There’s a collective sense of heartbreak being felt among players, fans, and the entire city as the Orioles head into their home opener at Camden Yards. Last night, only hours after it was announced that he had been awarded the Wild Bill Hagy Award and elected into the Orioles Hall of Fame, sports superfan Mossila “Mo” Gaba passed away at the age of 14 after his fifth battle with cancer.

Gaba lost his eyesight to a malignant tumor when he was an infant, but his infectious laughter and positive attitude made him a shining light of positivity for sports fans in Baltimore and beyond. He was known for his frequent calls to local sports talk-radio shows and sideline visits with players at the stadiums. He was also honored as the first person to read off an NFL Draft selection from a Braille card in 2019.

Gaba’s outlook on life was perhaps summed up best in a 2018 interview conducted by outfielder Trey Mancini, one of Gaba’s closest friends and supporters: “Every day when I wake up in the morning, I always feel like I’m going to achieve something that’s pretty cool,” Gaba said then, sitting in his wheelchair on the field at Camden Yards. “I just think positive.”

Many local athletes and community members have taken to social media to share tributes to Gaba and send condolences to his mom, Sonsy, and the rest of his family.

The day he heard that the NBA was shutting down, Orioles pitcher Branden Kline knew that coronavirus lockdowns were catching up to professional sports, but he didn’t realize just how quickly they would come for spring training.

“That day we had a game,” he remembers. “We were on the bus going to Fort Myers to play the Twins. About 10 minutes later they turned the bus around to go back. That’s when it sunk in: Oh crap, this is real.”

Major League Baseball had also shut down. Kline hung around the Sarasota facilities for a week or so and then realized there was no point in staying. He went home to Augusta, Georgia, to be with his wife, Sarah, and almost 3-year-old daughter, Adalyn (or Addy).

Kline has relished the time with his “girls,” as he calls them—the greatest silver lining of this whole pandemic. He’s been cooking more—learning marinades, Instant Pot recipes, and mastering his best dish, a chicken thigh wrapped in bacon with sweet potato—and cleaning, too. He’s also been amazed at how much destruction a little 2-year-old girl can do.

Kline calls himself a coffee connoisseur—“or coffee snob, if you prefer”—and has been learning more about different kinds of beans, from different roasteries and regions. He’s also getting into wine, learning about how factors like sun, temperature, and time of harvest can affect the taste.

“That’s the kind of thing that fascinates me, in a nerdy way,” he says.

Despite living in Augusta, home of the Masters, he says he’s not a great golfer—yet.

“If you saw me play right now you would throw up,” he cracks. But he’s determined to get good. It’s the competitor in him (his father and brother-in-law are both pretty decent golfers).

For entertainment, he and Sarah just finished Netflix’s The English Game, about the early days of soccer, which he recommends. And they’ve taken on a massive undertaking: rewatching every Marvel film, from the beginning.

“That’s been time consuming,” he admits.

Mostly, he’s been hanging out with Addy, whom he says is always sunny and happy, and lifts his spirits “except for when she’s tired or hungry,” he chuckles. “Then she can be a little bit of a monster.”

Addy even became something of an online sensation when she was featured in the Orioles “Story Time” video series. The mop-topped cutie, dressed in dinosaur jammies, sat on her father’s lap us he started to read Lizzie the Lioness.

“Mama’s gonna read book!” she announced.

“Mama’s going to read book later,” Kline replied.

He subsequently got to the bottom of it:

“We found out that my wife would also sing her a couple of lullabies [after story time],” he says. “So I looked up the lyrics to some of her favorite lullabies [and sang them to her]. Ever since then, she’s had no problem saying Daddy Reads Books!”

Kline, who stays in touch with his teammates through video calls, has even managed to find some creative ways to stay in shape while cooped up at home.

“I’ve used Addy herself as gym equipment,” he says. “I’ll put her on my back to do some squats and pushups, just some core stuff. She has a field day with it.”

He’s also incorporated his lab-shepherd mix, Zoey, into the routine. In one video that he posted to Instagram, Kline does squats while holding the large, heavy dog, who dangles gamely. (He even added the hashtag: #NoGymNoProblem.) Kline says he was lucky to capture that moment on film.

“Ever since then, I can’t hold her for more than 20 seconds without her going ballistic on me,” he says.

As Kline waits to hear when MLB will start back up, he has been thinking a lot about his teammate Trey Mancini, who is undergoing treatment for colon cancer.

“I love the guy,” says Kline. “I always will. The biggest thing that [his teammates are] expressing to Trey is that we’re always with him. He’s not in this fight alone. He’s such a high-spirited young man. It’s incredible. Even with this devastating news, he’s still looking at the positives. I look forward to being able to see him again. Hopefully, when this is all said and done, we can be back to talking about Trey Mancini on the baseball field.”

Trey Mancini was still woozy from the anesthesia, and when he woke up in the doctor’s office in Florida, his girlfriend, Sara, was squeezing his hand.

Then the doctor began to speak, matter-of-factly—as the 27-year-old Mancini describes it in a first-person essay he published in The Players’ Tribune this week— about the results of the emergency colonoscopy he’d just undergone.

