“Suddenly, the Baltimore Orioles are a team to be feared.”
Brian Roberts hit a home run on J.J. Putz’s first offering of the 10th inning to give the Orioles yet another dramatic victory on this day in Orioles history, August 9, 2010. Paul Konerko had tied the game with a home run versus Alfredo Simon leading off the ninth inning for the White Sox to set up Roberts’ walk-off.
The win was the O’s sixth in seventh games since Buck Showalter took over as manager a week earlier when the team held a 32-73 record. With Roberts’ heroics, three of those six wins had come via walk-off. The Associated Press game story began, “Suddenly, the Baltimore Orioles are a team to be feared.”
The O’s totaled six walk-off victories in 57 games under Showalter in 2010 matching their total for the season’s first 105 games. Overall, Showalter guided the team to a 34-23 record down the stretch, totaling more wins than the team had in those 105 games prior to his arrival.
The Orioles’ performance toward the season’s end provided fans something that had been in short supply for several years: hope.
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