Domenic Vadala: Crab cakes, cheesesteaks and forced rivalries

This week could be called "forced rivalry week" in Major League Baseball with lots of teams playing two-game home-and-home series against regional or natural rivals. Admittedly, some of these so-called rivalries are more forced than others. This would normally be O's vs. Nats week; however, those two teams will play two three-game series later this summer and into the autumn.

So the Orioles ended up with Philadelphia this week, which makes sense based on geography. The Atlanta-Boston series even makes sense given the fact that the Braves at one time were the Boston Braves. However series like Washington/Tampa Bay, Toronto/New York Mets and Chicago White Sox/Pittsburgh are a tough sell for me. That's not to say that these series can't produce great games and memorable moments, but they're far from natural rivalries.

Nevertheless, the O's and Philadelphia do in fact have some history with each other. I'm certainly not the first, nor will I be the last, to reference the 1983 World Series this week. It's kind of amazing when you look at the caliber of players who played in that series. Among others, there's Jim Palmer, Cal Ripken Jr, Eddie Murray and series MVP Rick Dempsey on the Orioles' side. Philadelphia boasted the likes of Pete Rose, Tony Perez and Mike Schmidt - the second-greatest third baseman of all time.

Since that time, it seems that the two franchises have consistently been like ships passing each other in the night. Keep in mind that much like the situation between the O's and Nats, the Orioles and Phillies' fan bases overlap in some of the northern Baltimore or southern Philly suburbs. Families are often split down the middle, and bragging rights are on the line.

However, it seems that these two franchises have never truly been good or bad at the same time. The O's went into a bit of what one might call a mini-malaise in the late '80s, while the Phillies remained respectable. They were of the best teams in the league come the early 1990s, however, and fell to Toronto in the 1993 World Series on Joe Carter's now-famous Game 6 walk-off homer.

By the mid-1990s, the O's under Davey Johnson were back as the crème de la crème of the American League, while Philadelphia struggled to stay out of the cellar in the National League East. And so it goes. We all know how good the Phillies were in the mid-2000s up until just a few years ago. They were the NL East's version of the Red Sox and Yankees in that their fans seemed to travel far and wide. Just ask the Nats fan in your office; while Orioles fans had to deal for so long with the red hue of Boston fans, Phillies fans routinely took over Nationals Park.

And that brings us up to the present day. The Orioles are once again a contending team, and the Phillies, shall we say, are where they are. Statistically, they're one of the worst teams in the league. They all but invent new ways to lose day in and day out. And that's something for which Orioles fans probably have a lot of sympathy.

For the record, when the Orioles were in a similar position a series against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, it was a rare highlight. In June 2009 the Dave Trembley-led Orioles went up to the City of Brotherly Love for a three-game weekend set. In fairly dramatic fashion, the Birds swept all three games of the series, with Brian Roberts hitting a go-ahead home run late in one of the games. Did that series foreshadow a still long-awaited reversal of fortune between the two franchises?

Not really, although it is somewhat funny how it seems that both teams can't be good at the same time for whatever reason. At that time, the Orioles were still light years away from contending, although some of the pieces were already in place, such as Adam Jones and Matt Wieters. The Orioles also took two of three from their neighbors to the north in June 2012 - when the Birds were on the way up and the Phils on the way down.

Needless to say, maybe one day crab cakes and cheesesteaks will be in vogue at the same time again. One thing that both cities have in common, of course, is passionate fans. And that's true regardless of whether or not the teams are good.

Domenic Vadala blogs about the Orioles at Birds Watcher, and his opinions appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. Follow him on Twitter: @DomenicVadala. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.