Goodbye George, welcome Steve and Josh

One of the perks of the job of reporter covering the Orioles is that you get to meet and talk to Orioles' players. That's a pretty neat thing for a kid from Baltimore like myself. What's cooler yet is when those players turn out to be quality people that are easy to root for. The Orioles have many such players on their roster but they just lost one - George Sherrill. In his less than two years here, Sherrill impressed just about any reporter who ever had a chance to interview him. He was always available, courteous and engaging. This is a guy who smiled a lot and enjoyed his job. You could tell he was popular with his teammates too. On the mound, the guy had guts and piled up saves for a team that didn't win that often. It would not surprise me even a little to see Sherrill get huge outs in October for the Dodgers. In fact, I'll be rooting for him. So, probably, will just about any fan or person who met George during his time in Baltimore. I completely understand why this trade was made. But moving forward, the O's need more, not less people, like George Sherrill. As for Josh Bell and Steve Johnson, welcome to the organization. I hope to get to watch them play soon at Bowie and before too long, in Baltimore too. I've hosted many pre-game and post-game O's radio shows with Dave Johnson since 2007 and it's been cool to sit with him and hear him talk about Steve. He doesn't go around bragging about his son, but you can tell how proud he is that Steve has achieved what he has. The O's didn't draft him out of high school, but they are bringing the kid from Baltimore home now. I could work another 20 years in this business and not have a day like yesterday - being in the next booth over when Dave got emotional hearing the news from Tom Davis while on the air that Steve was traded to the O's. Anyone who heard that exchange I'm sure felt the emotion through the radio dial. It was just special, no other way to describe it. Thursday, as we said goodbye to one quality person and welcomed two others, made me realize sometimes what we can easily forget. There are humans inside those uniforms. They have dads and wives and friends and family and problems like the rest of us. Sometimes we have amazing days that we will remember forever. For the three players involved in that trade and their families, Thursday was one of those days.