By late Sunday morning, Garrett Atkins was gone from Camden Yards, another casualty of the terrible start to the baseball season around here.
He met briefly with Andy MacPhail and Juan Samuel in the manager's office and got the news he was expecting: The Orioles had designated him for assignment.
Then he gathered some things from his locker, said goodbye to a few teammates and left hours before the Orioles beat the Washington Nationals, 4-3, for their fourth win in a row, a merciful respite from the frustrating grind of the past three months.
So the Garrett Atkins gamble in Baltimore is over. And that's really all it ever was, of course: a gamble.
The Orioles, you'll recall, were desperate last offseason for a right-handed-hitting first baseman with some pop in his bat.
They took a shot on Atkins, a 30-year-old free agent who had strung together three strong seasons for the Colorado Rockies before a disastrous 2009 cost him his starting job.
"We knew we were taking a risk," said MacPhail, the Orioles' president of baseball operations. "At the time, I think I referred to it as a flier. Sometimes you just have to take a risk. If you're risk-averse in this business, you're in the wrong business."
MacPhail isn't risk-averse -- he has proved that with more than a few of the player moves he has made.
But the risk didn't pan out this time. In fact, maybe you look at the Atkins signing as symbolic of much of what has been ailing the Orioles since April.
The guy was hitting just .214 (30-for-140), after all. He had one homer and nine RBIs in 44 games. Who's going to put up with those numbers from a power position?
Dulaney High wouldn't put up with those numbers from a first baseman.
But the truth is, I had no problem with the Atkins signing last December. And neither did most Orioles fans I spoke to back then.
Sure, it would have been nice if the Orioles could have signed a slugging free agent like Matt Holliday, or somehow pulled off a miracle blockbuster trade for a first baseman like Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder who would have electrified the fan base.
But signing Atkins to a one-year deal for $4.5 million when none of that happened?
Seemed like a good move to me, too.
Hey, $4.5 mil -- that's shoeshine money in the grand scheme of player salaries these days.
"Economically, in our game, it was not a huge gamble," MacPhail said. "I have a saying: 'There's no such thing as a bad one-year deal, because then you're out of it.' So we had to take a chance."
So now the Orioles move on with Jake Fox and Scott Moore as their utility players, two guys who can play just about anywhere on the field.
Whether they can play well anywhere on the field, guess we're all about to find out.
I remember talking to Atkins at the Orioles FanFest this year, and I was struck by how excited the guy was about playing in this town.
Let's face it: To a lot of quality free agents, Baltimore is the Devil's Island of baseball.
Syd Thrift, the former GM, used to say it felt like he was offering Confederate money, so reluctant were some players to sign with the Orioles.
But not Atkins.
He showed up at FanFest with a 200-watt smile, saying all the right things.
He said he was eager to play in the baseball cathedral of Camden Yards, eager to play in front of knowledgeable fans in a city with such great baseball tradition.
He spoke of needing redemption for his awful 2009 season in Colorado, when he batted .226 with nine homers and 48 RBIs after averaging 25 homers and 110 RBIs the three previous years.
He spoke of how hard he was working in the offseason to turn his career around.
I'm telling you, Garrett Atkins was so fired up that day, I thought he was going to pick up a bat at one of the booths and start spraying line drives around the Baltimore Convention Center.
He must have said all the right things to MacPhail and the Orioles, too, because they were eager to sign the guy.
But when he continued to struggle and stopped getting at-bats a few weeks ago, the handwriting was on the wall.
Atkins' career in Baltimore was coming to a close. And everyone knew it, including him.
"There were times when we thought he might get it [going] and get closer to where he was in the past," MacPhail said. "But it just never really materialized during games."
The Orioles took a shot with Atkins. It didn't work out.
Too bad for the team. Too bad for a guy who wanted to play here, too.
Listen to Kevin Cowherd from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays with Jerry Coleman on Fox 1370 AM Sports.
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