He started by eliminating all the possible things it could have been…Before he even said the word cancer I was thinking to myself, there’s no way that he’s about to say what I think he’s about to say.

And then he said it: They had found a malignant tumor in my colon. My dad’s an OB-GYN. I’m familiar with the way doctors talk. I knew immediately that this was real.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t shocking.

This was in February, just weeks after Mancini—the Orioles most established player and biggest fan-favorite on the current roster—arrived in Sarasota seemingly healthy for his seventh spring training with the team. He was coming off the best year of his pro career.

Stage three cancer? In his 20s? He had felt a bit more sluggish than usual during practices in Florida, but didn’t think anything was seriously wrong. He had already chalked his tiredness up to old(er) age, though he was excited, too.

Even the doctors, before the colonoscopy, paired with an endoscopy—where they thread a tiny camera down your throat and into your intestines—said they were expecting to most likely confirm that he had celiac disease, based on a pair of blood tests that showed he had low iron levels.

And less than a month before all that, Mancini was enjoying the last bit of the off-season in Miami with friends for Super Bowl week in late January. We spoke with him then, for a story in the April issue of Baltimore, and talked mostly about the ins and outs of the O’s data-driven organizational overhaul.

But, as we finished, we chatted casually about non-baseball matters, too. Health was not one of them. Was the O’s first baseman and outfielder actually going to the big game? “No, no,” he said, almost stunned at the suggestion. “I think the cheapest ticket is like five grand. I like watching on TV anyway, so I think I’m just going to do that.”

The response was typical, humble, and down-to-earth Mancini. He probably wanted to see the commercials as much as the game itself. The $5 million per year deal he signed in January—a huge upgrade from a $575,000 per year salary in 2019—clearly hadn’t changed his outlook on life.

And, without any hyperbole or exaggeration, cancer still hasn’t warped his view. “I want everybody to know I’m O.K.,” he said in his essay.

A week after the colonoscopy, Mancini had surgery to remove the tumor. He then started receiving chemotherapy treatments on April 13, and will do so every two weeks for six months at a Baltimore hospital. “I would say I’ve been handling the chemo pretty well so far, so hopefully it stays that way,” he told us in a text on Thursday, after we shared a message of support.

But even if baseball were to return in 2020—if the COVID-19 pandemic eases in the weeks and months ahead, and large public gatherings are allowed again—Mancini says he would probably still miss the entire season. What’s more, during the social-distancing era, he can’t have any visitors in the room with him during treatments.

As he wrote:

I know reading everything and seeing that I had a malignant tumor removed from my colon, it’s a lot to absorb—believe me, I know.

I’m not really big on social media, but I posted a video on Instagram after my surgery because I wanted people to see that I looked like myself and I was in good spirits. And I have no doubt that, even when I’m doing chemo, I can work out and do some things. So, whenever the time comes for me to come back to baseball, I’ll be ready.

But I just want to make sure that I am physically fine before I go out there and start trying to perform again at a major league level. Don’t get me wrong—I have bad days. I ask, “Why me? Why now?” And that’s when Sara’s been really good about kicking me in the rear. But she doesn’t have to do that too often, because I truly know how blessed I really am.

Mostly, Mancini is thankful. He was already appreciative to the team that drafted him out of Notre Dame before all this. He’s repeatedly pledged his commitment to the Orioles’ rebuilding project over the last few seasons, even as he was paid close to the Major League Baseball minimum salary after finishing third in American League Rookie of the Year voting in 2017.

As the organization has transitioned from a veteran-heavy Buck Showalter-guided playoff contender to Baby Bird-flavored rebuild under new leadership of manager Brandon Hyde and general manager Mike Elias—no player, in fact, has been as publicly loyal to the franchise as Mancini has.

He was finally rewarded in January, with the more than $4 million raise, and says he still wants to be around for the long-haul.

“Of course, of course,” he said in January, when we had asked if he was happy to be with the team, in the wake of other valuable players like Jonathan Villar and Dylan Bundy getting traded in the offseason. “I’ve always, always loved my time in Baltimore and even in the minor league system from the second they drafted me, I’ve always loved it.”

And, practically speaking, without a routine pre-season physical ordered by the O’s, including blood tests, the cancer would have been even worse if discovered anytime soon at all. “There was really no indication that anything was wrong other than me just feeling a little more tired than normal,” he wrote in The Players Tribune. “Everything that comes up when you Google colon cancer? I didn’t have any of it.”

For that reason, Mancini—of course, with the perspective that he had—is already talking about becoming a spokesperson for for things just as simple as getting regular physicals. First, though, he has treatments of his own.

“I’ve got other things to worry about right now,” he says. “I know that. But still, every once in a while I catch myself thinking ahead—to when chemo is over, to when they remove my port, to when I can start going full-speed again.”

University of Maryland sophomore Jalen Smith, the 19-year-old former Mount St. Joseph’s star, typed out a message yesterday in an attempt to process the shocking news he’d just learned.

March Madness, the whole thing, cancelled.

It is, and the feeling applies to a lot of us at this point.

