BOSTON - The riddle, now 3 years old and increasingly irritating, colors a season quickly dragging the Orioles to a familiar place where they would rather not return.
Why can the Orioles go up and down but never settle in between?
Not only are the Orioles baseball's oldest team. They have demonstrated since their 1997 American League East title that they are also the game's most schizophrenic, capable of encouraging runs of success followed by stretches of profound frustration.
The Orioles enter tonight's series opener against the Boston Red Sox lugging a nine-game losing streak that has dropped them into a last-place tie. Another loss tonight behind Mike Mussina would give them only the ninth double-digit losing streak in club history but their third in three seasons.
No team is defined by streaks more than the Orioles. Already this season they have experienced winning streaks of five, six, four and six games and losing runs of four, four, seven, four, five and nine games.
"I don't have a theory. My approach has always been to take one game at a time," third baseman Cal Ripken said. "What happened yesterday can't affect your ability to go out and play today."
Former manager Ray Miller theorized that advanced age made his team vulnerable to wild swings. His 1998 team crashed the wild- card race with second-half streaks of eight, five and five wins only to collapse in a 10-game losing streak following a disastrous August clubhouse meeting in Chicago.
Manager Mike Hargrove waves off theories as uninvited fortune- telling.
"I don't have a reason for it. It's perplexing," he said. "There are times when this team has played very well."
Those times typically have come at cozy Camden Yards. Hargrove's Orioles have not won any of their past 10 road series and have won only one of 15 road games since May 30.
"They can compensate to a degree for their lack of outfield range at home," said one American League club official. "They can compensate for some mistakes there with home runs. But put them in a big park and they look defenseless."
"We play some good games on the road, but something always seems to happen," catcher Charles Johnson said. "It's hard to figure out."
