Much Ado About Opening Day Lineups
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
Your first-place Baltimore Orioles…boy, that sounds good! We might as well enjoy it while we can, O’s fans. After last night’s 7-4 win over the Seattle Mariners, the good guys are over .500 for the first time since last April. If you’re like me, you also exhaled loudly when they got that first win over Tampa Bay on Wednesday. There’s something about rooting for a team that once lost their first 21 games that will make you appreciate that initial W. At this point, the only players on the roster who haven’t seen any game action are today’s starter, #29 Adam Loewen, and backup catcher #24 Guillermo Quiroz. After #55 Ramon Hernandez’s Friday night heroics, Guillermo may be waiting for a little while longer!
I wanted to have something number-related to give you today, so I checked out Baseball Reference’s Opening Day lineups to see if I could figure out which Orioles Opening Day lineup was the highest combined uniform number total, and which was the lowest. Unfortunately, their records begin with 1956, which was the third season in existence for the Birds. But I still found some fascinating stuff.