As novel coronavirus fears and prevention measures sweep the country, the NCAA—the national governing body of college athletics—made the unprecedented move on Thursday to cancel the 68-team men’s basketball tournament as part of a decision to end competitions in all spring sports.

It’s the first time in the 80-year history of the bracket-busting tournament that it won’t be played—and the news came quick. On Wednesday, it was announced March Madness games would be played without fans, which was weird enough to think about.

A day later, hundreds of thousands of college kids like Smith were digesting a sudden end to their seasons, and their entire playing careers, in some cases, like Terps senior captain Anthony Cowan, Jr. And Smith, too. He might test the NBA waters and enter the draft.

Business as usual in the U.S. is suspended for the time being. Many government officials have taken measures to limit public gatherings in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19—for which there’s no vaccine and specifically impacts those over the age of 60 and those with underlying medical conditions.

That goes for events like weddings, court trials, conferences, and schools. After the Big Ten conference cancelled the rest of its spring seasons earlier on Thursday, Maryland coach Mark Turgeon released a statement saying that “the health and safety of our student athletes and entire program is paramount. This is an unprecedented situation that is much bigger than basketball.”

It sure is. In the local sports world alone, Orioles opening day, as directed by Major League Baseball, has been pushed back for at least two weeks. Spring training games in Florida have been cancelled, though the team will still practice and continue precautions they began last week.

And the postseason hopes of teams from colleges like Maryland, Loyola, Johns Hopkins, Towson and many others are now over before players even took the field. Same goes in the ranks of public schools throughout the state, which will be closed for at least the next two weeks.

Mancini has tumor removed; Awaits test results

Meanwhile, all the coronavirus news has overshadowed another big piece of news with the Orioles this week.

Trey Mancini, the team’s most established figure and a fan-favorite, had surgery yesterday to remove a malignant tumor from his colon. He expects lab results back next week, and there’s no timetable for a recovery yet. He left the team last week after a colonoscopy revealed the tumor.

Mancini, 27, shared his thanks with everyone who sent messages and notes of encouragement. “The outpouring of love and support I have received has made an extremely tough week so much better,” he said. “I have the best family, friends, fans, and teammates imaginable.”

Yanda retires from the Ravens

Finally, longtime Ravens offensive lineman and potential future Hall-of-Famer Marshal Yanda formally announced his retirement—and look, his buddy Joe Flacco returned to Owings Mills for the press conference at the Ravens practice facility…

The Ravens have already announced that Yanda will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor at M&T Bank Stadium. Until then, we’ll remember the scene of the grizzled, sweaty, and frustrated 13-year-pro in the Ravens’ locker room after their shocking early playoff exit against the Tennessee Titans in January. That showed the type of person he is.

Yanda was adamant at calling out Titans rookie defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons for allegedly spitting in Yanda’s face during the game. “I just want to put him on notice in the media,” Yanda said. “I’ve never done this in my career, but I just wanted to let you know there’s a right way and a wrong way to play football, and that guy did not do it the right way today.”

Turns out the notice was a parting gift.

A few weeks ago, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde spoke to us by phone from his home in Illinois (where he used to work for the Chicago Cubs) and—especially considering the snow falling outside his door—he said he was already picturing the images of spring training.

Ah, sunny Florida. Baseball all day on beautifully manicured fields. The crack of wooden bats. Technology like motion-capture video cameras capturing pitchers’ every throw. And, generally speaking, all of the things that will go into year two of the Orioles’ ballyhooed rebuilding project.

“After the first of the year, your mind always starts racing,” said Hyde, 46, who has been coaching in major league organizations since 2005 and is now in his second season as O’s manager. “You start thinking about spring training and the season a lot. So I’m definitely ready.”

There’s a lot to think about this year, as hope springs anew.

A generous group of 66 players has been invited to the team’s preseason facility in Sarasota this year. The new front-office regime, led by former Houston Astros scouting director Mike Elias and director of decision sciences (real job title) Sig Mejdal, now have a full season behind them—one with 108 losses. They’re just now really putting their stamp on the organization.

The big picture includes stocking the Orioles’ minor league rosters with talent. Catcher Adley Rutschman, last year’s No. 1 overall draft pick, is the most notable.

And it means building for the future, like when this offseason Elias traded second baseman Jonathan Villar and pitcher Dylan Bundy, who had been one of the longest-tenured O’s, for pitching prospects.

Rebuilding also means figuring out what to do with the second overall pick in this summer’s draft, as well as investing in an analytics operation and international scouting efforts in places like Venezuela—which were behind the times under previous front-office leadership.

And doing all that while, hopefully, putting a respectable team together on the field in the present.

“We’re looking at this season through a player development lens,” Elias said during a recent interview for a story slated for an upcoming issue of Baltimore, “but we also want to have a good atmosphere at the major league level.”

In the meantime, before we start thinking about deep playoff runs and reliving the glory days of 2014, there’s a lot of games to be played. To be precise, 162 a season plus nearly two months of spring training games and practices—which are just kicking off. Pitchers and catchers, and a few other position players like the team’s most established and visible figure, Trey Mancini, arrived in Sarasota this week.

