The Orioles suffered another heartbreaking Sunday defeat, losing in the bottom of the ninth for the third time this year, 4-3. Closer Chris Ray needed just two batters to undo two hours of Jeremy Guthrie’s brilliance, giving up a lead-off single and a walk-off two-run homer to Vladimir Guerrero to turn the Birds’ ninth-inning lead into a bitter loss. Guthrie was once again robbed of a much-deserved win, holding the Angels to three hits in eight sensational innings before Sam Perlozzo’s questionable decision to yank him yielded disastrous results. It’s hard to believe this is the same team that recently won six games in a row, as the O’s once again find a way to snag defeat from the jaws of victory.

When the surging Orioles first rolled into Anaheim on Thursday, they knew that this series would test their mettle and provide a true barometer of whether they’re good enough to hang with the big dogs. Well, I think we’ve got a definitive answer. It isn’t a pleasant one. For a team to have any hope of muscling its way back into contention, you just can’t afford to repeatedly give away games you’ve got in the palm of your hand, especially when you’re three outs away from splitting a series with the best home team in baseball.

With the rash of manager ejections over the weekend, John Donovan of SI has written a good article about the dean of getting tossed… my hero, Earl Weaver. My favorite line: “Weaver was a sub-6-foot ball of spittle and curses and screams, a brilliant baseball mind who terrorized umpires and delighted fans”. Excerpt below… read the entire article here.

Once, back in the waning days of the 1985 season, the dean of disputatious big-league managers, Earl Weaver, was thrown out of both games of a doubleheader in Yankee Stadium. The second time it happened, he barely made it to home plate for the pregame exchange of lineup cards before he was run.

The first time, though, was the beauty. In the third inning of the first game on that late-September day, after Weaver already had been out on the field three times to argue something or other, umpire Jim Evans finally tired of the show and tossed the diminutive Baltimore skipper. The ump then took out his watch and gave Weaver one minute to leave the field.