Congratulations to the Orioles on Their Four Game Road Sweep

The Orioles swept the Rangers in a four game series at Arlington in the days leading up to the All Star Break. Now for many of you baseball fans who like better teams than the O's, a simple 4 game sweep on the road probably doesn't seem like a big deal. But to the Orioles franchise, this kind of thing doesn't happen. In fact, this is the first four game road sweep since the Orioles did it against the White Sox on July 6-9, 1995! Now I realize that teams only play a limited number of 4 games road series every season (the Orioles have 3 this season), but for it to have been 15 years since it last happened is ridiculous. That means that the Orioles went 14 full seasons, or approximately 42 series, without such a sweep in another teams' hometown. It's a small victory in a largely lost season, but could it be a signal that the Birds are about to turn things around?

For nostalgia's sake, here are a few of the players on the 1995 Orioles team who were part of that last four game road sweep.





Now that was a pretty decent team. Let's hope that the 2010 Orioles can play well through the end of the season and end up with an improved record, at least over the first half of the season. Good luck guys!

A trade with Beardy

I recently was able to work out a trade with fellow O's blogger and infamous trader, Beardy of Beardy's Baseball Blog. He was extremely easy to trade with and even threw in a bonus O's card that he thought I would like; and I do. That bonus card is a Brian Roberts Allen & Ginter game used bat card that I neglected to scan. Oops.

Since I know that Beardy collects everything Orioles related, pretty much as do I, we have some conflicts of interest as far as our collections go. But he specifically collects Markakisisis and he's not so much into autographs, so we had something to go on. I sent him a few Kakes Jr. cards and I received a few sweet O's autographs in return.

Doug Jones 1995

Doug was a long time closer who played for 7 teams over his 16 year career, most notably the Indians, Brewers and Astros. He amassed 303 saves, good enough for 12th place all-time upon his retirement after the 2000 season, and interestingly, at 43 years old, he was the oldest player in the Majors during his last season. Doug also was named to 5 All-Star teams and received MVP votes 4 times over his career.

Unfortunately, his one season with the Orioles wasn't what I would call a success. He went 0-4 with 22 saves and a 5.04 ERA in 52 games. That was his highest ERA for any team he played for; not the highest in a season but still, not good. I was really into the O's when he was on the team though and I will always remember his sweet mullet and long 'stache combo.

Scott Kamieniecki 1997-99

A starter for his first two years in Baltimore, Scott morphed into a middle-reliever/mop-up guy in 1999. Overall, he went 14-16 and had a 4.71 ERA for the Birds; those numbers were right in line with his career stats. He was regarded as having a very good pickoff move and I like to remember him as being the winning pitcher in game 5 of the '97 ALCS against the Indians, the most recent Orioles playoff win in 12 seasons. It's been a long time...

Kalina helps me remember how to spell his last name by pronouncing it Kam-ean-eyecki. Or something close to that. You get the idea.

Anyway, thanks for the awesome trade Beardy!