Throwback Thursday: Embarrassments (Part 1)

Are we far enough away from the Dark Days that we can acknowledge how terrible this team was between 1998-2011? They were bad. I mean bad. At the time, it hurt – all we wanted was for the Orioles to stop being a total embarrassment.

But looking back, some of it was pretty funny. For example, let’s look back to June 22, 2006, for an interleague match-up between the Florida Marlins and Baltimore OrioLOLs at Camden yards. The embarrassing part of this game is not that the O’s lost after taking a 5-1 lead in the 9th inning. What really took the cake was what came afterward. With the score tied at 5 in the 10th inning, Orioles’ reliever Todd Williams attempted to pitch around Marlins slugger Miguel Cabrera.

And then this happened:

Yup, that really happened. Williams failed to get his intentional walk pitch far away enough from the plate, and Cabrera smacked it to center field, plating the winning run. We couldn’t even wave the white flag properly.

Thankfully, this sort of thing is in the past. As painful as a Brian Matusz implosion in a 12-7 loss may be, as frustrating as another hat trick from Chris Davis may be, the Orioles are not that team any more.

And on this Throwback Thursday, that’s something to celebrate.