Sitting in his office at Camden Yards ahead of Wednesday’s game, Brandon Hyde, the manager of the Baltimore Orioles, smelled something unusual. Over the past three weeks Hyde had been consumed with ending his team’s ignominious losing streak, which had reached 19 games.
So Hyde hopped up and stepped into the hallway connecting his office to the players’ clubhouse. There he ran into first baseman Trey Mancini, 29, the longest tenured Oriole.
“Are we smoking some different type of cigarettes?” Hyde said. “What’s happening in our clubhouse?”
His players weren’t smoking cigarettes or anything stronger than that.