The Orioles were robbed of Gold Gloves, Cy Young nod.
There were clearly a lot of surprises this week and, while this one seems minor in the grand scheme of things, Orioles fans were shocked with the news. For the first time since 2010, no Orioles were awarded with Gold Glove awards. This is especially jarring since third baseman Manny Machado had the highest fielding percentage and the second-fewest errors at his position. The decision not to award Chris Davis, who we saw make some impressive catches at first base this year, is a bit more understandable considering his 10 errors to winner Mitch Moreland’s two.

But the real crime is that closer Zach Britton wasn’t even named a finalist for the Cy Young Award, when he didn’t blow a save all year. Granted, relievers don’t normally factor in, but his 2016 season was exemplary with a perfect 47-for-47 in save opportunities, a league-leading 0.54 ERA for pitchers who have worked at least 50 innings, and a span of 43 appearances without a single home run (from April 30 to August 24). Needless to say, manager Buck Showalter is not pleased.

“That’s a real poor reflection on the people who are evaluating him,” the skipper told MASN. “This guy had maybe the best year in the history of relief pitching. He should have finished in the top three in MVP, OK? He should. There’s nobody in baseball who’s more valuable to their team than Zach Britton is to the Orioles.” Preach!

One possibly silver lining? Quite literally, Mark Trumbo received the 2016 Silver Slugger Award for one of three American League (AL) outfield positions, the first Oriole outfielder to win the award since 2013. And, possibly best of all, Showalter was once again named a finalist for AL Manager of the Year with some stiff competition in the Indians’ Terry Francona. The winner will be announced next Tuesday, November 15, but we all know who gets our vote.

Orioles don’t make QO to catcher Matt Wieters.
Fan favorite and hometown boy Matt Wieters may not be wearing an Orioles uniform next year. While the team made a qualifying offer to Trumbo, they passed on the chance to extend the $17.2M, single-season offer to Wieters this time around. The catcher struggled a bit this past season with a .243 average and fell well shy of the above-average offensive number he has posted in prior years. Though he was an All Star, hit 17 home runs, and had solid fielding, the team likely wasn’t willing to pay big bucks based on his age, offensive production, and future injury risk. But Wieters, now a free agent, should have his fair share of suitors.

As far as the Orioles, they may not have to look very far for a replacement since Chance Sisco was named as the best position player in the club’s minor league system by Baseball America. The 22-year-old spent most of the season at AA Bowie before a promotion to AAA Norfolk, hitting for a combined .317 with six homers, 28 doubles, and 51 RBIs.

Tatyana McFadden wins fourth-consecutive New York City marathon.
We’ve got a real-life Superwoman in Clarksville native Tatyana McFadden. After a stunning performance at the Olympics in Rio, the Paralympic athlete returned to the states to dominate at the New York City marathon on Sunday. It is her fourth-consecutive title, finishing the wheelchair race in one hour, 47 minutes and 43 seconds. Not to mention that she completed the Grand Slam by winning in London, Boston, Chicago, and New York. The New York Times beautifully recounted McFadden’s multi-burough race, in which she thrived on the uphill climb of the Queensboro Bridge and stayed focus throughout:

McFadden pushed well ahead of the field at the start, before Schär, Amanda McGrory and Susannah Scaroni caught up by Mile 6 in Brooklyn. The pack stayed tight until the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Koch, a former New York mayor, had a trademark line — “How’m I doin’?” — and McFadden had an answer. Just fine. She even loves the crosswind. Makes it even tougher. Here she continued to pass the elite male wheelchair racers, including her coach, Adam Bleakney, a four-time Paralympian. What did he say to his star racer? “Not a word,” Bleakney said. “She was going too fast.”

And he wasn’t quite done. On Thursday night, Kim reached based three more times, going 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI to raise his average to .308 for the year. His biggest moment came in the seventh inning, when he grounded a ball into right field, driving in Michael Bourn from second to give the Orioles a 3-0 lead.

