A great many strange things happened in 2020, but one was that, as of August 15, 2020, the Orioles were a playoff-bound team. Second in the AL East, a few games back of the Yankees, they had just swept the (future AL Champion) Tampa Bay Rays, and the defending World Series champion Nationals and the Phillies before that. O’s magic in 2020?!? People believed, damnit!
And then, the collapse. The Orioles lost six games in a row and thirteen of the next seventeen, including a couple to last-place Boston and a New York Mets team that definitely didn’t have Francisco Lindor or Carlos Carrasco.