentgen won a Cy Young Award. But someplace else. Sidney Ponson has 20-win stuff but, like Pedro Ramos, has a sub-.500 career record.

Baseball, year in and year out, isn’t about winning the World Series or having Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs for the home team. It’s about players with partial gifts and interesting stories who have to work their hardest just to be average. They wheedle their way into your affections despite themselves because the game makes them fascinating by showing us all their facets. It’s about solid, serviceable guys like Jeff Conine, who always wants to whack the first pitch, or Mike Trombley, whose only major league skill is a roundhouse curve. They’d have been great Nats.

Whether Washington ever gets a team back or not, look at it this way: If you want to know what baseball in Washington felt like, decade after decade, here’s your chance. For one summer, you only have to drive about an hour to go back in time more than 30 years.