Warts and All - Mike Mussina's Season of Highs and Lows Epitomized The Plight of the 1998 Orioles

Queen Elizabeth, who once attended an Orioles’ game at Memorial Stadium, might have called Baltimore’s most recent baseball season annus horribilus, as she did the year her sons and daughters-in-law were splitting up and philandering with un-princely types.

What made 1998 a ‘horrible year’ for the Orioles was much simpler. They played mediocre baseball, losing more games than they lost for the first time since 1995 (or before Davey Johnson’s reign), finishing a dismal fourth in the AL East after winning the division handily the previous season. Exacerbating the humiliation was that the team had the highest payroll in major league history and wound up producing so very little in return.

When all the chits were in at season’s end, they trailed the despised New York Yankees by a whopping 35 games - that’s the most distant the Orioles have been from first place since way back in 1955, their second year as a major league team.

Still, there were wonderful moments in 1998 - a gallant start to the season, a near-perfect game, a two-grandslam performance, the grace and consistent brilliance of Eric Davis, the hitting prowess of Rafael Palmeiro, and a post- All-Star game flurry of wins that excited both fans and players alike. And the team set a major league record for fewest errors (81) in a season.

Yet overall, it was a rotten and disappointing season for the Orioles. They were victimized by serious injuries to the pitching staff and a lack of clutch hits when games were on the line. They tormented their followers by making several spurts at respectability and the wild card race, but inevitably they floundered.

The official line explaining the team’s collapse - espoused by manager Ray Miller and owner Peter Angelos - was that injuries to the starting pitching crippled the team so badly they it could never fully recover. There is some truth to that line. The staff gave up 104 more runs in 1998 than it did in 1997. And with Mike Mussina, Jimmy Key and Scott Kamieniecki all dwelling on the DL at various times, Miller had to rely on unreliable arms like those of Norm Charlton, Joel Bennett, Radhames Dykoff, Richie Lewis, Bobby Munoz and Terry Mathews.

Still, there were other factors contributing to the team’s demise. The off- season acquisitions of old-timers Charlton, Joe Carter, Doug Drabek and Ozzie Guillen ended in varying degrees of failure.

Key hitters like Palmeiro, Cal Ripken, Brady Anderson and B.J. Surhoff were unable to hit even .260 with runners in scoring position.

Players did not respond well to the changeover of managers. Many missed the stability and assuredness that Davey Johnson had brought to the team. Roberto Alomar, as fine a player as the Orioles have had this decade, pouted over perceived slights and contributed little other than his customary brilliant fielding over the last half of the season. He hit just .229 - his worst month as an Oriole - in September.

A philosophical schism between Angelos and departing general manager Pat Gillick and his assistant GM, Kevin Malone, left the team rudderless as summer wore down.

The loss of Randy Myers left the bullpen dazed and confused.

And, as Eric Davis says, sometimes in major league baseball, it’s just not your year.

The following is a look at some of the season’s highs and lows:

• For Orioles ace Mike Mussina, 1998 was a year of near glory and even nearer catastrophe.

  Few who were at Camden Yards for the game of May 14 will ever forget the sickening thwack of a baseball driven by Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar that ricocheted off the forehead of Mussina, a mere inch above his right eye. As Mussina crumpled to the ground as quickly as Baltimore fans’ hearts sank, it looked as though his wonderful career might be prematurely truncated by the cruelly serendipitous journey of a batted baseball.

  But then, less than two months later, few who were in attendance at Camden Yards would forget the tension building up as Mussina - for the second time in two years - came within a hair or two of hurling a perfect game. In 1997, ironically, it was the same Sandy Alomar who delivered a one-out, ninth inning single to left field that broke Mussina’s bid for perfection. This time around, it was Detroit’s unheralded Frank Catalanotto who struck a double with two outs in the eighth to become the Tigers’ first base runner of the game and deny Mussina once again.

  It was that kind of a year for Mussina, the Orioles’ finest starting pitcher for the past seven years. Every time it looked as though something good was about to happen, he seemed to falter, just like his team.

  Alomar’s wicked line drive was not the only unforeseen element to send Mussina to the disabled last during the year. A nasty wart on his right index finger broke open in April during a game against Chicago, forcing him to undergo cryotherapy - wart removal - and miss more than two weeks of the season. The ball that almost cost him his career disabled him for another 21 days.

  For the year Mussina went 13-10 with a 3.59 ERA. He won his third consecutive Gold Glove as best fielding pitcher in the AL (he hasn’t committed an error since 1995) and was among league leaders in most key pitching categories. Not a bad year for a starting pitcher by most standards today, yet a subpar season for Mussina - just like it was for his team.

