Bergesen was able to retire the Bucco’s 1-2-3 in the first, and didn’t really run into any trouble until there was one out in the second inning. Dave Trembley pulled him with one out, two on and one in. I was a little surprised to see Dave Trembley making his way to the mound so early, but as I said I think that overall Bergesen looked okay. While the score isn’t necessarily indicative of anything in spring training, it is worth mentioning that Bergesen left with the lead. I think that along with Rick Kranitz, Bergesen will look back on this start tomorrow and see some positives, and a few things upon which they can build. Nobody’s expecting perfection, especially in spring training.

Thus far, Oriole bats have also made a re-emergence. It only seemed to last in the beginning part of the game, but the O’s loaded the bases in the first inning, and Luke Scott was able to double home two runs. Ty Wiggington added another, and the Orioles led 3-0. In that sequence, Matt Wieters had a great at-bat that resulted in a walk off of Pittsburgh starter Zack Duke. In the few times I’ve seen the O’s on television this spring, I’ve been extremely impressed with Wieters’ patience at the plate. Obviously you don’t want to be overly patient because then you suddenly find yourself trudging back to the dugout with your bat dragging on the ground. But when a pitcher’s struggling, a little bit of patience on the part of the batter can do wonders. In that case, Wieters was able to work a walk, and Like Scott followed with a double, which is good fundamental team baseball.

With all the talk about starting pitching, I don’t want Mark Hendrickson’s performance in the game to be lost. Hendrickson’s a person of whom I was extremely critical last season when he struggled as a starter. But he’s found a home in the Oriole pen, and his performance has been much better since being moved there. Tonight, he pitched two full innings, giving up one hit and striking out two. Incidentally, Jason Berken had an almost identical line, although he only had one strike out.

From what I could see on television, the Pirates appear to have a beautiful facility in Bradenton. The field looked beautiful under the lights; seeing the Orioles in prime time in spring training gave us a nice change of pace to games played under the blonde sun. As it stands now at the top of the ninth, the O’s are still holding onto that slim 3-2 lead. If they’re able to hold on, they’ll snap a six game spring training losing streak. As I’ve said, the final scores are meaningless at this point as compared to the fundamentals that are exemplified during the game. But it would still be nice to get one back in the win column!

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The O’s lost to Boston on Sunday, but we can’t look at it as such. Sure the score indicates that the O’s lost, and they did. But the culture in spring training is much different than that in the regular season. The overall game story is much more important than the final score. Now having said that, Andy MacPhail said today that he’d like to see the O’s snap out of this skid they’re seeing in spring training, and I would agree. The last thing that any of us wants is to have the concept and feeling of losing to seep into the Orioles’ psyche heading into the regular season. But for the most part, the starters are looking good. In that game on Sunday, Jeremy Guthrie gave up one run in 2.1 innings of work. Not too shabby if you ask me. Nick Markakis added his second homer of the spring, and some other folks added to the line as well, including Garrett Atkins and Matt Wieters.

Case in point, spring training isn’t about wins and loses. Certainly there’s a competitive juice that flows through every athlete in terms of winning, but spring training allows players to get the kinks out, grow together, and get into the swing of things again. Hopefully that’s what the Orioles are doing, as they’ve limped to a 1-6 start to the spring in the wake of today’s 8-3 loss to Tampa. It also came to my attention today that second baseman Brian Roberts had a setback of sorts with regard to his health. He was given an injection of some sort for his back condition on Sunday, and that somehow managed to upset his stomach; he won’t resume baseball activities until Thursday. While the trainers are expecting Roberts to be ready for Opening Day, this is most certainly of concern to Andy MacPhail and Dave Trembley.

1-6 does raise my eyebrow, but it’s not of supreme concern to me. I personally believe that this team is going to fine moving through the spring, and into the regular season. One positive that came out of today’s game was that Nolan Reimold finally saw some action, going 0-2 at the plate. Again, you obviously don’t want to make two outs in your first two at-bats, but baby steps are important, and that’s exactly what getting into the lineup is for a player coming off an injury. I’d like to see some wins this spring, but hey…last time I checked the Orioles’ record still stood at 0-0 for the year. Incidentally, MLB Network is airing the O’s vs. Pirates game tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 PM eastern time. I assume that they’ll be using the Pittsburgh broadcast, so it won’t be Gary Thorne & company, but it’s worth tuning in just to see the O’s.