The Orioles moved into a tie for the first AL Wild Card spot and last night’s win eliminated the Yankees from the playoffs altogether. We’re not sure about you, but that makes us want to mimic Kim’s dance moves in this amazing Korean music video.

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Joe Flacco has fourth baby, and first daughter.
Maybe it’s just us, but it seems like the Flacco family is having kids at the same rate Joe was throwing consecutive completions on Sunday. And on Tuesday at 2:19 p.m., they added another one to the clan—but this time it was a baby girl. Joe and Dana welcomed Evelyn Renee to join brothers Stephen (4), Daniel (3), and Francis (1).

“It was definitely different. Seeing a girl come out after three boys was a bit of a shock,” Joe told BaltimoreRavens.com. “Everybody is beyond overjoyed, beyond pumped.” During every pregnancy, the couple has waited to find out the sex of their baby. “I was keeping my fingers crossed,” Joe said. “You hear fathers getting scared about not having boys, but I was starting to get to the point that I was scared about not having a little girl. It’s just something I wanted.” Congrats to the Flacco family on the new addition!

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Arnold Palmer had many Baltimore connections.
Legendary golfer Arnold Palmer passed away on Sunday at age 87 and The Sun‘s Don Markus chronicled Palmer’s various connections to Baltimore over the years. Markus recounted that Palmer earned his first professional win in the 1956 Eastern Invitations Open at Mt. Pleasant, played for more than 1,000 people in 1972 at the Pine Ridge Golf Course for a charity event, and made his last public appearance five years ago for a Maryland Special Olympics fundraiser at Martin’s West.

“I love Baltimore,” Palmer told The Sun prior to that 2011 event. “I think it’s one of the great cities in America. I’m big on the seafood.”

Another fun piece of trivia is that the iced tea/lemonade hybrid drink named after Palmer was rumored to be first invented at a local pub here in town.

“[People at the next table] asked what he was drinking, and he said, ‘Half iced tea and half lemonade,’ and she said ‘That sounds, great, what do you call it?,” PR executive David Nevins told The Sun. “Arnie said, ‘It doesn’t have a name, it’s just that she ran out of ice tea when she was pouring it. The woman said, ‘I’m going to order the same thing and call it ‘The Arnold Palmer.’ From that day on, it caught fire.”

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Barack Obama talks about the “Phelps face.”
Thursday was Team USA Day at the White House and many of the American Olympians who competed in Rio were present, including Bethesda’s Katie Ledecky and Clarkesville native and Paralympian Tatyana McFadden. President Barack Obama gave a speech in which he discussed specific accomplishments of the athletes and a couple of Marylanders got a shout-out. First he talked about Ledecky’s phenomenal swimming performance.

“Then then there’s this young woman named Katie Ledecky,” Obama said. “She obliterates her own records in the 400- and 800-freestyle, and lapped the field in the 800. Did you watch it on TV? Like there was nobody else in the pool. Crazy!”

A few minutes later, President Obama mentioned Michael Phelps, who wasn’t in attendance, presumably still at the Ryder Cup in Minnesota. (I guess the White House is old hat at this point.)

“Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian of all time, breaking a 2,000-year-old record for most individual titles,” Obama said. “If you’re breaking a 2,000-year record, that’s pretty impressive. If they have to go back to the Greeks, that’s an impressive record.”

The President—on stage with First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, and Paralympic soccer player Josh Brunais—went on for 15 minutes about how proud he is of Team USA before cracking just one more joke.

“I could talk about this forever,” he said. “But if I keep going longer, I could get ‘Phelps Face’ from you guys.”

