The Orioles take the final game, with a seven-run explosion in the seventh and eighth and a scoreless inning of relief from McDonald, and everyone begins envisioning a pennant for Memorial Stadium as a going-away present for the 33rd Street icon. But despite all the promise, 1990 is more like "Not Again" than "Why Not?" By mid-April, the Orioles slip to .500 and never resurface, ending with a 76-85 (.472) record, 11 1/2 games behind the Red Sox. The glow of winning won't return until 1996.
"Unfortunately, in my nine-year major league career, it was the only time I got to experience a pennant race," says McDonald. "I kind of took it for granted at that time; I was convinced it was the norm, not something unusual, but it didn't work out like that."
Baltimore has never taken it for granted. Ask fans of a certain age where they were on the weekend of Sept. 29, 1989, and most can tell you. They might mix up the details a bit, but they remember a team of overachievers who never worried about how they matched up on paper but who scooped up ground balls, hit the cutoff man and moved the runner along - the Oriole Way.