1:45 PM, 3/10/10-MASN announced today that Mike Flanagan will be the official replacement for Buck Martinez in the Orioles’ TV booth. He’ll join Gary Thorne in calling approximately half of the Orioles’ games (splitting time with Jim Palmer). Flanny’s had two other stints doing the O’s on television, and speaking for myself I always liked listening to him. He’s sort of a character (similar to Gary Thorne), and I like that in a commentator. According to masnsports.com, Flanagan’s first game will be on April 15th, at Oakland.

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Speaking for myself, I was very impressed with Jeremy Guthrie’s outing, even though he only faced seven batters, which is to be expected in a spring training game. Guthrie’s line: 2 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 2 K. I’ll take that, especially seeing that last season it seemed like Guthrie and several other Oriole pitchers were taken out in the middle of the second or third inning. For the most part, it appears that the Orioles used the lineup that we’ll come to know very well this season, the exceptions being Brian Roberts and Nolan Reimold. Roberts has been recovering from a herniated disk in his back, which has put the damper on his spring thus far. He’s expected to be fine, but he’s not at a point now where he can play in spring training games. Reimold is perfectly healthy, but Dave Trembley wanted to hold him back for a few days since it’s been cold and rainy in Sarasota.

Josh Bell, who DH’d today, got the scoring started off in the last of the third inning with a home run, which was promptly complimented by Nick Markakis’ shot to right in the fifth. Bell, whom the O’s got in last season’s trade of George Sherrill to the Dodgers, seemed to have a very productive day at the dish. In two turns at the plate, he had two hits (including two HR’s) and three RBI. Rhyne Hughes added four RBI on the day, and Miguel Tejada had a base hit. Adam Jones walked and struck out twice, and Garrett Atkins added a base hit as well. Incidentally, as I said Josh bell hit two home runs today; what I didn’t mention above is that Bell hit homers from both sides of the plate, bringing back shades of Eddie Murray, who accomplished that feat 11 times in his career. Unfortunately for Bell, this game doesn’t count in the standings, so technically he’s yet to do it!

For those of you who care to know, I’m not worried about Adam Jones’ performance. We all know that Jonesy’s going to be a major player on this team. It would have been nice for him to have gotten on base with a hit today, but it’s only the first spring training game. While I mentioned Jeremy Guthrie’s performance above, his relief looked good today as well. Of all the pitchers who played today, only Dennis Sarfate and David Hernandez gave up runs, although Hernandez gave up a homer to Sean Rodriguez.

Aside from the offensive output, the stat of the day for me is that Oriole pitching was solid. We’ve always known that the O’s had a potent offense with the likes of Jones, Markakis, Roberts, and company. But if the starting pitching and the pen can give efforts like that, this should be a really fun ride! I’m the first one to say that you can’t take away too much from a spring training outing, but again this is as good of a start as Dave Trembley could have hoped for. Nevertheless, the nighttime got a little closer to ending this afternoon, as the sky seemingly got a little brighter, and that round ball of sun started to peak onto the lowest edges of the horizon. But if this meaningless game is any indication, the ghosts of 2009 were put to bed a long time ago. To use Gary Thorne’s catchphrase, “this one’s in the books for the O’s!”

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That aside, the O’s will actually take the field in a semi-formal manner in two days…TWO DAYS!!! On Wednesday they open up their spring training game schedule with a 1 PM contest against the Tampa Rays “at home.” (The game won’t be televised, but fans in the immediate Baltimore area will be able to hear the game on 105.7 “the fan.”) Ironically, the Orioles will also open the regular season in roughly one month’s time against those same Tampa Rays at Tropicana Field in Tampa. But Wednesday’s game is all about this year’s team playing together for the first time, and melding the new guys like Tejada, Atkins, and Mike Gonzalez in with the players that have been here for awhile.

Coaches and managers will tell you that spring training isn’t necessarily about wins and losses, but more so about what I just described above (team building). While I do buy into that to a certain degree, players are also competitors. At least they’d better be! When a player in any sport puts on his uniform, he’s playing to win whether it’s a regular season game, the playoffs, World Series, or even just an exhibition game as is the case now. Last year many of these guys learned how to lose together, and I recall saying that I hoped that feeling stuck with them in the pits of their stomachs all off season. (Lord knows it’s stuck with me!) Now they need to move forward and ensure that the losing ceases, and thus learn to win together. So while none of us is going to lose sleep over an Oriole loss for the next month or so, the players should and will be playing to win. As much as I hate the Yankees, I always respected Joe DiMaggio’s attitude that he played hard every day because for all he knew, there was someone sitting in the stands that had never seen him play before.