Other names are likely off the casual fans’ radar, but some may crack the lineup at some point this season—particularly infielder Ryan Mountcastle, left-handed pitcher Keegan Akin, and California native pitcher Dean Kremer, who was part of the trade that sent Manny Machado to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2018.

“I think you’re going to start seeing some of our farm guys break through to the big leagues,” Hyde said.

And there’s others who got seasoning at the top level last year and are back for more, like outfielders Austin Hays, Anthony Santander (subject of the U.K. Boy Scouts’ fan club), and infielder Hanser Alberto.

There’s plenty of big questions, too. Most notably, who will be the team’s starting catcher, how will the O’s pitching hold up, and what does Chris Davis look like this year? (Please don’t boo him on Opening Day, people.)

As for the highest-profile of prospects, that’s Rutschman, who this time last year was in college at Oregon State. But he’s already becoming a visible face of the O’s rebuild. In roughly a month last summer, the O’s promoted him twice up the minor league system, and he impressed with the Aberdeen IronBirds and Delmarva Shorebirds. Over the last week, he was part of the O’s preseason caravan across the Baltimore area, engaging with fans and even serving drinks, to the best of his ability…

Rutschman recently got the TMZ treatment (he looked slightly peeved, do these guys even introduce themselves?) at Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C., and told the paparazzi he wants to play in Camden Yards as soon as possible. Elias said he’s been very impressed with Rutschman, and is looking forward to having him at spring training.

“I think it will be nice for the big league staff to get a look at him, but also it will be good experience for a young guy like him,” Elias said. “He still has the entire minor league career ahead of him. There’s ups and downs and every pick is different, but we’re excited to have him. He’s got a great head on his shoulders.”

Elias has done this before, being part of build-by-numbers and scouting projects with Houston and the St. Louis Cardinals. His previous employer, the Astros, of course, have become the subject of scrutiny and attention—even beyond baseball—for a sign-stealing scandal during their 2017 World Series-winning season and the early part of 2018.

Elias and Mejdal were both part of the organization at the time. But as we reported a few weeks ago, neither were mentioned in major league baseball’s report that punished the Astros’ general manager, Jeff Luhnow, and manager A.J. Hinch, and set off a media firestorm that seems to only be intensifying as the preseason begins.

Asked if he knew about the situation when he was in Houston, Elias told us, “My work and focus was with the Astros’ was the minor leagues, the international scouting department, the domestic scouting department, and I’ll leave it at that,” he said. “It’s an issue that I’m glad baseball is rectifying.”

Unless he knows something about Fort McHenry’s future that we don’t, John Angelos—the Orioles top executive and son of Peter, the team’s principal owner—appeared to put all of the rumors of Baltimore’s beloved baseball team moving out of town someday soon to bed last week.

“No, no,” Angelos—the Baltimore native, a trial lawyer like his father, who is in charge of the Orioles day-to-day business—went on record saying from a big comfy chair during a panel discussion at Visit Baltimore’s annual meeting at M&T Bank Stadium. It was as good a time as any to refute the speculation.

“As long as Fort McHenry is watching over the harbor, the Orioles will be in Baltimore,” Angelos said in his first public comments since last month’s buzz that the team was either looking to relocate (and even had a likely new home in Nashville or Las Vegas) or would be for sale (which, reading closely, wasn’t ruled out in Angelos’ wonderful anthropomorphic statement.)

The questions stem from a confluence of uncertainties including 90-year-old Peter Angelos’ reported declining health and an unknown (at least publicly) ownership succession plan; the rebuilding state of the club; the ongoing legal dispute over television rights fees with the Washington Nationals; and, most prominently, the fact that the Orioles haven’t yet signed an agreement to play at Camden Yards after their current lease runs out in two years.

Those still scarred from the Colts’ middle-of-the-night move to the Midwest more than 30 years ago might say they’ve heard a claim like Angelos’ before, only to experience the opposite.

“I have not any intentions of moving the goddamn team,” the Colts’ then-owner Robert Irsay said during an infamous press conference, standing alongside former mayor William Donald Schaefer in January 1984 at BWI Airport. “If I did, I will tell you about it, but I’m staying here.” Two months later, fearing state seizure of the team, the Mayflower trucks packed with Colts gear and office equipment rolled out of town amid snowflakes, leaving the city sensitive to relocation rumors.

But the present circumstances are different and not as immediately concerning. Both the Colts and Orioles were seeking a new, joint stadium back then—the O’s already have a beautiful, fully capable home now, which ultimately arose from those talks—though the future, again, is uncomfortably unknown.

The Orioles’ lease with the Maryland Stadium Authority states the team can’t move from Baltimore until the current 30-year term ends in 2021, and the team has a five-year renewal option. But negotiations on a new agreement have been held up, according to a letter Governor Larry Hogan sent to Major League Baseball last year, due to the O’s never-ending multi-million dollar legal battle with the Nationals over the rightful owner of a years’ worth of MASN revenue.

Despite the money and politics involved, many fans are optimistic. It’s hard to imagine anything other than baseball happening at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, aside from a few concerts. And color me skeptical that general manager Mike Elias and assistant GM and former NASA engineer Sig Mejdal would have taken jobs here if they knew they’d be moving anytime soon. Their aptitude for gauging probabilities and risk-reward ratios is too good for that.