U.S. Lacrosse celebrates move to new headquarters in Sparks.
A good news/bad news/but mostly good news kind of thing. U.S. Lacrosse, the national governing body for the sport, moved from the Johns Hopkins University’s campus, which served as its home since 1998, to northern Baltimore County this spring where it has space to grow. The new 12-acre center—following a $15 million private capital campaign—includes not only the Lacrosse Museum and National Lacrosse Hall of Fame, and various admin offices, but outdoor training facilities for national men’s and women’s teams.

This past grand opening weekend featured several matches, including an exhibition game between the lacrosse teams of the Fire Department of New York and the New York Police Department as the sport honored the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

Michael Phelps goes full Eminem on Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle.
We’re just going to leave this here without comment on the celebrity-sports-media-entertainment complex:

Zach Britton saves American League’s All-Star win.
Though we really shouldn’t be surprised, our very own Zach Britton closed out a 4-2 American League victory with a scoreless ninth inning in Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Britton is a perfect 27-for-27 in save opportunities this year and go to show off his skills for the last three at-bats of the game, ending with a double-play grounder that sealed the AL’s victory. In doing so, he became the second O’s pitcher to earn a save in the All-Star Game since Don Aese in 1986. More disappointing, however, were the Orioles position players, who combined for an 0-for-6 performance at the plate. One silver lining? Mark Trumbo reached on an error and had an impressive showing at the Home Run Derby the night before, clocking 30 dingers and making it to the semi-finals. Regardless, the moral of the story is that, with the American League’s win, the Orioles will have home-field advantage when they (inevitably) make it to the World Series this year.

Athletes + dogs = cute.
This formula is a no-brainer and one that we recently tested out when we visited two Orioles and their dogs at Camden Yards. (Check out the photos in the current July issue of Baltimore magazine.) And, as if we needed further proof, there were two news items relating to athletes and their pets this week. The first was that Ravens center Jeremy Zuttah and wife Heran included their dog Ace as a groomsman when they got married last month. Ace, donning a black-and-white doggie tux, put in some extra training at the Downtown Dog before walking down the aisle with Jeremy’s brother. “He’s awesome,” Heran told BaltimoreRavens.com. “I just could not imagine getting married without him.”

Plus, the Orioles announced this week that they’ll be giving away a bobblehead featuring Chris Davis and his English bulldog, Samson on August 20. The bobblehead—with Davis’s alter ego Crush and Samson with a bobbly head himself—will be given out to the first 25,000 fans ages 15 and older. That same night, the beloved Orioles pet calendar will go on sale at the park, with proceeds benefiting the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS).

Pokémon Go takes over everywhere.
I’m extremely hesitant to classify this as a sport. In fact, I’m hesitant to write about Pokémon Go at all. Age-wise, I completely missed this boat and I’ve heard far too many weird stories about people nearly getting hit by a car due to Pokémon overindulgence. But, alas, it’s a thing. And these creatures(?) are seemingly everywhere in Baltimore. They’ve been hanging out with the Kooper’s Chowhound Food Truck. Patterson Park is apparently crawling with them. There have been some lurking on the water in Harbor East. Local app Loople is hosting a Pokémon bar crawl this Saturday. I am honestly afraid to think which ones could be near me right now.

Good luck catching them or whatever, but just remember to look up every once in a while.

“Ya sama!” As she walked around the orphanage on her hands,
her arms acting as legs, the cheerful, bright-eyed, brown-haired little
girl would repeat the Russian saying over and over. “Ya sama, ya sama,” she’d proudly proclaim. “I can do it myself.”
That Tatyana McFadden is even alive is remarkable. Born in St.
Petersburg, Russia, with her spinal cord outside her body, she was
abandoned by her birth mother, essentially left to die. That she
survived those critical first three weeks, when her spina bifida was
ignored, then emerged from countless surgeries stronger; when she found a
soulmate in the form of her adoptive mother, Deborah McFadden, who took
her home to Clarksville, where she went on to achieve unprecedented
athletic success—all of it could be called miraculous.