Spring training games can be hard because the players know that they’re not going to play the entire game. In fact, the pitchers are often on a schedule to the point that they know how many innings they’re going to throw, and the relievers know which specific innings they’re going to pitch. I think that the first week of spring training games is going to be very interesting in that I want to see how things go the first time they run through the order. I’m not so much talking about balls and strikes as I am technique and poise, especially with the younger pitchers. Another thing to watch will be Miguel Tejada, who’s never guarded the hot corner in his life, but will be doing so this year with the O’s. Adam Jones, Nolan Reimold, and Felix Pie are also coming off of injuries, so hopefully they can shoot right out of the gun and be productive this spring as well.

So while the real “thrill of Orioles baseball” won’t come for another month, this is going to have to suffice for now. From Wednesday forward, we’ll all be checking Oriole box scores on a daily basis to see what’s going on, and hopefully tuning into MASN’s four televised contests this spring (March 7th, 25th, 29th, & 31st). I might also add that ESPN will be televising the April 2nd O’s/Yankees game at 1 PM in Tampa, so that makes five times that fans can see the Orioles on TV this spring. Incidentally, that Oriole jingle that was always played on WBAL was during some good years, so hopefully the act of me bringing it up brings good fortune to the O’s, as they walk down the ballpark aisleway towards the future, which could be now.

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Johnny Cash wrote The Man in Black to describe why he always wore that color. While he did so as part of his style, he also did it to symbolize the people that he felt didn’t have a voice in society. However, he did say that he’d cease to wear black if things improved in his eyes (“…until we make a move to make a few things right, you’ll never see me wear a suit of white…’till things are brighter, I’m the man in black.”) Whether that truly happened in Cash’s life, I don’t know. But speaking for myself, I always seemed to find myself wearing a lot of black Oriole shirts over time. In fact, the last game I attended in 2009 was on September 6^th, and I found myself wearing black shorts and a black Oriole polo shirt. I did that to somewhat symbolize the era that the O’s had just gone through. As Terrence Mann told us in my favorite movie (Field of Dreams):

“America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”

So have the Orioles. It’s been a much longer road than one might have originally thought, but we’ve erased, rebuilt, erased, and rebuilt again. Hopefully this time it lasts. And yes, baseball…Orioles baseball, has marked the time. So on that above-mentioned September afternoon when the O’s beat the Blue Jays 7-1 with the breeze kissing the field as it gently blew down the first base line towards right, I wore black. On a hot Labor Day weekend afternoon with the sun beating down on the fans as they tried in vain to extend the summer for one more day, I wore black. I wore black for the poor and beaten down fans over time that have suffered at the hands of wasted seasons. I wore black in mourning for seasons that could have been, and for all of the dreams of fans that were dashed by years of futility.

Seeing that black is one of the Oriole team colors, odds are I’ll probably wear it again at some point in the future. But in reality, I’ll be wearing a bright shade of orange from this point forward, as I firmly believe that good times are returning to Birdland. So I’ve gone from being that somber man in black to riding upon the Orange Blossom Special in a way. And that’s how you can characterize this year’s Oriole team from the outset. From now until the end of the season, we’ll be that orange blossom special…rolling down the seaboard line from Boston, to New York, to Tampa, up to Toronto, and of course back home to Baltimore. This year the Orioles’ll go everywhere man!

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• Jeremy Guthrie
• Kevin Millwood
• Brian Matusz
• Brad Bergesen
• Chris Tillman

As was the case last season, I would expect Guthrie to get the ball on Opening Day, but that’s really just a formality in my opinion. Speaking for myself, I’d like to see Guthrie and Millwood bookend the rotation at the front and back. Both of those guys are veterans, thus in theory they should be able to go further into games than some of the younger pitchers. So having the two veterans at each end of the rotation would make for the potential of giving the bullpen two consecutive game days where they might not have to eat up as many innings. My expectation is that once things get going, Matusz, Bergesen, and Tillman (assuming they’re in the rotation) will see their stamina get stronger and be able to work into the sixth and seventh innings on a nightly basis. But one problem that the Orioles have had the past couple of years has been overworking the bullpen due to poor outings by starting pitchers (not to call out anyone specific…Adam Eaton). Hopefully that’ll cease to be an issue starting this year.

Using that as a segue way, let’s talk about the bullpen. The Orioles brought in Mike Gonzalez to be their new closer, and hopefully that move will make for some less-than-exciting 9th innings. But gone are the likes of Danys Baez and George Sherrill. The O’s have brought Mark Hendrickson back, which I think was a good move. They brought Hendrickson in last season as a starter, and he was a total flop. When they sent him out to the pen he settled down and actually pitched fairly well. We’ll also see the likes of Cla Meredith and Kam Mikolio back for 2010, along with Koji Uehara. As we remember from last season, Uehara was brought in as a starter, which was something that he had never done. I liked Koji last season…until the fifth inning was over. He had the classic “relievers’ syndrome” in that he would start loosing it after five or six innings. But to that point, Uehara was pretty solid, so I could see him being a good setup or long man out of the bullpen.

