Chapter 17

The Orioles' runaway Division championship in the AL East made for a disappointing year in New York, Boston, and Toronto. Not so much in Tampa Bay. The Devil Rays had done pretty well on the season (despite once again finishing fifth-and-last). There was hope. If anything, Devil Ray fans, seeing the Orioles' success, took some encouragement from it.

After all, we'd been right down there in the basement alongside them, for close to a decade; and not so very long ago.

Joe Torre got fired, just as everyone had expected. He'd been a consistent success in New York, but he was ready for retirement anyway, so not much of a fuss was made when he was canned. The Yankees finished in a tie with Toronto for third, 87-75 on the season. Lots of folks would be happy at twelve games over .500. The Blue Jays probably were. A few years earlier, Oriole fans would have been thrilled.

But not George Steinbrenner.

The Red Sox had second place all to themselves. Nothing unusual about that, except they had been mathematically eliminated eleven days before the season ended.

For us, it had been a great season. I hit 43 homers -- good enough for third-best in the AL. Josh Brennan finished at .401, making him the much-celebrated first man since Ted Williams, in 1941, to hit over .400. Williams had hit .406 that year. Brennan was actually a little bit unhappy. He'd wanted to hit .407! The cheeky little bastard! The second-highest batting average in the league was .349.

We had the Twins in the first round of the ALCS. The AL Central champions, the White Sox, were set to go against Seattle.

I knew Paul Warren was searching everywhere for some kind of statistical argument to explain why we should be going into the Divisional playoffs scared to death of the Minnesota Twins. It was Paul's way. He'd keep looking up numbers until he found something to hang his hat on, and then use it in what he hoped was a rousing pep talk. But it was hard going for him. We had a solid edge in the season series played against all three of the clubs that were in the playoffs with us.

That was no guarantee of anything, and we all knew it. But it sure made it tough for Paul Warren to speechify about complacency and overconfidence, and to back it up with his usual array of arcane statistics.

We swept the poor ol' Twins. Baltimore sportswriters reminded everyone of all the times -- back in the late 60s and 70s, that Oriole clubs had done the same thing -- sent Minnesota fans home disappointed in post-season play.

I guess after all these years, that was the one thing that hadn't changed.

Seattle, with the fewest wins among American League Division champions that year, nevertheless managed to whip up on the White Sox in their series. Ironically, the AL Central -- the most competitive, and probably the strongest Division, top-to-bottom, in our League -- was out of it for the League Championship Series.

Paul Warren wasn't happy. It had been coast-to-coast post-season travel requirements that he had blamed, in large part, for the Orioles' World Series loss to the Cardinals. The way Paul saw it, the American League Championship Series, played that year against the Angels, had worn his club out. (That had been, so far, the only World Series in Paul Warren's history, either as manager or player.)

Now Paul worried about being caught up in another orgy of coast-to-coast October plane rides, in order to compete with the Mariners.

In the National League, the Cardinals were meeting the Mets in the NLCS. Compared to ours, those clubs were facing a comfortable commute.

I invited Alice to accompany me to Seattle for games 3, 4 and (if necessary) 5, of the ALCS. She worried about being a distraction during the series, and she fretted about all the time she had missed from work already this year. I could tell she really wanted to come, and part of me really wanted her there, too. But the truth is, when she finally decided not to make the trip, I didn't fight her on it very much.

We were together every night now. Not living together. My house was too far from her work for her conveniently to stay over with me. But I was with her during the work week at her house, and we were together at my place on weekends whenever the Orioles were in town.

She was going to be in attendance at every post-season game played in Baltimore. By this time, she and Orlie Warren (my boss' wife, no less) had become fast friends. By now, Alice and I had also been dinner guests at the home of Alex and Maria Osborn. Maria was a decade younger than Alice, but she was a very mature young woman, and a sweetheart to boot. Maria and Alex, like us, were an interracial couple, and although nothing was ever verbalized, I think we all felt that it gave us a little something extra in common. Maria's husband, Alex, was several years older than Alice or I, so to some extent that balanced out our age differences, as couples.