At least you're not a Baltimore Orioles fan

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My kid is old enough to have a whole lot he wants to say but young enough that a lot of what he says is unintelligible. He’s got a monologue going at most times and it’s completely adorable (to me, if not to the people sitting next to us at restaurants), but when he really gets going, I can only pick up little familiar snippets of speech and parts of songs he likes. Then a couple days ago, unprompted and perfectly clear, he shouted, “Baseball, nooooooo!”

That really cuts to the core of it, I think. I’ve spilled literally millions of words in my life to essentially say nothing more than, “baseball, nooooooo!” Because baseball, as you probably realize, will ruin you. Unless you’re a fan of, like, the Yankees, Cardinals, Red Sox, Giants or, now, the Astros and Cubs, heartbreak is your primary constant.

Every year, inside the bubble of optimism that forms around every club’s spring camp, you convince yourself all the scrubs on your favorite team’s roster are ready for breakout seasons and you fantasize that this is the year the former top prospect finally puts it all together, then the season starts, a bunch of guys get hurt, a couple other guys suddenly and mysteriously turn bad, and baseball’s few haves roll through town and trounce your beloved have-nots. Maybe a few times in your lifetime, if you’re lucky, you get a World Series run out of them. Or maybe you’ve pulled for the Mariners since their 1977 launch and you still don’t know what the World Series is like. Baseball, nooooooo!

But no matter how bad it gets this year — and for roughly half of MLB teams, it’s already pretty bad — you can take solace in this: At least you’re not a fan of the 2019 Baltimore Orioles.

That club remains on pace to shatter the all-time mark for home runs allowed in a season. At 21-51, they have the worst record in baseball by a full three games “over” the Kansas City Royals. They became the fourth fastest team this century to lose 50 games, and two of the other three teams were also the Orioles. Last year they traded the best player they’ve developed since Cal Ripken, and only one of the five guys they got in return — Double-A reliever Zach Pop, who’s thrown only 10 2/3 innings — has played especially well this season. Their top hitting prospect has walked only nine times while striking out 62 times in Triple-A this year. Their top pitching prospect is literally named “DL.”

Oh, yeah! And the Orioles play in a division that includes the Yankees and Red Sox, both of whom are almost always good and usually willing to spend lots of money to patch holes in their rosters, as well as the Rays — baseball’s most innovative team, now loaded with young talent and locking up lots of it to team-friendly extensions — and the Blue Jays, who are also quite bad right now but appear way closer to being good than the Orioles do.

It’s bleak. And that the Orioles look doomed to the basement of the AL East for the foreseeable future only makes more frustrating the fact they were actually pretty competitive from 2012-2016, a stretch in which they made the postseason three times but never won an ALCS game.

If you’re a baseball fan and all seems hopeless, understand that at least your team doesn’t appear as hopeless as that one. And if you’re an Orioles fan, a) I’m sorry b) you’re probably not around to read this anyway, and c) know that it can only get better from here. Also, this guy John Means has been really good! There’s always something to enjoy.

Monday’s big winner: Frank Gunn

I know what you’re saying: “Ted, that’s not Frank Gunn! That’s just an outrageously cool photo of Kawhi Leonard at the Raptors’ victory parade!” Check the caption, homes.

Quick hits: Almora, LaVar, Drake again

– Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. had injury added to insult when a Cody Bellinger home run caromed off the batter’s eye and doinked Almora right in the head. It looked pretty painful. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before, and I’ve endured most forms of sports pain.

– The same day I feel sympathy for LaVar Ball, he goes and makes a slimy comment to host Molly Qerim on one of the ESPN yell-about-sports shows. Former ESPN personality Jemele Hill wondered if the network would finally learn its lesson about putting Ball on TV. SPOILER ALERT: It won’t.

– Yesterday I learned that Drake owns a private 767. Obviously I realized Drake was extremely rich, but I guess in my head he was, like, Learjet rich, not 767 rich. Ever been to Graceland and checked out Elvis’ planes? They’re bigger and nicer than my apartment, with a more optimal amount of shag carpet. I now envy Drake. Stupid Drake. Get a zeppelin, for cryin’ out loud.