Baseball: Difference between revisions

* The '''Baltimore Orioles''': Although traditionally one of the flagship franchises of Baseball, they have entered a [[Dork Age]] with seemingly no end under the "leadership" of Peter Angelos, probably the most reviled owner in baseball. Since taking over the Orioles in 1993, his tremendous incompetence has turned a once proud franchise into the laughingstock of baseball. Almost everything he does makes you say [[What an Idiot!]]. They've had 14 consecutive losing seasons, topped only by the Pirates' still active streak of 19 seasons. The team's most famous players are super-fielder Brooks Robinson and "Iron Man" Cal Ripken Jr, both Hall-of-Famers who played their entire careers with the Orioles. Prior to 1953, the club was known as the St. Louis Browns. They play at Camden Yards, widely considered one of the most beautiful stadiums in the league.

* The '''Boston Red Sox''' are often considered by their fans to be [[La Résistance]] to the Yankees' [[The Empire|Evil Empire]] (this view is not well received by fans of other teams these days, [[Rule-Abiding Rebel|given that they have effectively acted exactly like the Yankees since 2004]]), and had a 86-year span from 1918 to 2004 in which they did not win a single World Series (this is sometimes known as "The Curse of the Bambino", although despite what the [[Cultural Translation|American film version of]] ''[[Fever Pitch]]'' told you, barely any hardcore Sox fans believed that this curse was why they kept losing). That finally ended in 2004 when the Red Sox, coming off a [[Miracle Rally]] that saw them come back from a unprecedented 3 games to nothing hole to beat the Yankees, swept the Cardinals in the World Series (during [[Weird Moon|a lunar eclipse]], nonetheless). The Red Sox are [[Serious Business]] in Boston, and the rivalry between them and the Yankees is the biggest [[Fandom Rivalry]] in North American sports, if not sports period. When viewed from outside the rivalry, however, the Red Sox have since the end of the curse merely become the lesser of two evils (the result of [[He Who Fights Monsters|adopting Yankee-like spending habits]]). The Red Sox play in Fenway Park, the oldest stadium in Major League Baseball. Fenway itself is known for "The Green Monster", a ridiculously high left-field wall erected to compensate for its close relative proximity to home plate. (Short pop flies that would be easily caught in other parks can turn into home runs over the Green Monster, while hard liners that would fly out of other parks bounce off the Green Monster for doubles or sometimes even singles. In rare cases balls have come close to landing on the nearby [[Mass Pike]].) Experienced one of the biggest collapses in baseball history in September 2011 when they went 7-20 blowing not only the lead in the AL East to the Yankees, but losing their wild card spot to the Rays despite being ahead of them by 9 games at the start of the month. [[Never Live It Down|Because of the management after Jackie Robinson's debut, they were the absolute last team to integrate in baseball]], passing on both Robinson and Willie Mays.

* The '''Cleveland Indians''', a charter member of the American League, are the Cubs of the AL, only with a nice stadium. No one really remembers how they got their name (popular belief asserts that it came from an early Native American-descended player named Louis Sockalexis, but this is wrong), but some agree it's politically incorrect. Their previous stadium was cold, windy, and in general a horrible place to play. Their new stadium is nicer, but players and fans occasionally get attacked by swarms of insects (which actually helped the Indians win a key playoff game in 2007) and, in 2009, seagulls. They lost a game in 1974 when their fans, drunk on cheap beer, began to attack the opposing players. They were perennial last-place finishers in the '80s, which led up to the movie ''[[Major League]]'', in which a fictional version of the Indians overcomes their idiosyncrasies and ineptitude to win the pennant. Incredibly, they became successful a few years after the release of the movie and today are one of the most consistently solid teams in the American League (though they have yet to win a World Series since 1948).

* The '''Detroit Tigers''' are one of the charter American League teams. Historically, they've alternated between periods of brilliance and long dry spells of non-contention. After enduring one such dry spell for over two decades following their 1984 World Series championship (which included losing ''119 games'' in 2003, one shy of tying the Major League record for losses in 162 games), the Tigers came out of nowhere in 2006 to reach the Fall Classic again (only to get unexpectedly and swiftly defeated by the Cardinals). However, high expectations in ensuing seasons failed to bear fruit; in 2009, the team suffered one of the worst collapses in baseball history, losing a three game division lead with only four games to play. The Tigers seem to have redeemed themselves, however, in 2011, reaching the ALCS with an excellent offense and one of the best pitching rotations in AL history (headed by the aforementioned Justin Verlander, with Jose "Papa Grande" Valverde serving as an absolute top-notch closer). The Tigers have boasted several Hall of Famers in their history, including Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford in the 1900s and '10s, Hank Greenberg (the majors' first Jewish-American star) and Charlie Gehringer in the '30s and '40s, and Al Kaline in the '50s and '60s. Another Tiger Hall of Famer is the late broadcaster Ernie Harwell, who called the team's games for over 40 years and was basically the AL counterpart to Vin Scully.