The New York Times describes last night's Orioles victory over the Mets as
a practically unprecedented comeback by the Orioles, who had lost each of their previous 34 games when trailing after eight innings.
Setting aside the problematic syntax (which seems to say the Orioles were on a 34-game losing streak going into last night's game), the "after eight innings" standard is a little misleading. Last month, I took Mack to a matinee against the Blue Jays, his first-ever ballgame.
The Blue Jays led 8-3 going into the bottom of the eighth, and Mack was mostly absorbed in reading the numbers from the seat backs of the empty rows.
But then the Orioles strung together a five-run rally, including a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch for Chad Moeller and a bases-loaded single by Robert Andino, who went 4 for 5 and raised his average from .189 to .262 in the game. Robert Andino should probably consider buying Mack a season ticket.
So after the eighth inning--the Times' measure for judging a comeback--it was tied 8-8. It stayed that way through the ninth and tenth innings. Someday, Mack can tell his friends he saw the Orioles way back before Matt Wieters was even in the majors--back when, with the winning run on second base in the bottom of the ninth, the Orioles were stuck using Gregg Zaun to pinch hit.
Then, in the top of the 11th, Danys Baez--who had been doing a decent job of keeping the Orioles in the game, and who is no stranger to late-game heroics himself--served up a two-run home run to Aaron Hill, to put the Orioles behind again, 10-8. And but then, THEN, the Orioles strung together three singles to make it 10-9. And then, Nolan Reimold clubbed a pitch into the sparsely but ecstatically populated left-field stands, and Mack learned that the ballgame is not only a place where there are lots of numbers to read, but it's a place where sometimes Daddy tosses him up in the air and hollers "NOLAN REIMOLD!" and everyone yells and is happy. As far as Mack knows, the Orioles always do things like that, and the two most important baseball players in the world are Nolan Reimold and Robert Andino. He may be half right about that second part.