• As the 1998 season mercifully sputtered to a conclusion, Cal Ripken, Jr. came to the rescue and gave Oriole fans a few images to remember from a season to forget. On September 20 - the final home game of the year on the day the Orioles were eliminated from playoff contention - Ripken asked to be taken out of the lineup. Thus ended his consecutive games played streak at 2,632, all starts. With his 17-year journey, Ripken had surpassed Lou Gehrig’s seemingly unbreakable record by a staggering 501 games. Following a top-of-the-first ovation started by the rival Yankees, Ripken came out of the dugout to acknowledge the Camden Yards crowd. Later, he would spend time in the O’s bullpen.

  “I look at it as a happy moment, a celebration,” Ripken said after the game. In a season with few cheerful moments, Ripken provided a much-needed night of exhalation for a man that set a record that likely will never be broken. “I don’t know who would want to” play more than 2,632 straight games, joked Brady Anderson. “Nobody said it was the smartest streak.”

• If one game epitomized the frustration and sense of defeat that characterized the Orioles’ season, it was the May 19 loss to the Yankees in New York in which Armando Benitez threw a pitch that hit Tino Martinez in the back, touching off a brawl and humiliating the pitcher and his teammates. The Orioles arrived in New York on that day having lost five in a row to fall 11 games behind the Yankees, after having been in first place just a month earlier. But they built a 5-1 lead through six innings, largely thanks to the pitching of Doug Johns and some timely hitting by Harold Baines. In the bottom of the seventh New York picked up two runs to shrink the lead to 5-3.

  Then, disaster struck in the eighth. With Johns out of the game two innings earlier, three relievers preceded Benitez to the mound that inning. With two outs, the big right-hander came in to protect what had become a 5-4 lead. Bernie Williams was at the plate, and the Yanks had two men on base. Up until that moment, Benitez had converted all six of his save opportunities for the year.

  Williams changed that instantly with a mighty home run that gave the Yankees a 7-5 lead and enraged the volatile Benitez. His next pitch drilled the innocent Martinez. Both benches and bullpens emptied after Benitez mockingly gestured at the New York bench to come and get him. The Yankees did.

  Benitez was suspended, along with a number of players from both teams. Yet he was obviously the villain, and manager Ray Miller took the unusual step of apologizing to the Yankees for his closer’s behavior. The New Yorkers won the next two games, sweeping the series, as the Orioles never came close to challenging the Bombers for supremacy in the AL East.

  Benitez’ stature on the team, and with Miller, was irreparably hurt, and the Orioles’ season and image were permanently tarnished.

• Putting an exclamation point on his remarkable and inspirational return from colon cancer, 36-year-old Eric Davis set the Orioles record for hits in 30 consecutive games from July 12-August 15. Rafael Palmeiro previously held the record with 24 games. Davis’ run was only the 36th in major league history to reach more than 30 games. The streak contributed to Davis’ .327 average - the third highest single-season average in club history - and fourth place finish in the AL batting race. He became just the fourth Oriole to finish among the AL’s top five in batting.

• Rafael Palmeiro hit .296 and paced the O’s with 121 RBIs and a career-high 43 home runs. For his effort he was named winner of the Louis M. Hatter Most Valuable Oriole Award for the third time in four seasons. Along with teammate B. J. Surhoff, Palmeiro was one of only eight major leaguers to play in each of his team’s games this season.

• Trouble began for the Orioles in 1998 before they even arrived in spring training.

  During the offseason a team that already was being described as a bunch of gray beards curiously became even older with the acquisition of four veterans - outfielder Joe Carter, infielder Ozzie Guillen, starter Doug Drabek and reliever Norm Charlton.

  These four players, all of whom had had success in previous seasons, were clearly over the hill. But Miller and club officials insisted the quartet, whose average age was 35.5, would provide the team with veteran leadership and skills. They were wrong.

  Guillen was shaky in the field and was hitting a meek .063 when the Orioles dropped him on May 1. Carter was, in fact, a positive presence in the clubhouse, but his once mighty bat had lost his zip. He also was put in right field, an alien position to him, and looked awkward and sorely out of place. On July 23, hitting only .247 with 11 homers and 34 RBIs, the venerable Carter was traded to San Francisco for a minor league pitcher of little note. Carter had hoped to end his career on a high note in Baltimore. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way.

  Drabek had a 5.74 ERA in 1997 with the White Sox, but the Orioles insisted that his reunification with Miller (his pitching coach in Pittsburgh in 1990 when Drabek won 22 games and the NL Cy Young award) would somehow rejuvenate his arm. It never happened. The Texan’s ERA grew even higher in Baltimore (to 7.29), he won only six of 17 decisions, and, like Carter, his once glossy career picked up some tarnish during his year in Camden Yards.

