The Orioles lost Thursday night to the Tampa Bay Rays, 7-6, and the after-game news conference with Buck Showalter that was televised on MASN was vanilla again because reporters are not asking him hard questions. Why have these interviews if reporters are afraid of the Orioles manager? It's true that when someone gets close to such a hard question, Buck will say, "Don't go there, don't go there." Then there is silence and the interview comes to an abrupt stop — and there goes Buck out the door!
This isn't acceptable, not when there's building frustration throughout Birdland for the many runners reaching third base but no further because hitters are swinging from their hips and striking out. What happened to just making contact for a flyout to get a runner to score? We had three such opportunities Thursday night and could not take advantage of any of them so the team lost by one run. Incredible! We have too many "prima donnas" and that's not helpful to a team effort. Small ball on this team does not exist.
We all would like this Orioles team to go all the way, but I don't think you can win a World Series with home runs alone. We need more players thinking of the team, and we need Buck Showalter to open up and let more pertinent questions be answered. Maybe, together, we can win this thing!
Ray Bahr, Baltimore