Hey everyone, my name is Daniel Weintraub, and I am a Baltimore Orioles fanatic. I’m starting this blog to give my thoughts about the O’s as the season progresses. Most of my posts will be about the games, but for my first p(O’s)t (see what I did there), I’d like to tell the story of my life as an Orioles fan.

For most of my 18-year life, being an ardent follower of the O’s has been more of a burden than a hobby. Anyone can attach themselves to a winner, experience years of winning, and call themselves a fan. Even someone whose team occasionally has a winning season can look forward to the promise of glory at the start of every April.

But until last season, there was little to look forward to as an Orioles supporter, even before each year’s April Fool’s Day. I was born in 1994, and for the first 17.75 years of my life, the O’s had made two playoff appearances – in 1996 and 1997, when I was one and two years old, and didn’t know the difference from Cal Ripken Jr. and Mr. Clean.

When I attended my first Orioles game in 1999 at the tender age of four, I was treated to a heartbreaking 9th inning O’s loss via the second home run of the game by Oakland A’s veteran utility man Tony Phillips, who to this day remains one of my least favorite sports figures of all time. That may seem unfair to Phillips, but with all due respect, he probably isn’t held in high regard in Anaheim, Ca. or Yuma, Az. either.

Seriously, anytime that your 2nd and 3rd most noteworthy Wikipedia sections involve cocaine and Jose Canseco, you’ve made some bad decisions. But I digress, as the guy who destroyed my first baseball experience really could have been anyone, and it’s not like most sluggers in 1999 were doing anything illegal, right?

Yeesh. Gotta tell ya Tony Phillips, I may have been wrong to single you out all these years. I declare a truce. Although I still cringe at the mere sight of your name.

My parents have called me stubborn throughout my life, and since I decided to stick with the O’s after that first game, maybe they have a point. Many little kids would ditch a team if they broke their heart in their very first game, but naivety combined with stubbornness is a recipe for disaster. Which is exactly what I experienced for the entirety of my childhood, as the Orioles failed to record a winning season from 1998-2011.

Not only did the Orioles lose, they didn’t even come close to winning. From 2000-2011, the Orioles’ 78-84 finish in 2004 was their best record. They failed to win 70 games SEVEN times during that span, “trailing” only the Pirates and Royals in that category, who each had eight such abysmal seasons.

To make matters worse, the Orioles did not capitalize on their losing seasons because they failed to select promising players in the MLB Draft. From 2000-2006, the Orioles had 12 first-round draft picks. The only one of those 12 who has made an impact with the team is right-fielder Nick Markakis, who was selected in 2003. Who were some of the others, you ask? Raise your hand if you have the jersey of Beau Hale, Tripper Johnson, Chris Smith, Bryan Bass, Brandon Snyder, Billy Rowell, or Pedro Beato.

No hands? Even HE is incensed with the Orioles putrid draft scouting. That’s half a decade of misguided picks. That means another half decade of futility. That RUINED my youth! My dad told me in 2009 that the Orioles had to make the playoffs before I went to college, and I immediately knew that wasn’t going to happen. There was no hope, no future, nothing to look forward to.

And then 2012 happened.

A breakthrough. A miracle. And end to the suffering, a new leaf turned. A WINNER. For the first time in my short yet unbearably painful life as a baseball fan, my team was a WINNER. How it happened, I’m still not sure. Our ace, Jason Hammel, has a career ERA of 4.82. Our leading home run hitter, Chris Davis, was a castoff from the Texas Rangers. Every win seemed to be a nailbiter. In every loss, it seemed like we were getting crushed.

But somehow, we did it. We made the playoffs with a 93-69 record, beat the two-time reigning American League champion Rangers on the road in a one-game playoff, and pushed the New York Yankees to the brink, eventually coming up short in the ALDS. And although losing to the Yankees was a tough pill to swallow, I was never more proud to be a sports fan, even after we were eliminated. A team of vagabonds — and that is really what we were last year, a team of misfits, castoffs, and burnouts like Hammel, Davis, Nate McLouth, Joe Saunders, Miguel Gonzalez — came together, and gave the long-suffering Orioles fans a season that we will never forget.

When I attended Game 2 of the ALDS against the Yankees in Baltimore, I could not believe how electric the atmosphere was. For a moment, I was regretful that I had missed out on this environment at Camden Yards my entire life.

But as I looked around the stadium, and saw more than 40,000 white Orioles towels frantically waving in the air, I realized that I was waiting my entire life for that moment. For the first time as an Orioles fan, I did not feel alone. We had all come together as one, to forget our sorrows, and move forward. There was no more cellar-dwelling, no more taunts and jeers, and no more looking up at the giants of the AL East, because we had finally grown up, and were staring the Yankees fans right back into their pompous, entitled, ungrateful faces. We could not lose that night, and when Jim Johnson struck out the mighty Alex Rodriguez to end the game, Baltimore erupted. We were back.

And we are not going away.