But nothing
about McFadden’s accomplishments—winning last year’s Grand Slam
(victories in the Boston, London, Chicago, and New York marathons, a
feat never before done), the track world championships, and the
Paralympic medals, which she hopes to add to next month in Sochi,
Russia—is the result of some shadowy preordination.

McFadden has
reached the pinnacle of wheelchair racing the same way almost all
exceptional athletes achieve greatness: by expending sweat, maximizing
her natural talent, and cashing in on a little bit of luck.

She
possesses a rare combination of physical superiority and mental
determination, traits she displayed at age five in that orphanage a
world away.

“My past has a strong influence on where I am today,”
says McFadden, 24, who is paralyzed from the waist down. “Coming from
nothing, I was able to survive. You have to work hard. There’s nothing
disabled about me. I live life just like everybody else. I drive a car. I
love to go to the beach. I don’t think people should be classified as
disabled. You can always find ways to do things, even if you happen to
be different.”

Tatyana McFadden most certainly is different.

Throughout
McFadden’s college years, which ended on December 20 when she delivered
a commencement speech at the University of Illinois, from which she
graduated with a degree in human development and family services, her
alarm would sound around 7 a.m. (an hour when many undergraduates are
just hitting the REM stage). She worked out six days a week, spending an
average of two to three hours training.

The results are striking.
McFadden, who can bench-press 200 pounds (she weighs just 105), has a
chiseled physique that can intimidate competitors on sight. Her biceps
bulge; her cut shoulders show the effect of countless reps.

Yet
her strongest attribute is her mind. She seemingly never tires, never
allows the pushing and the pain to get the best of her.

“When
I started racing, I wanted to prove something,” she says. “I wanted to
prove that with training, hard work, and dedication, you can be the
best.”

Her legendary vigor in the gym and on the track has earned
her the nickname “The Beast.” Coupled with her charming smile and warm,
humble spirit, perhaps “Beauty and the Beast” is more appropriate. At
the ESPYs, the ESPN awards show for which she’s been nominated for
honors multiple times, superstar athletes such as Adrian Peterson of the
Minnesota Vikings flocked to be photographed with her.

It was at
that event in Los Angeles that she introduced herself to a colleague of
John Farra, high performance director of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic
skiing team.

“She said, ‘I want to be a Nordic skier,'” Farra
says. “He joked with her and said, ‘Nobody wants to be a Nordic skier,
that sport’s too tough.’ She said, ‘Well, you just don’t know who I am
then.’ She is wonderfully stubborn, which all great athletes need to
be.”

After winning three track gold medals at the London
Paralympics in 2012, McFadden abruptly announced that she was going to
compete in an entirely new sport. And not just any sport, but the
notoriously cold and taxing one of Nordic skiing. Later that year,
McFadden, no fan of frigid weather, won a national cross-country skiing
sprint title after only a few weeks of training.

“The biggest part
of our sport that you can’t fake is the fitness,” Farra says. “That’s a
part that she clearly has. She has incredible physiological capacity
and strength, but she needs to find ways to become more efficient with
that energy she’s spending. We think once it clicks, that’s going to be a
big factor in her climbing closer to the podium. She knows that she’s
not even close to maximizing her capacities in skiing.”

Yet, in
December, she placed 7th at the World Cup in Canada. The event was held
in the middle of a dizzying few months for McFadden, who hopped from
Illinois home to Maryland for three days around Christmas, then to Utah
for the U.S. Championships, then to Europe for competitions before
Sochi.

It’s an exhausting lifestyle, but for a woman who as a girl feared she’d never go anywhere, there’s no time to rest.

As
commissioner of disabilities at the Department of Health and Human
Services under President George H.W. Bush, Deborah McFadden traveled
extensively, evaluating organizations that might receive U.S. aid. It
was during one of those trips that she happened upon Tatyana at a dreary
orphanage with metal cribs, peeling lead paint, little food, and no
toys.