In any event, and thankfully, season one of this nascent, ballyhooed build-by-numbers revival is now finished. The O’s long baseball year ended on Sunday with a 5-4 loss to the Red Sox in Boston. Fifty-four wins. One hundred and eight losses. The team would have ghosted into the offseason, had it not been for this Steve Wilkerson spectacular catch, navigating one of Fenway Park’s sharp old-timey features while taking away a home run in centerfield. “Greatest HR robbery ever,” dude.

The play speaks to one major takeaway from this year: We can’t say the 2019 edition of the Orioles quit, even if players sometimes felt like they wanted to.

Sure, there was the Chris Davis mid-game blowup in the dugout (after a fielding gaffe, of all things). Davis would have done something he’d later regret to first-year manager Brandon Hyde had big Mark Trumbo and hitting coach Don Long not intervened. “That was really kind of the breaking point,” Davis said later, and frankly, we don’t blame him. His season started with a chorus of boos, a historic hitting slump, and ended with 139 strikeouts, a .179 batting average, 12 homers, and continued talk about his albatross of a contract, which has three years, $51 million (and $42 million in deferred payments in the 15 years following) still to go.

There were also the MLB-record 305 home runs that the Orioles pitching staff allowed, a number that demolished the previous mark of 258 (and a rate of almost two per game.) The Yankees’ Glayber Torres hit 13 of them, and the Astros’ Carlos Correa hit the longest homer tracked in Camden Yards history, 474 feet to centerfield.

The Baby Birds’ weekly transaction report resembled a yo-yo of players to and from Baltimore and the minor league affiliates in Norfolk, Bowie, Frederick, wherever. The O’s used 38 pitchers this season. In the statistics that most non-analytics folk are familiar with, only John Means finished with a winning record (12-11) and a close-to-respectable earned run average (3.60). Wilkerson threw five innings, and he was not the only position player to take the mound. Which is to say, the O’s are still looking for help at the game’s most important spot.

But—and this might be the optimists’ view—wasn’t this season not as bad as you thought?

The Orioles somehow won 54 games. That was anywhere from one to five less than the Las Vegas sportsbooks’ preseason predictions, but the overall record was better than last year’s brutal, franchise-worst 47-115 number. And that team had expectations of another potential Buck Showalter-led playoff run.

There’s some more good news: One of the few holdovers from the Buck era, first baseman Trey Mancini, is still with us. So is second baseman Jonathan Villar, the only Oriole to play in all 162 games. Means was a surprise all-star. Stories and possible parts of the rebuild emerged like outfielders Austin Hays and Anthony Santander (San. Tan. Dare.), who famously entertained a group of about 4,000 kids from the United Kingdom in leftfield in the dog days of summer. The Brits are apparently more grateful for a free ball than us. (Speaking of that, good for the O’s for extending foul-ball netting into the outfield.)

There’s hope you can believe in, too, namely in catcher Adley Rutschman, who the O’s drafted first overall out of Oregon State University in June. His highlights in the minor leagues made this summer somewhat bearable as the big club’s losses piled up, but also embodied the idea that this Oriole-ball project is going to take time.

Only recently did Elias begin to make sweeping front office personnel changes, as expected, firing 14 people last month (including Showalter’s son, Nathan, who was somehow still on staff as a scout), and hiring his own people like new director of player development Matt Blood. “I anticipate many more hires and additions to our baseball operations department as we proceed into the offseason,” Elias said.

Mancini, the most defined of the O’s puzzle pieces, told us something last year that continues to ring true. “It’s a process,” he said of the rebuild. “It’s not going to happen overnight. You have to get some of the right guys, people have to click, and unfortunately, it might take a couple years. That’s usually the case.”

Unfortunately, is right. Losing more than a hundred games a year, no matter how much you’re paid to play, coach, or watch a kids’ game, isn’t easy on anyone’s health. Take one night a few weeks ago, the O’s fourth to last home game of the year. It was around 10:30 p.m., and at the start of the bottom of the ninth inning, the Orioles led the Toronto Blue Jays by four runs. Maybe a thousand fans were left in the stadium. It felt almost like an open practice.

With the game’s outcome seemingly decided and a newborn baby at home, I left the press box, and headed down the stairs to get to the team’s clubhouse a little early. The Oriole Bird had the same idea. The mascot soon emerged from a nearby staging room in the bowels of Camden Yards with a big black-and-orange flag that he or she waves after wins, and the feathered animal of joy jogged down a hallway toward the field.

But soon, as I watched on a small television with a few team employees and stadium security guards, relief pitcher Miguel Castro had walked the bases loaded. One run scored first. Then, someone named Randal Grichuk hit a crushing, two-out grand slam into the mostly empty left-field stands that put the Blue Jays ahead 10-9.

In a sad yet terribly appropriate and telling image, the Bird came running back down the hall. The O’s ended up losing by 11-10 in a game that took more than four hours to finish. It was as demoralizing a defeat as we’ve ever seen, and a reminder of how much time there might be before the O’s consistently win again.

