What in the name of Joe Orsulak is going on here? The calendar reads September 5th, and the Orioles are tied for 1st place in the AL East. How can this be? The last time the Orioles were relevant might have been when I was a young lad in college and Baltimore won 98 games and lost in the ALCS to the Indians.

The Orioles and their embarrassing -19 run differential throttled the Blue Jays Tuesday 12-0, and coupled with Tampa’s 5-2 win over the can’t-hit Yankees, the former rivals are knotted atop the AL East.

I can actually name more Orioles from the 1988 team – the one that started 0-21 and finished with just 54 wins – than the 2012 version. Back then I was passionate about baseball – collected cards, kept fantasy stats by hand – and because Baltimore was the local team, I was well aware of highly-mockable scrubs like Larry Sheets, Rick Schu, Pete Stanicek and Mr. Do-Everything, Jim Dwyer. (I was a Mattingly fan.)

One wonders … let’s say the Dodgers, Yankees, and Angels all miss the playoffs, and they’re replaced by the low payroll Pirates, Orioles and Athletics. With the Red Sox still a 4-alarm grease fire and the Phillies nowhere to be seen … toss in the Strasburg shutdown and this will have to be Bud Selig’s worst nightmare, right?