Baltimore Orioles: Strange Start to 2015 Season Gets Weirder

Apr 27, 2015; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore police officers stand outside the stadium prior to the cancellation of the game between the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports

The Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox game for this evening has been postponed due to all of the civil unrest in the city. The strange beginning of the O’s 2015 season just took a new and even stranger twist.

For this first 10% of this young season, the pitching of the Orioles has been strangely ineffective, as they have posted the worst ERA in the American League. And now, looking as if they might be turning a corner on that, the offense goes out on Sunday and puts up the most runs in a game since Y2K. It would be great to follow up on that quickly, especially against a team that had to travel here after finishing a suspended game and playing an additional full game on Sunday.

But there is certainly wisdom in the postponement. There is no need for the Baltimore Orioles and MLB to become a part of the national news any more than they already were by locking the fans inside the stadium for a time on Saturday evening.

I feel like I’m back in the 1960s, remembering viewing these sorts of things on a black and white TV as a boy. Forty-seven years ago in April of 1968 there was rioting in the streets of Baltimore and other American cities in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King. So much has changed just in my lifetime, and I had thought we were past this sort of thing.

Everything about this incident is just terribly sad. And it seems almost wrong to talk sports at a time like this, even as sports – particularly baseball – is something that has done so much to bring the races of humanity together in healthy endeavor, competition and celebration of achievement.