The first impression of this Orioles season was the stunned silence from the crowd at Yankee Stadium during player introductions of our dear visiting team. So many new names, they didn’t know who anyone was. Or maybe it was simply apathy. Only Chris Davis’ name and likeness elicited a few boos.

At the same time, first-year manager Brandon Hyde felt a little bit differently, as he stood on the third-base line and started to soak in the reality of the situation. It’s the start of, well, everything new compared to last year’s edition of the Orioles. Most of the players; there were seven new starters, and 11 of the 25 in uniform made their first Opening Day roster. All of the coaches. The general approach to baseball. The expectations. “When they say your name,” during introductions, Hyde said afterward, “that kind of hits you a little bit.”

It was an appropriate welcome to the Orioles’ 2019 baseball season, and came ahead of an expected result: A loss, 7-2, in New York to the talent-laden Yankees, one of this year’s World Series favorites, as usual.

The Baby Birds, meanwhile, at the start of an ambitious rebuild plan under the leadership of a new data-driven front office regime, are the longest of long shots to win the title (it sounds silly even to write that phrase, “win the title”). Odds are as big as 2,000-to-1 at last check of the Las Vegas sports books. A few free-wheeling, or desperate, souls have placed that wild bet.

Back here in reality, here’s three big takeaways from the O’s season-opener:

Say it with us, the theme for 2019! “We’re trying to elevate the talent level of the organization.”

The mantra for this season is not exactly something you’d print and put on the back of a t-shirt for a Little League team, much less a Major League one. But is it the truth. New Orioles general manager Mike Elias said the words once again, during a second-inning appearance in the MASN broadcast booth.

Translation: This year is not about winning. This season is about the next three or four seasons as much as it is 2019.

This can be a hard concept for a fan to accept the day after the first game of a six-month, 162-game schedule. But Elias and the O’s leadership have and will continue to preach patience in their long-term vision for sustained success, of building a strong minor league system, developing players, making a hard run at international scouting, and hitting on draft picks (hopefully high ones).

We still think Adam Jones was worth having around—he hit a home run yesterday, by the way, for Arizona—but “we don’t want to be a one-year wonder,” Elias says (and poof, images of the 2014 Orioles, and Nelson Cruz belting 40 home runs then leaving in free agency that offseason, come to mind). That’s a blueprint that’s worked in his previous stops in Houston and St. Louis, both teams that won World Series championships while he and numbers wizard, O’s assistant GM Sig Mejdal worked there.

Time will tell exactly how hard the games are to watch this season. Given the “talent level of the organization” relative to the rest of pro baseball right now, after the dismantling of last year’s core amid a historically bad year, there might be 100-plus losses again.

Thursday’s start, which included a 428-foot three-run homer in the bottom of the first inning by Luke Voit, one of the cartoonish mammoth Yankees (sunflower seeds, much?), off the bearded Andrew Cashner, was not a great sign. But as best you can manage, keep the long term in mind.

The Bright Spots

There were a few.

Trey Mancini, three years removed from being a rookie and now the grizzled veteran of this team, looked like it. In the lineup as designated hitter and batting fourth, he went 3-for-4, scored the Orioles first run and knocked in their second.

Third baseman Rio Ruiz, a 24-year-old, drove home Mancini for that first score in the top of the fourth inning and in the bottom half made a nice defensive play, stopping a line drive.

Shortstop Richie Martin, who last season played 118 games in the minors for the Oakland A’s affiliate in Midland, Texas, and was one of two O’s making his major league debut, helped turn a double play. Reliever David Hess was effective.

The highlight of the day was probably Joey Rickard’s diving catch in right field. Overall, the O’s defense looked pretty good.

Chris Davis, um . . .

He picked up where he left off. The strikeouts continue. Three of them. Already.

Davis batted seventh in the O’s order, a move Hyde made for a reason, and was pinch hit for in the ninth inning. “I’m going to try to do everything I can to take pressure off him,” the manager said of the guy with $92 million and four years left on his contract, coming off one of the all-time worst hitting seasons in baseball history. (Right. No pressure.)

Davis’ story is fascinating. One day we’ll really find out how Crush’s stroke and confidence completely unraveled, but for now, he’s a representative part of what might be the real O’s theme for 2019: Hope.

Davis is our primary emotional connection on the current roster to recent glory days. (Remember, Jimmy’s Seafood offered Davis, his children, and grandchildren free crab cakes for life for a reason.) We hope he can find some kind of respectable form to stave off the internet memes and comments that began instantly upon his first strikeout yesterday.

And, for the next six months, we hope the O’s do the best they can, give us some fun and enough reasons to watch, while we believe in the promise of a better future.

It’s sad, but true. The consensus among Las Vegas sports books—and they typically know a thing or two about how games and seasons unfold—is our Baltimore Orioles have the longest odds at winning next year’s World Series.

Anywhere from 350-to-1 to 300-to-1, they say.

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but it still hurts. The Orioles are in major rebuild mode, and haven’t hired a manager, or a permanent general manager just yet, to lead a roster comprised of what are largely unproven players—and all that after a 115-loss season and the painful teardown of what we knew as the Old Guard. Buck. Manny. Adam. And the rest. (Okay, this is the last time we’ll write their names. Maybe.)