“She was crawling on the floor with a big bow in her hair
and a sparkle in her eyes,” Deborah says. “I had her sit on my lap, and
she asked me in Russian about my camera. It’s strange because I never
had in my mind the thought of adopting, let alone a 6-year-old who is
paralyzed from the waist down. I spent the day there and just had a
great time. I went back to my hotel room that night and couldn’t get her
off my mind. It was something very strange.”

A similar revelation was occurring that night at the orphanage.

“When
my mom walked through that door, we had an instant connection,” Tatyana
says. “Something with my instincts went off, and I told everyone that
she was going to be my mom. I really do believe in fate. It changed
everything.”

The adoption process took about a year. When Tatyana
arrived in the U.S. with her new mom, she underwent a number of
surgeries on her legs, which were atrophied behind her back. Doctors
worried that Tatyana might not live a long life, so hoping to build her
strength, Deborah enrolled her daughter in the Physically Challenged
Sports Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

Run
by Gerry Herman and his wife, Gwena, the program provides therapeutic
sports and recreational programs for children with varying degrees of
physical abilities. From the moment she first merrily splashed around in
the swimming pool, it was clear Tatyana had found her niche.

“It
was her genetics in terms of her physical attributes that set her apart
right away,” Gerry Herman says. “Taking up a new sport she may not have
had the skills, but she was able to move faster than anybody else. She
used to win swim meets just by moving her arms faster than everyone
else, not necessarily because she was a good swimmer. She’d get to the
end of the pool first—it wasn’t pretty, but she was faster. It was
basically just a matter of which sport she wanted to choose to be the
best at.”

McFadden competed in basketball, hockey, and swimming,
but track was her favorite. The thrill of speeding in her wheelchair,
nothing but the wind in front of her and competitors behind, couldn’t be
topped.

“I never wanted any help,” she says. “I didn’t want
people picking up the ball for me, I wanted to bounce on the trampoline
on my own. I was able to do that through sports. If I had never gotten
involved in sports, I don’t know where I would be today.”

The 2004
Paralympics in Athens was McFadden’s first foray into international
competition. An inexperienced and nervous 15-year-old, she nonetheless
won the silver medal in the 100 meters (and the bronze in the 200). The
world’s second-fastest woman in a wheelchair was not yet able to drive a
car.

“Being on that stand with a silver medal, I knew I wanted to
bring myself to another level,” she says. “I knew this was something I
wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

McFadden has gone on to win
eight more Paralympic medals, and her mother’s house is jammed with
trophies from her other triumphs. One that she does not have, however,
is the gold medal from her victory at the 2010 New York City Marathon.

Soon
after that win, Tatyana asked her mom to take her to Russia, back to
the orphanage she still remembers quite well. To this day, the smell of
cabbage, a frequent meal along with potatoes, conjures memories of her
former home.

As the children at the orphanage gathered around her,
she took out the medal and said, “This is very, very special. Few
people have it. If you wear it, everyone knows you’re the best of the
best,” her mother recalls. She then turned to the director, Natalia
Vasilievma, the same woman who cared for her when no one could have
possibility predicted this future, and gave her the gold.

“I can’t
think of anyone who deserves it any more than you, because you saved my
life,” Tatyana told her. “Someday I’ll win another.”

The next time she returns to her native land, McFadden plans on adding to her medal collection.

“I
was born in Russia, so going back and competing in Sochi, it will have a
special place in my heart,” she says. “I’m an athlete. I’m there to
represent America and do the best that I can.”

In some ways the
term “individual sports” contradicts itself. No one reaches the top
without help from others, and the love of her mother, support of her
sisters, camaraderie of friends and teammates, dedication of coaches,
and divine hand of fate all aided McFadden in her momentous journey.

But
when she’s in her wheelchair crossing the finish line of a sprint or a
marathon first, or in her ski sled propelling herself through the ice
and snow faster than anyone else, she’s there primarily because of her
own desire, motivation, and drive.

She’s done it herself.