Striking Out at Camden: How Three Bad Seasons Sent A Once Proud Franchise Into A Decade Long Tailspin

The 1998–2000 Orioles were one of the more disappointing teams of modern times. From owner Peter Angelos’s ham-fisted and wrongheaded ownership to Mike Mussina’s inevitable exit, we saw how a team loses 14 straight seasons. How does it start? One season at a time…

The cynical among us say that the roots of the 1998 losing season were in 1997. After falling to the Cleveland Indians in the AL Championship Series, Orioles owner Peter Angelos fired Davey Johnson. For all of his vaunted intellect, Peter Angelos basically fired a perfectly capable manager who got his team to 1st place.

That was just a start. Star Orioles closer Randy Myers got 46 saves in 1997, didn’t want the O’s contract and went to Toronto, San Diego and then out of baseball.

The Orioles went in-house for a new manager, pitching coach Ray Miller. Although he was there for the Oriole Way/Cal Ripken fungo bat days, he wasn’t in any shape to practice “The Oriole Way,” especially on a team of rented and hurt veterans.

Really, Ray Miller was a so-so manager who hadn’t managed in 13 years, he wasn’t the  optimum choice, especially dealing with a George Steinbrenner manqué in owner Angelos. It didn’t take long for Miller and the Orioles to be tested.

On May 19th the Orioles and Yankees faced off in a bench clearing fight. Reliever Armando Benitez gave up a home run to Bernie Williams and then dinged the next batter, Tino Martinez (of course) in the shoulder and a brawl for the ages started. One of the biggest highlights was when Daryl Strawberry ended up in the Orioles’ bleachers.

Even the fight was telling. The Yankees had more fighters, even their brawls were coordinated and the Orioles were outmatched in fights and in baseball games. At the point of the fisticuffs, the Yankees were 28–9 in first, the Orioles were 20–23 in last place and 11 games back.

That said, the 1998 team wasn’t a bad one. Rafael Palmerio, Roberto Alomar and Cal Ripken were All-Stars and both Mike Mussina and Scott Erickson had gutsy seasons. Strong vets anchored the team including Eric Davis and Harold Baines. The problems? Well, they started off slowly but surely.

Only two pitchers Mike Mussina (13–10) and Scott Erickson (16–13) had wins in the double digits. The Orioles searched for a third starter in tired arms like Doug Drabek, Scott Kamienicki and Juan Guzman. Jimmy Key spent most of the season in pain and went 6–3 and retired from baseball.

To add insult to injury, the Yankees went 114–48 and won the World Series in 4 games. The Yankees winning percentage was a staggering .714. The Orioles winning percentage was .488.

Not surprisingly, the Orioles’ high level talent started to leave. General manager Pat Gillick left for the Seattle Mariners. Rafael Palmerio took a pay cut to play again for the Texas Rangers. Roberto Alomar left to play with his brother for the Cleveland Indians.

The Orioles vaunted farm system wasn’t going great guns either. After another promising start, the oft injured Jeffrey Hammonds was traded to the Reds. 

In other comings and goings, Mike Mussina longtime battery mate Chris Hoiles called it a career. And oddly enough the 1998 season was the year that the Iron Man Cal Ripken decided to stop his streak. It was as good a time as any. Promising farm system player Ryan Minor replaced Ripken in the lineup at 3rd base.

Since it wasn’t 1992, neither Joe Carter, Norm Charlton, Jimmy Key or Doug Drabek would be coming back to the Orioles. By this point, Angelos’ brusque management style had become so renowned that exiting GM Pat Gillick told 1999 GM Frank Wren not to take the job. He didn’t listen. What came so easy in 1996–97 became downright difficult in 1999.

Of the returning players, the O’s still had Brady Anderson who was a durable presence even after his 1996 dream season. Cal Ripken was still there although age and injuries were catching up to him. Mike Mussina remained a dominant pitcher although on a diminishing team that couldn’t recruit A level talent.

Peter Angelos started to own the team in 1994. Despite early good luck, Angelos made rookie mistakes that hampered the organization for many years

Peter Angelos and the Orioles front office dysfunction wasn’t exactly an inviting place to go play baseball so the options became limited. Angelos did his tried and true acquisition of vets including Charles Johnson, Jeff Conine and Delino DeShields.

In an interview, Angelos talked about a player he wouldn’t have taken a chance on.

“Jeez, that guy! I’ve looked at medicals for 30 years as a lawyer, and that guy had the injuries of an infantryman!”

Who was that guy? It was Will Clark and Angelos signed him to a 2 year, $11 million dollar contract.

