The sports shutdown has led fans and media to come up with all sorts of lists to provide entertainment and kill a few hours. Twitter is filled with them. You can't swing a dead opening day article without hitting one. I'm more of a lurker than a participant, but I did name the Colts leaving Baltimore as my most heartbreaking sports moment. No team can replace them in my heart. No offense to the Ravens, but the 1970s Colts will always be my sports love. The improbable run to the playoffs in...

If you want to re-watch the Nationals' dramatic run to their first World Series title on television, here's your chance. MASN will be broadcasting all 12 of the Nats' postseason victories, plus the championship parade, during the first two weeks of April. It all begins Thursday at 1 p.m., exactly when the Nationals were supposed to raise their banner before facing the Mets in their 2020 home opener. Instead, MASN will be showing the entire National League wild card game, capped by Juan...

They didn't have to submit an official 26-man roster for opening day this morning, but the Nationals did make a series of transactions, procedural moves that involved the optioning of six players off the major league spring training roster. Right-hander Erick Fedde and catcher Tres Barrera were both optioned to Triple-A Fresno, the club announced. Four more players were optioned to Double-A Harrisburg: right-handers James Bourque and Kyle Finnegan, plus infielder Adrián Sanchez and...

What will you be doing today at 1:10 p.m.? Will you turn on your television, hoping beyond hope to see Trea Turner stepping to the plate to face Jacob deGrom at sold-out Citi Field? Maybe this has all been a bad dream, a two-week-long nightmare that we'll all wake up from just in time to watch the 2020 Major League Baseball season begin as scheduled. Sadly, no. This is all too real. And it's only going to start feeling more real with each passing day as the pandemic numbers skyrocket and the...

Who would have ever thought we'd have an "opening day at home." But today, on the day that the Major League Baseball season was set to open, here we are. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic we are getting ready to watch previous great games. And not watch, attend or report on new ones. Major League Baseball yesterday made an announcement with a spoiler alert: Every team wins on this opening day. MLB will be showing a rebroadcast of one game for each team. For the Orioles it's the...

The Orioles have made executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde available on separate conference calls during the shutdown. What they can't do is invent answers. Major League Baseball is pushing back the start of the season. No date has been set for opening day. No assurances have been given that it's going to happen. No one in the organization can offer a prediction. They aren't keeping it a secret. They just don't know. Fans should have been filing into...

Good update here on left-hander Tim Cate and his progression prior to the shutdown. Nationals minor league pitching coordinator Brad Holman said Cate was making nice strides at camp and focusing on a few mechanical adjustments prior to the season beginning. Holman said they got started early this year with Cate in West Palm Beach. Cate, 6-foot and 185 lbs., is listed at No. 8 in the latest MLBPipeline.com top 30 roundup of Nats prospects. No. 8 Tim Cate "Tim was down in instructional league as...

The re-watch of the 2019 postseason has been a blast - thank you to everyone who has reached out to say how much they've enjoyed it - but it's also pretty time consuming. I mean, you really want me to watch an entire baseball game and then write a full article about it 17 times? What do you think I am, a baseball beat writer? (Wait, don't answer that question.) Rest assured, the postseason re-watch will continue later this week with the National League Championship Series. Then after another...

For love of the game. We're not talking about a Kevin Costner movie here, but rather the love of baseball that probably all of us have, to some extent. For some, maybe love is too strong a word. For me, it's not. I fell in love with baseball as a kid and I still love the sport. Almost everything about it. From a well-executed relay that gets the runner at the plate to that line drive double in the gap to that great play in the hole at short. I love big swings leading to dramatic big hits and...

My scheduled return home yesterday from Sarasota would have been the ideal time to reflect on six weeks of spring training. Something that I've been doing in its abbreviated form since my actual return on March 14. There hasn't been one like it during my tenure on the Orioles beat, which officially began in 1997 after I assisted in coverage of 2,130 and 2,131 in 1995 - no other explanation needed - and the 1996 playoffs. Including Jeffrey Maier's interference of a Derek Jeter fly ball at...