Leaning against the dugout wall, Brandon Hyde chomped his pink bubblegum, one hand on his hip, his eyes filled with the kind of dissatisfaction Orioles fans were used to seeing from their manager in each of his previous three seasons.
Hyde’s bullpen was floundering. His defense was breaking down. A six-run lead was slipping away like air from a balloon.
But this wasn’t like old times.
After a nightmarish top of the fifth inning for the Orioles, in which two errors were committed and five runs were scored, the team settled down, refocused and followed up with five runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning.
There would be no collapse. The O’s would cruise through the final four innings of Friday’s 15-10 win over the Red Sox.