Angelos sidestepped the glaring pitching issue and signed human powder keg and Albert Belle for a five year $65 million dollar contract.

Belle’s stats were great. For all of the talk about his slugging (.564 batting percentage) he was great on the field too with a .976 fielding percentage. According to reports, Angelos acquired Belle so the Yankees couldn’t get him. How cynical was that? And costly, very costly.

The pitching was a bit better but not enough to compete. Mike Mussina just missed having his first 20 game season and Scott Erickson actually had more wins than losses at 15–12. Mike Timlin was all but the poster boy of this team’s deficit and was 3–9 and appeared in 69 games, mostly used in short relief. The once promising Rocky Coppinger started to find his path out of baseball going 0–1 with a 8.32 era.

The worst of the bunch had to be Heathcliff Slocumb who got paid $1 million dollars for 10 games and a 12.46 era. Slocumb didn’t make it past April. Really? In retrospect, the very idea of having a pitching staff that included Heathcliff Slocumb, Mike Timlin and Mike Fetters wasn’t going to compete let alone win.

The manager had to go and he did. In October 1999 Ray Miller’s option wasn’t picked up at the end of a very grim season. That season incurred more wrath and collateral damage from Angelos, and while Angelos and GM Frank Wren were looking for a new manager, Wren was relieved of is duties too.

In November 1999, the Orioles signed Mike Hargrove as the manager. Like the 1997 Orioles, the 1999 Indians they lost in the playoffs after coming in 1st in the AL Central and Hargrove was the fall guy. In effect, he brought all of that cheer to a fading, failing highly dysfunctional franchise.

If anyone thought Hargrove would light a winning spark in this group of vets, they were sadly mistaken. At this point the losing skid was in the team’s DNA regardless of whether Cal Ripken was there or not. Syd Thrift was in the GM role and reportedly helped Frank Wren out the door.

The Orioles didn’t make any moves, likely a combination of being tentative, being cash strapped and the organization having a bad reputation. Shortly after the All-Star break, the Orioles were 38–49, the accustomed “comfort zone” for the team hovering below .500

Something has to be done and Angelos did it during the season. Instead of filling his dugout full of vets, he let a bunch of them go. Charles Johnson, Will Clark, Mike Timlin, Mike Bordrick were all traded as there were more games to be played. Even a returning Harold Baines wasn’t immune and was sent for his third stint with the White Sox.

While it was good news to see some of those recent acquisitions go by the end of the season, another important one was on the horizon and it didn’t have to be so.

The farm system continued to be depleted as Calvin Pickering didn’t turn out to be a Y2K Gates Brown anymore than beloved Ryan Minor would become an heir to Cal Ripken Jr. Although this was all bad, worse was coming.

By 2000, Albert Belle had a degenerative hip condition and at a press conference, Peter Angelos stated the following:

“This is the end…Albert is no longer playing baseball for the Orioles.”

Belle didn’t go away with just a handshake, the O’s had to pay $13 million in for the final three seasons of the $65 million, 5 year contract with $3 million a year deferred.

In November 2000, the Orioles No. 1 pitcher and franchise player, free agent Mike Mussina, left and signed with the New York Yankees for 88 million dollars. The loss of Mike Mussina still stings to this day, most had expected Moose to end his career here. The reason he left was simple and Mussina said at the Yankees press conference…

“It just came down to who really seemed to want me on their team the most…”

Before it got to this point, owner Angelos never even considered Mussina leaving as he said, “He’s not going anywhere…”

Mike Hargrove ended up managing the Orioles for 2 more seasons. He ended up with four seasons where the Orioles ended up in 4th place. Arguably, he had little to do with the losing seasons, the foundations started years before the Orioles turned losing into an art form.

The Orioles basically toiled in anonymous anonymity. Melvin Mora (acquired from the Bordick trade), Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters and later Chris Davis and Adam Jones represented the new guard.

The O’s had a flirtation with actual success in 2005 under new manager Lee Mazilli, the Orioles led in the East most of the season until they collapsed in a heap and headed towards another losing season.

Angelos’s machinations seemed to be mollified by the mid 2010s. His yen for limping veterans abated due to the fact that that kind of player began to retire early and wasn’t available.

The Orioles finally won again in 2012 with manager Buck Showalter. Not surprisingly, the winning season seemed to come as baseball changed and Angelos just stayed out of the way. The Angelos family sold the Orioles in January 2024 to a group led by private equity investor David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos died in March 2024. 

After over a decade of steady losing, the Orioles are a regular team again, going through the simple highs and lows of a contemporary baseball ball club. At this point, that is a gift in and of itself.

Jason Elias is music journalist and a pop culture historian.