A tale of two college kids, the O's, football and a lost weekend

The Orioles, since their first season in 1954, have won 100 or more games five times. The first four times they did so, they made the World Series, even though they lost three times. The fifth time they did so, they didn't even make the playoffs.

The 1980 Orioles went 100-62 but finished second in the American League East, three games behind the New York Yankees. Baseball featured four divisions then and 100 wins would have been enough to win any of the other three divisions that year. But not in the American League East.

The 1980 team featured two 20-game winners, two players that drove in 100 runs and a future Hall of Fame manager. But as the Orioles sat home, in the AL Championship Series, Kansas City beat New York three games to none. In the National League Championship Series, Philadelphia won in five games over Houston. The Phillies won the World Series, four games to two, over Kansas City.

I recalled the 1980 season recently when my good friend and college classmate Spiro Morekas wrote this blog on TowsonTigers.com. We were classmates then at Towson State University (which became Towson University in 1997). Spiro, who is the long-time play-by-play broadcaster for the Tigers, wrote about a weekend where he and I flew to Detroit with the Towson football team. We were students and going there to broadcast a college football game between the Tigers and Wayne State on the student-run radio station, WCVT. It was a weekend that began with excitement for two young kids who hadn't seen all that much and/or traveled much to that point in our lives. But the weekend would include us seeing Tigers lose Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and then we got stranded in the Detroit airport.

We can laugh about it all now and have many, many times since. But certainly not then.

On Sept. 26, 1980, we left BWI for Detroit. Meanwhile, as the season was winding down, the Orioles were in trouble. They were about five games out with only eight to 10 games left. We noticed the Yankees were playing that night in Detroit. Were we staying near Tiger Stadium? We got there and found out. Yep, walking distance. Off we went to the game. We needed to root on the hometown team to win and keep the Orioles in it.

We were two of 30,864 at old Tiger Stadium that Friday night and saw the home team lose 7-5 to the Yankees. The next day, the Towson State Tigers lost to Wayne State. Not long after that, the flight heading back to Baltimore took off with the entire Towson football team and coaches onboard. But not the two young broadcasters.

We've had better weekends.

I hope you take a few minutes (you'll need 16 in all) to watch the video at the end of this entry. Spiro and I talked this week and remembered how it all happened.

As for the Orioles, that was a good year, but not a great one because they didn't make the postseason, which consisted of just four teams then. Steve Stone went 25-7 and won the Cy Young Award. He is the last Oriole to do so. Scott McGregor went 20-8. Two 20-game winners. The Orioles haven't had one since Mike Boddicker in 1984. In that 1980 season, Eddie Murray drove in 116 runs and Ken Singleton 104.

Two young kids that loved their Orioles rooted hard for a Yankees loss that Friday night. But we were disappointed. It was not the first time we would be that weekend.