The good news for the Orioles in 1980 was that the won 100 games, which means they had an awesome season. The bad news was that the Yankees won 103 games and the O's finished 3 games out and missed the post season. This is how things would go back in the dark days of divisional play prior to the advent of the Wild Card. The O's battled their butts off all year and never quit. With a manager like Earl Weaver manning the bench quitting was never an option. At one point in July the O's were behind by double digits (11 games), but they never stopped coming. Slowly but surely they chipped away at the Yankees lead. A ten game winning streak spread out over July and August along with a 17-2 stretch got them right back in the race. After Jim Palmer led them to a 13-8 win over the Angels on August 28 the O's were just a 1/2 game behind the "Evil Empire". With virtually 1 month left to go the O's had caught New York. Baltimore won an incredible 24 games in September and lost just 10, but the Yankees played even better. The O's did not crumble. The did not lose the division. The Yankees flat out won it. Baltimore went 14-4 over the final 2 weeks and still finised 3 out, which was a bitter pill to swallow.
Earl Weaver basically used a 9 man staff all year. Cy Young award winner Steve Stone was 25-7 (3.23). Scotty McGregor, a Yankee castoff, also won 20. Lefty Mike Flanagan was 16-13 (4.12) and veteran Jim Palmer, who struggled, still managed to go (16-10, 3.98). Baltimore basically had a 4 man rotation with Dennis Martinez splitting time between the pen and the rotation as the 5th starter when needed. Tim Stoddard (26 saves) is the closer and Sammy Steward (118 IP) is the setup guy, who will routinely go 2-3 innings. Tippy Martinez, who started the season as the closer had some trouble, but still saved 10 games and at least kept his ERA around 3.00.
As usual, the offense is predicated on the 3 run homer. Shockingly there are 3 guys on this team that stole more than double digits worth of bases. Vietnam Vet Al Bumbry stole 44. 35 year old part timer Pat Kelly stole 16 and Doug DeCinces had 11. The offense is led by a pair of switch hitters. HOF'er Eddie Murray, at the age of 24, was the best 1st baseman in the league. Murray hit an even .300 with 32 homers and 116 RBI's. Singleton, who split time between right field and DH hit .304 with 24 round trippers and 104 RBI's. Stolen base guy Bumbry played a great centerfield and chipped in with a .318 average and a .392 OBP. Manager Andy Weinrib, who is returning for his 13th KOD will look to get Bumbry on in order to shake things up and setup the long ball. Doug DeCinces will give manager Weinrib a gold glove presence at third and some power, but not much in the way of average. Rich Dauger and Mark Belanger might be the smoothest keystone combo in the league, but neither will knock down any walls with their lumber. Dauer did hit .284, but Belanger hit his customary .228. When Belanger isn't in the lineup Kiko Garcia will be. Garcia hit below the Mendoza line and didn't have half the glove Belanger had. Bench/Platoon players like Terry Crowley (.288-12-50) and Dan Graham (.278-15-54) make the O's dangerous late in games. Benny Ayala is especially dangerous as a pinch hitter, who hit 10 homers in only 170 AB's. John "Let it be" Lowenstein hit .311 off the bench in 196 AB's, so Andy will have many options to mix and match his lineup.
Creating the 1980 missing Orioles cards was a fun proposition. The template was pretty easy to create and the font was quite simple. In all I had to create 10 cards to round out this set. The Paul Hartzell card is a colorized version of a B&W photo taken of him in the mid 70's. Just seeing the name Drungo Hazewood brought back a lot of memories of great baseball names. Sadly I was only able to find a semi-colorized version of his photo off of a Orioles special anniversary team set. IMO, the 1980 Topps set is the most under-appreciated set that the company issued. The template was great, but Topps did a horrible job in producing the cards. Many of the photos that they used were either grainy or out of focus. This would be the last year Topps had a monopoly in the Baseball card business. The following season (1981) both Fleer and Donruss issued sets that challenged Topps's stranglehold on the industry and forced them to step up their game.
Earl Weaver basically used a 9 man staff all year. Cy Young award winner Steve Stone was 25-7 (3.23). Scotty McGregor, a Yankee castoff, also won 20. Lefty Mike Flanagan was 16-13 (4.12) and veteran Jim Palmer, who struggled, still managed to go (16-10, 3.98). Baltimore basically had a 4 man rotation with Dennis Martinez splitting time between the pen and the rotation as the 5th starter when needed. Tim Stoddard (26 saves) is the closer and Sammy Steward (118 IP) is the setup guy, who will routinely go 2-3 innings. Tippy Martinez, who started the season as the closer had some trouble, but still saved 10 games and at least kept his ERA around 3.00.
As usual, the offense is predicated on the 3 run homer. Shockingly there are 3 guys on this team that stole more than double digits worth of bases. Vietnam Vet Al Bumbry stole 44. 35 year old part timer Pat Kelly stole 16 and Doug DeCinces had 11. The offense is led by a pair of switch hitters. HOF'er Eddie Murray, at the age of 24, was the best 1st baseman in the league. Murray hit an even .300 with 32 homers and 116 RBI's. Singleton, who split time between right field and DH hit .304 with 24 round trippers and 104 RBI's. Stolen base guy Bumbry played a great centerfield and chipped in with a .318 average and a .392 OBP. Manager Andy Weinrib, who is returning for his 13th KOD will look to get Bumbry on in order to shake things up and setup the long ball. Doug DeCinces will give manager Weinrib a gold glove presence at third and some power, but not much in the way of average. Rich Dauger and Mark Belanger might be the smoothest keystone combo in the league, but neither will knock down any walls with their lumber. Dauer did hit .284, but Belanger hit his customary .228. When Belanger isn't in the lineup Kiko Garcia will be. Garcia hit below the Mendoza line and didn't have half the glove Belanger had. Bench/Platoon players like Terry Crowley (.288-12-50) and Dan Graham (.278-15-54) make the O's dangerous late in games. Benny Ayala is especially dangerous as a pinch hitter, who hit 10 homers in only 170 AB's. John "Let it be" Lowenstein hit .311 off the bench in 196 AB's, so Andy will have many options to mix and match his lineup.
Creating the 1980 missing Orioles cards was a fun proposition. The template was pretty easy to create and the font was quite simple. In all I had to create 10 cards to round out this set. The Paul Hartzell card is a colorized version of a B&W photo taken of him in the mid 70's. Just seeing the name Drungo Hazewood brought back a lot of memories of great baseball names. Sadly I was only able to find a semi-colorized version of his photo off of a Orioles special anniversary team set. IMO, the 1980 Topps set is the most under-appreciated set that the company issued. The template was great, but Topps did a horrible job in producing the cards. Many of the photos that they used were either grainy or out of focus. This would be the last year Topps had a monopoly in the Baseball card business. The following season (1981) both Fleer and Donruss issued sets that challenged Topps's stranglehold on the industry and forced them to step up their game.
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