What better illustration of the 2002 season could we use than the end of the first at-bat in the majors for career minor-leaguer Howie Clark? Watching Howie stride into second base, all alone in a moment of triumph, with only an umpire even in the frame with him, was my favorite photographic moment of the 2002 season. Since Howie did not have enough at-bats to qualify for inclusion in the Yearbook (hey, we have to draw the line somewhere; it's bad enough having two people do all of the players that we review without adding in the very short-timers), I'm pleased to put him right here, at the intro.
As you all recall, 2002 was an interesting year for the Orioles. As rumors of continued acrimony and discord between the front office and the manager continued to swirl, the undermanned team managed to stay close to .500 for nearly the entire season. Jorge Julio had a breakout year, and Buddy Groom continued his marked improvement over his O's tenure, while Rick Bauer offered additional unexpected quality help. What no one saw coming, (except perhaps the Belfry, thanks to luckily seeing him in a Spring Training start and coming back with some very positive press :)) was the emergence of Rodrigo Lopez as a quality starting pitcher. This, combined with a workmanlike effort from Sidney Ponson and Jason Johnson, gave the Orioles some semblance of a pitching staff. Scott Erickson dragged things down, and Calvin Maduro pitched poorly, but the overall performance was upbeat, for awhile.
On the offensive side, things were mostly, well, offensive. Though new outfielder Marty Cordova got off to a pretty good start, Chris Singleton, the team's new center fielder, went into the toilet right out of the box and never recovered. Jay Gibbons had actually bulked down over the winter, and was playing a reasonably capable right field, and Tony Batista offered representative play at third base. David Segui and Chris Richard were injury non-factors, however, and Jeff Conine ended up playing the bulk of the season at first base again. The team's biggest albatross, however, was Jerry Hairston at second base, because he had been wrongheadedly been thrust into the leadoff role, a task at which he quickly proved to be incapable of handling. He even lost his job briefly to Brian Roberts, who promptly turned it back over to Hairston by taking the Will Rogers approach to hitting. Mike Bordick was only a shadow of the level of competence offensively he had managed in his previous couple of seasons with the Birds. Geronimo Gil managed to parlay one good month of April into making O's fans think they had found a catcher, when in reality they found a backup catcher who starts for the O's because the alternative is Brook Fordyce. Melvin Mora repeated 2001, helping keep the team afloat with a dynamic performance for a few months before going down in flames in the stretch run.
As the year wore on, changes were made. Calvin Maduro broke completely down, and Travis Driskill, a career journeyman, ended up in the rotation, and actually pitched well for six weeks. Gary Matthews Jr. was brought in for his latest trial as a big leaguer, and actually responded for a good while until he, too, was injured. Chris Richard came back from his shoulder injury and hit for about a week, falling off the table completely afterward as a part of the September Swoon. Yorkis Perez and Luis Lopez made appearances as band-aids, though Lopez somehow managed to pinch hit over 20 times, giving one a concept of the capabilities of the Baltimore bench. John Stephens pitched very well at times, poorly at others; Sean Douglass didn't pitch well at all, and was totally misused by the big club.
Overall, somehow this rag-tag group made it to .500 on August 23, thanks to a 11-7 win over the Blue Jays. They stood at 63-63. And then the roof fell in. The starters stopped pitching. Ponson was hurt, Johnson too...Lopez hit the wall in September, and Driskill had already pitched his way back into the bullpen. There were no starters pitching well, and the hitters had stopped hitting. Mora, Conine, Cordova, Singleton, Bordick, Gil, Batista, Richard, Gibbons all in a slump, and Matthews was hurt. Jerry Hairston was really one of the few players, ironically, who had a good September.
So the team went into a tailspin. They lost 10 in a row. Then they lost another 8 in a row. Then after winning three out of five, they lost their last 12. The only good thing that came out of all of it is that the Orioles were not fooled into thinking that they were close to contention, and Vice-president Syd Thrift was put out to pasture.
So there you have it in a few paragraphs. 2002. Oh, there was a Belfry Week...and there were some real feel-good stories, like Lopez and Driskill and Howie Clark; and even a Rookie of the Year contender. There haven't been many seasons like the O's had in 2002, with a total collapse at 63-63, so it's hard to look back on how much fun a lot of the earlier part of the season was. Sure, there were lots more empty seats at the ballpark, but O's fans were still solid, even after a couple of years of being a genuine laughingstock. That's something to be proud of. There were a lot of good times, and even some occasional excitement in 2002, and O's fans have Gibbons, Julio, and Lopez to look forward to, and perhaps Matthews, Bauer, and Stephens, too.
It's time to take a little bit of in-depth look at what the individual members of the Orioles did, or didn't do, in 2002.