  Charlton was, well, downright awful. Again, the Orioles tried to persuade everyone that he would become a respectable in Baltimore, since it was Seattle manager Lou Piniella’s fault that Charlton had been the league whipping boy coming out of the Seattle pen. But the Chesapeake Bay was no more of a tonic than the Puget Sound, and Miller did no better than Piniella in turning Charlton into a decent pitcher. He was given his release by the Orioles on July 28, with no one in the city lamenting his departure.

  The foursome never clicked with the Orioles, and their presence in Baltimore will be remembered as little more than an unfortunate footnote to some very impressive careers.

• In a season decimated by injury, Scott Erickson was the only starter not miss a turn in 1998. His resilience put him atop the AL in starts (36), complete games (11) and innings pitched (251.1). That was the first time an Oriole pitcher lead the league in those categories since Dennis Martinez in ’79 and Erickson was only the fourth in team history to make 36 starts in a season.

• Recalled when Mike Mussina was placed on the DL for the first time, Aruban Sidney Ponson was 1-6 with a 6.67 ERA through June. Thereafter, he went 7-3 with a 4.33 ERA giving the O’s every reason to think he will be a contributing member of their rotation in 1999. Especially encouraging was the rookie’s performance against the Yankees: 2-0 with a 2.20 ERA. His longest outing of the season came against the World Champions on September 19, 7.1 scoreless innings for his final victory of the year.

• With only 81 errors, the Orioles set a major league record. The team also led the majors and set a team record with a .987 fielding percentage. The O’s have led the majors in fielding in three of the last five seasons. They were the only team in the majors with three Gold Glove winners and the first time the O’s have accomplished it since 1976. Mike Mussina was honored for the third straight season and Rafael Palmeiro for the second straight. Roberto Alomar won for the seventh time in his career.

• Jesse Orosco throws nearly as hard as he did as a rookie in 1981 and in July he became only the sixth pitcher ever to appear in 1,000 games. Two weeks later he appeared in his 1,000th game in relief. He is poised to take over first place in both of those categories, trailing Dennis Eckersley in games by 49 and Kent Tekulve in relief appearances by 29. Last year was the fourth straight season in which Orosco appeared in more than 60 games. He turns 41 on April 21, 1999 and is the third oldest Oriole ever, trailing Rick Dempsey (43) and Dizzy Trout (42 years, 2 months, 12 days).

• Chris Hoiles did not have a stellar season for the Orioles in 1998. He essentially lost his seven-year hold on the starting catching job, and his production at the plate was inconsistent and unimpressive. But he sure had one helluva day on August 14 against the Indians. On that Friday evening at Jacobs Field, Hoiles became the third Oriole in history to blast two grand slams in a single game. His two slams and eight RBIs powered the Birds to their second highest run total and largest margin of victory of the season, 15-3.

  Hoiles also picked up a single, giving him nine total bases for the game. His eight RBIs were the most of his career for a single game and the most accumulated by any Oriole in one game in 1998.

  The two other Orioles to post double grand slam games were Jim Gentile in 1961 and Frank Robinson in 1970.

  Interestingly, Hoiles’ feat means that one-third of the players in baseball history who have hit two grand slams in one game (a total of nine) played for the Orioles while doing so.

• Harold Baines is becoming perhaps the most prolific designated hitter of all- time. He became the leader in RBIs at the position by finishing the season with 837, besting Hal McRae’s record of 823. Under contract for 1999, the sweet-swinging lefty can take over first place in games by passing McRae (he needs 18) and home runs (he’s 20 behind Don Baylor’s 219).

• His motivation to play questioned all season, Roberto Alomar put on an incredible performance at the All-Star Game in Denver. In becoming the fifth Oriole to be named MVP, Alomar went 3-for-4 with a home run and a stolen base in sparking the AL’s 13-8 win over the NL. Cal Ripken doubled in his 17th appearance in the game and Rafael Palmeiro’s had a 2-for-2 night.

• Starting the season 10-2, the O’s were in first place in mid-April. They went 4-11 for the rest of the April and 24-37 over the next two months. Coming out of the All-Star break at 38-50 and a whopping 26.5 games behind the Yanks, the team swept the Red Sox and reeled off a nine-game winning streak. After putting together the best second-half in baseball, the team lost 10 straight from August 23-September 2 and sank to its final resting spot, fourth place in the division. The 10-game losing streak was the longest since the ’89 team opened the season 0-21. The ’98 O’s also had losing streaks of eight and nine games.

• Despite an injury-marred season, Brady Anderson reached two single-game milestones in ’98. On August 7 in Minnesota he collected a career-high five hits, 2 home runs, 2 doubles and a single. The 13 total bases tied a club record. On July 5 at Yankee Stadium, Anderson set the team mark with four stolen bases.