This Is How Baseball Can Break Your Heart

The Orioles can't wait for the future to get here.

But maybe that's because the present has more emotional highs and lows than Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Look what happened to this team in less than 24 hours.

Tuesday night, at about the time most people were going to bed or watching Conan O'Brien, the Orioles came back from a nine-run deficit to beat the Red Sox, 11-10, at Camden Yards for the greatest comeback win in club history.

The players were giddy - well, about as giddy as you can imagine guys like Nick Markakis and Melvin Mora getting.

Manager Dave Trembley was so happy, I thought his face would freeze into a permanent smile.

Then Wednesday afternoon, leading 5-3 in the ninth with George Sherrill on the mound and two outs, they watched their previously lights-out closer surrender a bloop single to left, two walks and a bouncer up the middle to tie the score on the way to a heartbreaking 6-5 loss to the Sox, the team that has owned them lately.

You talk about being emotionally whipsawed. Baseball can do that to you.

This time, after the loss, Trembley looked like someone ran over his dog.

And when Brad Bergesen, who pitched brilliantly (four hits and six strikeouts in eight innings), was asked how tough it was to come so close and lose after the comeback of the night before, he was actually speechless for a moment.

"Oh, it's very tough," he finally managed. "You'd love to get the win here and win the series and get on the plane and go to Anaheim."

Anaheim is where the Orioles begin a seven-game road trip with the Los Angeles Angels tonight.

And if the weather's nice - and when isn't it in Southern California? - it's probably a great place for them to be right now.

But you can bet they won't soon forget these two games against the Red Sox, two of the most inspiring and maddening back-to-back games most have ever played in.

What a gritty comeback that was Tuesday night for the Orioles.

Trailing 9-1 after a 71-minute rain delay, with the stadium at least half-filled with the usual jeering Red Sox fans, they could have mailed it in for the rest of the game.

Instead, they suddenly looked like a completely different team.

Out of nowhere, the bats came alive. They scored five runs in the seventh inning, led by Oscar Salazar's three-run homer crushed into the left-field bleachers.

In the dugout, Trembley could feel the momentum begin to swing.