Since the last Orioles World Series championship in 1983, the team has not made it back to play for the title. Every season, sooner or later, ends up with a question of who Orioles fans might have to root for instead. With each passing round, the choices shrink. We’re down to the final two teams as the World Series starts tonight: the Dodgers, and the Blue Jays.
In our survey this week, I asked Orioles fans a simple question. Who are you rooting for to win it all? This is one of the most evenly-split
Reacts surveys we’ve ever done:
That’s a slight edge to the Blue Jays overall, but a close fight for folks whose preference is for the Dodgers to repeat as champions.
This is a much closer margin than I would have expected. The idea of anyone who just won last year repeating this year is unappealing to me. That takes priority over all other considerations. Though I get it: There are plenty of considerations to cut against Toronto here. There’s the general distaste for seeing a division opponent get success. There’s the distant history involving Cito Gaston. There’s decade-old history of flying beer cans, and this season history of Jeff Hoffman beefing over the Orioles front office backing out of signing him for medical reasons.
As a counter to my thinking, perhaps you might even like the Dodgers to repeat so that we can stop hearing about how the most recent repeat was the Yankees 1998-2000 threepeat. Which, you know what, that’s totally valid.
The best-of-seven to determine who wins it all this year gets under way tonight. Either way, close to half of Birdland will be satisfied with the outcome. The other half probably won’t be too torn up on behalf of the losers either way.