“It’s a process. It’s not going to happen overnight. In baseball, when you’re rebuilding, it takes some time,” first baseman Trey Mancini said on the last day of the season. “You have to get some of the right guys, people have to click, and unfortunately, it might take a couple years. That’s usually the case.”

A couple years? Really? Yes, another one in the sad, but true department. And as each day passes, those low expectations for the start of a new era of O’s baseball unfortunately become more real. Buck (Okay, last time we mention him, really) returned to town a few weeks ago to hold a previously scheduled charity event at Camden Yards, and he mentioned he and wife, Angela, sold their tractor, mower, and land at their Baltimore-area home, and would be holding an estate sale. That was two days before former Oriole Steve Pearce won 2018 World Series MVP with the Red Sox, after crushing three home runs in five games against Machado’s Los Angeles Dodgers.

Meanwhile, at the current moment, the O’s are like a schooner floating in the bay without a captain while powerboats zip by. John and Louis Angelos, now in control of the team’s day-to-day operations, have reportedly interviewed a few candidates to be the team’s top executive from a broad list of targets—including Houston Astros assistant general manager Mike Elias (analytics, man!), former Red Sox and current Blue Jays assistant GM Ben Cherington, and former Dodgers GM Ned Colletti. But Orioles player development director Brian Graham is still the point person for the roster in an interim role.

Whoever the next front office leader is will hire the next manager, but that’s a way’s off, even as major league baseball’s free-agent signing period has already begun.

That means the guys we used to know—Machado and Jones (Okay, last time, seriously. That’s it), the latter who will be back in Baltimore Thanksgiving weekend for a Boys & Girls Clubs charity tailgate—now have the chance to sign with new teams. But it’s doubtful anyone will want to come here given the lack of clarity in leadership. The O’s are the only team in baseball without a general manager right now.

Aside from a few in-their-prime leftovers from last season—like Mancini, pitcher Dylan Bundy and prospective closer Mychal Givens—and a handful of second-year pros, you’re unlikely to be familiar with the O’s Opening Day roster come April. They don’t even know who they are yet.

So, as much we want the Vegas odds-makers to be wrong, they’re probably right. On the bright side, an Orioles World Series win next October would give you the greatest return on investment of any baseball bet you could make right now. If you ever wanted to turn $10 into $3,500, no strings attached and for a good cause, this is the time to take a chance.

The 2017 Orioles season is one of those that fans are eager to move past. The attitude is less reflective and more looking forward to spring, counting down the days (95) until pitchers and catchers report in Sarasota, Florida.

But this week we were given a great reason to look in the rear-view mirror, as outfielder—and clutch DH—Trey Mancini was named a finalist for American League Rookie of the Year. He’ll definitely need his “it’s an honor just to be nominated” speech ready, as any baseball fan knows that this has been the year of Aaron Judge. Pinstriped or not, when a first-year player hits 52 home runs and ends up with a slugging percentage of .622, there really is no contest.

Still, it’s great company to be in and Mancini was picked over infielder Yuli Gurriel of the world champion Astros, who had a pretty comparable year to our ROY finalist—albeit a better ending. Mancini, an eighth-round draft pick and University of Notre Dame alum, gave the Orioles plenty of great moments to celebrate this season, including 25 homers, and a resulting slash line of .293/.338/.488. No matter where he falls in the battle for silver or bronze, we are sure glad Mancini had plenty of sunflower-shower moments this year.

But that’s kind of where the good news ends. For the second year in a row, no Orioles were nominated for a Gold Glove. Manny Machado was our best bet. Not to get all stat-crazy, but if you look at his range factor—which divides putouts and assists by the number of games played—Machado’s was low (2.57), especially versus last year (4.13). That number, which is essentially the amount of outs he was involved in, hasn’t been that low since 2014, fittingly another year he didn’t make the All Star Game or MVP list.

Maybe the biggest tell as to what this means for the Orioles franchise is how little outcry there has been. Sports fans are generally all too willing to claim a player was robbed by Rawlings, MLB, or BBWAA. But the O’s faithful seems pretty resigned to the fact that this season we only had one All-Star (a reserve at that), no nod for Manager of the Year, zilch on Gold Gloves, and no one on the short list for American League MVP. As one Camden Chat commenter said about Machado, “At the least, I don’t feel he was unjustly shafted by The Man.”

There is another thing that Orioles fans can all agree on: it’s time for a change in 2018.

Trey Mancini has a magical night at Camden Yards. 
It’s fitting that Trey Mancini sounds like the name of an old-timey magician—because he certainly knows how to put it on a show. On Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Orioles fans felt pretty deflated going into the ninth inning down 6-2. But the Orioles managed to put runners on the corners with no outs, causing the Pirates to bring in closer Tony Watson. A sac fly by Joey Rickard and double by J.J. Hardy cut the lead in half. Then Buck Showalter put in Mancini as a pitch-hitter, where he battled against Watson for eight pitches before hitting a two-run homer out of the park to tie the game.

