Joseph on his promotion

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Caleb Joseph spent part of his afternoon accepting hugs from teammates in the visiting clubhouse at Tropicana Field, warm greetings given to a player making his major league debut at age 27.

Joseph didn't know whether he would start tonight, since he hadn't spoken to manager Buck Showalter and no lineup was posted. Turns out, he's catching and batting ninth against Rays left-hander Cesar Ramos.

It's been an unforgettable 24 hours for Joseph, a late scratch from Triple-A Norfolk's lineup yesterday as the Orioles scheduled an appointment for Matt Wieters with Dr. James Andrews in Pensacola, Fla.

"Crazy, exciting, fast, long, slow - all at the same time," Joseph said. "Excited to be here. Just trying to do my part to help the team continue to win. Whatever that may be."

Tides manager Ron Johnson passed along the news to Joseph, but in typical comic fashion.

Johnson pretended to scold Joseph for fraternizing with a former teammate on the Louisville Bats, ordering him to the batting cage and later accusing him of being disrespectful.

"After batting practice, their team was walking off," Joseph said. "Our team was finishing stretch, they're going to right field to play catch and warm up, and I hung around to talk to a former teammate for a few minutes. And he jumped me pretty hard and asked me a few questions and I just responded back. And then he told me, with some choice words, 'You probably need to go and join your team.' I was like, 'OK.'

"So we go and hit BP and we come back after the first round. I'm hitting in the second group. I come back and hit my first round and he comes over and says, 'Hey, I need to talk to you.' And he's got a very mad look on his face. He says, 'Hey, I don't really appreciate the way you talked to me a few minutes ago when I confronted you about talking to that player.' A lot of choice words in there. And he just continued to look really mad, so I was scared.

"I was like, 'I didn't mean to disrepect you,' because he used the term, 'You're disrespectful.' I kept apologizing and said, 'I'm sorry.' Finally, he said, 'Because of that, I'm going to go ahead and scratch you for tonight's game,' and I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' I didn't say anything back to him that was bad. I was like scared."

Joseph had no idea what was coming.

"R.J. is a character, so I've never seen like a really, really, really serious side to him, so I was scared to death," Joseph said. "I said, 'Man, I'm really sorry. I'll never talk to anybody on their team ever again. I won't even talk to you if you don't want me to.' And he goes, 'Yeah, we're going to scratch you. We're also scratching you because you're going to Florida tomorrow.'

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' I lost it at that point. I was like, 'That is not how I dreamed about it.' But it was great. It was a good moment. All the players over there were great. There's only two or three guys who have not played in the big leagues on that team, so they all remember their first call-up. It was a special moment."

Joseph won't forget his call-up and how he learned about it. And he's got a shot at starting Thursday night, as well, with the Rays sending left-hander David Price to the mound.