Serves You Right For Being a Bitch

On Monday, the Orioles fired their manager Sam Perlozzo, a former Orioles player whose lifelong dream was to manage the Orioles.

He was not very good, compiling a 122-164 record in less than two seasons as manager.

So the Orioles, who haven't finished above .500 since 1997 (congratulations to Davey Johnson, who now is the answer for the question "Who is the most recent Baltimore Orioles manager not to suck?"), went on a crash search for new talent in the drivers seat. They aquired a new general manager/Chief Operating Officer in the person of Andy MacPhail, whose father was Orioles manager right after the team moved from St. Louis to Baltimore.

They were the St. Louis Browns, for the uninitiated. And oddly enough, the team has purged all records of ever having been the Browns from their website.

Anyway, the question was, would Baltimore owner Peter Angelos, who is a historically whiny bastard as owner, let his staff do their jobs and make the team better? He has deep-sixed several trades that would have made his team capable of winning at least he wild card, if not the division, in the last few years. His only big free-agent splashes were Sammy Sosa, who sucked for one season in a Baltimore uniform, and Miguel Tejada, who was good for one season and has since been on the decline.

And ohbytheway, the Orioles have a 90-million dollar payroll. For 90-million, you would expect to at least have a .500 record, or something. Right?

As another ohbytheway, Peter Angelos categorically opposed letting a team move into Washington (the Nationals), because he thought they would take away fans from his team. He shut up when Major League Baseball agreed to write him a multi-million-dollar check.

Perhaps Angelos doesn't understand that fielding a crappy team is what costs you fans, and being a dick costs you fans. Having another team appear in your market will only cost you those fans who weren't really your fans, capiche?

The team went on a search, and zeroed in on Joe Girardi, 2005 National League manager of the year. Girardi, you may recall, managed the Marlins almost to a wild card berth that year, despite having a total payroll of 14 million dollars, lowest in the majors by about $10 million that year. He was summarily fired because he got into a public argument with Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins owner.

What made the Orioles owner, who is a bigger turd than Loria, think that no-nonsense Joe Girardi would manage the Orioles, a worse team? God only knows. But Angelos went after Girardi anyway.

And today, he was uncermoniously rejected. Girardi politely said that it was family issues that made him decide not to take the job, but my guess is that in the interview, Girardi said, "I'd like to run the team my way," and Angelos said, "I'm the billionaire here, you poor little peasant. I'll run the team how I want."

And so the Orioles have no new manager, and are suffering through their worst attendance in decades - 2 million tickets sold is a stretch goal, where they used to draw nearly four million a year.

And Peter Angelos still doesn't get it.