Pitching has been the problem in Baltimore for quite awhile, and for all I know it might continue to be in 2010. If so, I can accept that…for this year. What I never appreciated was the O’s having pitchers over the years that were supposed to be good, but never achieved what they were supposed to. If Brian Matusz struggles a bit, I can accept that because he’s young and he’ll learn, which is something that guys like Sydney Ponson and Daniel Cabrera never did. (“Sir Sydney” seemed a bit more intent on spending time on the bars on Pratt and Charles Streets…) We know that the Orioles have a potent offense, but if they can get some good pitching performances as well, they’ll be a force with which to reckon.

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The O’s will hold their first full team work out tomorrow morning at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota. Personally, I see this as a very important step along the way. Many teammates will be seeing each other for the first time in a few months, and many newbie’s (rookies and veterans alike) will be trying to find their place on this team and in the club house. I’ve been around sports for my entire life as a participant, coach, and most importantly as a fan. With all of that experience in mind, I firmly believe that team chemistry is an imperative aspect to any athletic team, be it amateur or pro. Competitors compete for one reason and one reason only: to win! The Orioles have a core group of players that has started to form over the past couple of seasons. The likes of Markakis, Jones, Roberts, and Guthrie are now being complimented by Matusz, Wieters, Reimold, and Tillman. All of them had experience playing together and becoming comfortable with one another last season, which could be looked upon as a “proving ground,” so to speak. But now we’ve also added the likes of Millwood, Tejada, Atkins, and (Mike) Gonzalez to the mix. How all of these guys meld together could be paramount for how the season turns out.

As I’ve said before, my prediction is that the Orioles win every game one million to zero. I figure that if you’re going to follow a team, what’s the use of even paying attention if you’re not going to predict them to win every game?! But realistically, I think that the O’s will probably finish within five or ten games of .500, and I would call that a successful year. But while those potential results are based mostly upon on-field production, they also ride on the above-mentioned team chemistry. If one or all of the new players becomes a “me-first” attitude type of guy, my prediction won’t hold true. I have no doubt that the pieces already in place will do their part to incorporate the newbie’s into the fold. And in the past couple of seasons I’ve noticed the Orioles moving towards getting more “character guys,” so I’m sure they did their homework in that regard as well. Miguel Tejada was a bit of a dead weight when he was with the O’s before, but now it seems that he’s genuinely happy to be here, and he’s comfortable with his role on the team.

So the first full team work out tomorrow is huge. These guys are going to be together from now until October with very little time away from each other, so they might as well get along, right?! I remember on the first Saturday night in October when the Orioles were in the midst of the last weekend of the 2009 season, and playing the Blue Jays at home. MASN featured a shot of the full moon over the B & O Warehouse during the game intro that night; I felt that it was a fitting image, as while the winter was almost upon us, there was still that shining beacon standing as a watch light over the team. The moon has now served its guard well over the O’s, and it begins its own descent into the western sky, as the orange in the eastern sky gets a bit brighter. And there we stand now, still waiting for spring. But to quote the title of a Marvin Gaye song, the fundamentals upon which this team works now, will hopefully help to make them the “Pride and Joy” of Baltimore this spring and summer.

Had he lived to this point, my late grandfather, Domenic Vadala’, would have been 87 years old today. My grandfather has been my hero my entire life, and it’s always been my goal to be as much like him as I could. At the very least, it’s the greatest honor of my life to bear his name. In his memory, I’ve posted this column at 5:10 PM, which was the time of his death on May 10, 2006. May he rest in peace.

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Incidentally, I really like the coverage that WJZ provides for Oriole games. They begin every gameday by airing the O’s All-Access Pre-game Show beginning one hour prior to first pitch (generally anchored by Tom Davis and Dave Johnson). After the game coverage, they air the O’s All-Access Post-game Show. For home games, the pre/post-game coverage is broadcast live from the Bud Light Warehouse bar at Camden Yards.

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More importantly, the Orioles’ AAA affiliate, the Norfolk Tides, is in that area. During my visit with my sister, we drove out to Virginia Beach because I love the sea and I love to walk on the boardwalk. We also went to church in Virginia Beach, during which I was wearing my Oriole pullover jacket. (Yes, I make a point of representing when I’m on the road!) During the “handshake of peace” (a ritual in the Catholic mass), the guy behind me leaned over and said “Go Birds!” When I started talking to him and his wife, it turned out that they were transplanted Baltimoreans. However based upon what my sister tells me, there are in fact a lot of Oriole fans in the Hampton Roads/VA Beach area.

