The Orioles returned home this week to Camden Yards with eight wins over the season’s first six weeks, and Steve Mason didn’t know where it had all gone so wrong. The Baltimore resident has been devoted to the Orioles going on two decades now. For so long, early-season games like Tuesday’s against the Kansas City Royals had offered the promise of some uplift. No longer.
“I’m afraid to turn on the Orioles tonight,” he said Tuesday afternoon, just hours before those fears were realized on a nightmarish scale. Dylan Bundy, the team’s nominal ace, became the first pitcher in modern major league baseball history to give up four home runs without recording an out.