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, two innings later, Mancini delivered an extra-inning walk-off homer to give the Orioles a 9-6 victory in 11 innings. Because baseball nerds love numbers, Stats LLC reported that he is the first Oriole ever to accomplish the feat of pinch-hitting a game-tying homer and then hitting a walk-off in extra innings. In fact, there have only been two regular position players to ever do it: Boog Powell in 1966 and Eddie Murray in 1980. Pretty impressive company.

Ravens release Dennis Pitta after hip injury.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Dennis Pitta was released Wednesday by the Baltimore Ravens after reinjuring his hip. Pitta is currently being hospitalized and undergoing procedures after he dislocated his hip for the third time in five years. This past Friday, he hurt his hip without any contact and merely stretching out for a catch. Previously, Pitta dislocated his hip during training camp in 2013 and early in the 2014 season. But in 2016 he returned to set team and career high records in catches.

“For him to get that year and to play so well was probably something beyond expectations and yet we hoped for me,” Coach John Harbaugh told ESPN. “We thought we would get more—it was not meant to be.” 

The latest injury for the tight end could be career-ending, and the release frees up $2.5 million in salary-cap room for the Ravens. “It’s going to be a tough conversation,” Harbaugh said. “But we’re friends.”

We will miss the on-field chemistry between real-life best friends Pitta and quarterback Joe Flacco. We wish Pitta and his family the best of luck as he recovers.

Manny Machado out with sprained left wrist.

In other injury news, one downside to Wednesday night’s incredibly Orioles game was third baseman Manny Machado leaving it early due to a strained left wrist, puncture, and bruise. During an awkward stolen-base slide into third, Pirate outfielder Andrew McCutchen unintentionally spiked Machado’s wrist as he tried to field the throw from the catcher.

As a result, Chris Davis got his first start at third base since 2014 against the Nationals on Thursday night. Though it’s been a while, Davis has the most experience at the position.

“I think he’s started over 300 games there, counting the minor leagues,” Showalter told The Sun. “I’m not particularly happy about having to do it, but it’s kind of where we are as a club.”

Woman ends 444-mile solo kayak journey in Havre de Grace.
Cathy Mumford pulled her kayak, dubbed “Sparky” into Havre de Grace marina at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday after quite the trip. The New Jersey native paddled for 444 miles and 26 days by herself from Cooperstown, New York down the Susquehanna River. She started her journey on Mother’s Day, May 14, paddling in her yellow, 9.5-foot kayak and camping along the way. 

“I see lots of fishermen, lots of Boy Scouts. I hardly ever see girls,” she told The Sun. “I’d just like to encourage young women to get out there more.”

Ubaldo? U bet! On the heels of a 9-3 drubbing in the series opener at Cincinnati’s The Great American Ball Park (okay, we have serious problems with that name) the lovable, but ever-unpredictable Ubaldo Jimenez delivered a dominant effort, shutting down the Red Stockings over 7 and 2/3 innings. The most fun part of the night? When Adam Jones—ignoring a team pieing ban—celebrated the Jimenez’s stalwart performance with a strawberry pie to the kisser during the on-air, post-game interview.

Ubaldo has been known to string together both good and bad outings and we hope Wednesday is a sign he’s about to get on a roll. We also hope this means more post-game dessert action from our star centerfielder.

Trey Mancini’s magic bat. Trey Mancini, the young Orioles slugger, tied a Major League record earlier this week while rocking two home runs in the O’s 11-4 win over Toronto Sunday. A late-season call-up last year, those two dingers gave Mancini seven homers in first 12 games of his career, becoming just the third player ever to achieve that feat.

In fact, Mancini’s bat was so hot, two of his teammates—Craig Gentry and Manny Machado—grabbed his Louisville Slugger C243 and crushed subsequent home runs in the same game.

From Buck Showalter: “So Trey hits his second home run and Gentry grabs his bat and says, ‘I’m going to give that bat a try’ [and he] hits a home run. Manny says, ‘You know what? Give me that bat’ and Manny hit a home run so all of them with Mancini’s bat — I’ve never seen that before.”

Ravens Land Monday Night Game in Baltimore. Five years is a long time without a Monday Night Football appearance. But mark your calendars—the Ravens will host the Houston Texans at M&T Bank Stadium four days after Thanksgiving—just one more reason to be grateful come turkey season. The just-released 2017 schedule also has our birds opening up at The Jungle against the Bengals and then, circle your calendars again; the Steelers arrive in town in Week Four.

We don’t know a lot about the Arena Football League. Just being honest here. We’re still getting up to speed on the Baltimore Brigade, our new hometown entry in the indoor league. But we did see that Brigade defensive lineman Dexter Davis was named Defensive Player of Week after posting three sacks, two forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery in the team’s 52-49 win over the Cleveland Gladiators. Hey, nothing wrong with having two great pro football teams in Charm City. Nice work Brigade and kudos to Dexter.

Save the Trees. This is what frustration looks like to O’s fans: Chris Davis breaking a bat over his knee after a strikeout. While we admire the passion, we’d caution Chris to find a better way to channel his negative emotions. He does strikeout quite a bit (a trade-off for all the homers and RBIs) and something’s going to give eventually—either his knees or the folks who make his bats.