Norfolk/Hampton Roads is a minor league baseball town as I said, so I presume that a lot of people there follow the big league affiliate of their hometown team, which in this case is the Orioles. The Tides were a NY Mets’ affiliate until a few years ago, but since the O’s have taken over I’ve noticed a few more Oriole bumper stickers on cars when I’m down there. In fact, if you look at the Tides’ roster, you’ll see a few names with which we’re all familiar: Jake Arrieta, Dennis Sarfate, & Scott Moore. I might also add that the Orioles do a great job of involving the greater Norfolk community in the major league club. MASN is one of the local “hometown” cable networks in the area, and starting this season Oriole games will be heard locally in Norfolk on 94.1-FM WVSP. (In the past the team did have a radio affiliate in Norfolk, however it was the same station that carried the Tides’ games locally, so the O’s were often preempted.)

For those of you who have never been to Harbor Park in Norfolk, I’d recommend going down and taking in a game. It’s a beautiful park, with the James River as a backdrop over the right field wall. I went there last season with my sister when the Orioles played the Washington Nationals in one of the final spring training games before the regular season. It was a perfect afternoon for a ballgame; a crystalline blue sky and blonde sunlight almost coming down over the water and kissing the field. And true to form, the southern Oriole flock turned out to see their Birds play that day, with a good percentage of the crowd rooting for the O’s. (Washington is closer to Norfolk than Baltimore, so it might have stood to reason that there would have been more Nats’ fans.) Many of the people with whom I spoke were locals who were Oriole fans due to their affiliation with the Tides. In fact, I saw very few Maryland license plates in the parking lot that day.

Any of you who spend some time in Hampton Roads during the baseball season might well feel at home. The Tides also have a huge community presence, much like the O’s do in Baltimore. Light blue obviously figures into the Tides’ color scheme fairly prominently due to the whole ocean theme, but make no mistake about the fact that the true colors of the Hampton Roads area are orange and black.

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So, why all this talk about the northern lights? Well, today starts spring training, as pitchers and catchers are reporting for duty. Over the course of the off season, I’ve written a lot of things regarding the upcoming season, and I love using Shakespearean-style motifs and double meanings in my text. That aside, the definition of the word aurora is dawn. I’ve mentioned a lot about this year being the dawn of a new era in Oriole baseball, and it starts in an unofficial manner today.

The true aurora hasn’t really arrived as of yet; that will come on April 6th in Tampa. But as we all know, the sunrise is a process that takes awhile. We begin at the darkest depths in the chill of the night. Then suddenly off in the distance in the eastern edges of the sky, we begin to see the faintly glowing colors of orange, then mixed with perhaps an auburn or amber. This moment starts the process, and it’s exactly where we now stand.

As we know, those colors begin to get steadily stronger and lighter, and eventually we see the true aurora, which comes when the sun starts to come over the horizon. That process will be going along throughout spring training. This is only the first step. The second will be the reporting of position players in a few days, and thus the colors in the sky will get brighter. (Incidentally, if you think I’m going to write this column in reverse come October to tie in the end of the season with the sunset, you’re crazy!) Once actual spring training games start in the beginning of March, the colors get brighter still…you get the idea.

This leads us down a path that culminates with the actual rising of the sun, which as I said will come on April 6th. But right now we’re just beginning. I truly believe that the O’s have an appointment with destiny moving onward, and to this appointment they can’t and won’t be late. There’s too much talent on the team for them not to be successful. Many teams probably look at the Orioles’ lineup of Roberts, Markakis, Jones, Wieters, etc, and feel a twinge of jealousy. The same could be said when they look at the Oriole pitching staff of Matusz, Bergesen, Tillman, Guthrie, etc. I’ve spoken to so many former Oriole fans over this off season that were once driven away by mediocrity, but are now starting to return to the flocks of the orange & black. They’re returning because they see progress, and that progress will hopefully lead the Orioles down that collision course with destiny.

Incidentally, the northern lights have had quite a few names throughout history, depending upon which group was referring to them. The Cree people called the phenomenon the “Dance of the spirits.” With that in mind, I can only hope that the current crop of Oriole players can embrace the hard-working blue collar spirit of the great city of Baltimore and its people, and thus allow us to think back on these times one day as the dawn of something great.

“All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days; nor in the life of this administration. Nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

-President John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

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