Nine.

The Baltimore Orioles have won nine games this season, including their game last night.

Finally!

This gives them, still, the worst record in baseball. They are 17 games back of the Yankees in the AL East. (The Yankees have lost 10 games this season; the Orioles have won nine.)

Thanks to a walk, an Orioles error, and a double steal, the Royals had the tying run in scoring position in the 9th last night.

But, don’t rain on my parade today, Mr. Pickles, because a win is a win. They got the last out.

 

And, the losing streak comes to an end.

On April 27, the Detroit Tigers came to Baltimore. The Orioles won two of the three games that weekend. Those were the last games the Orioles won.

Until last night.

At some point during that Tigers/Orioles series in April, somewhere in a woody area not far from Camden Yards, two young opossums found each other in the moonlight and when their giant-pupil eyes met, they knew. They just knew. It was love.

As the Orioles were winning their series not far away, those two opossums, oblivious, young, and in love, pledged their troth and made crazy opossum love in the wild Maryland woods.

The next morning, the boy opossum left. Opossum love, I’ve learned, is really only a series of one-night stands.

The girl opossum was left alone and pregnant.

Opossum gestation is a quick 12-day thing and today, somewhere in those Maryland woods, that girl opossum will become a mom. Maybe a dozen or as many of 20 little pink baby opossums – each the size of a grain of rice – will emerge from her tummy and crawl into her pouch where they will spend the next two months or so. Sort of born, but still not quite ready for the real world.

It’s a marsupial thing.

These teeny-tiny opossums – opossum-ettes? – were conceived on the night of an Orioles win and born (in their kinda-sorta way) today in the glow of an Orioles win.

They will, in a couple months, look something like this.

They are good luck opossums.

Let me tell you one more thing you need to know about baby opossums. It’s important.

When opossums nurse, they don’t really suckle. Instead, the mother’s nipple presses her milk directly down into the baby’s stomach.

You know what that means, don’t you?

Opossums don’t suck.

And, for today anyway, neither do the Orioles.

Dear Baltimore Orioles,

Thank you.

Your Relieved Friend, The Baseball Bloggess

P.S. The Wildlife Center of Virginia cares for ill, injured, and orphaned opossums. As of May 9, the Center is caring for 85 baby opossums. When healed and healthy, opossum patients are returned to the wild. But, some are unable to be released.

This is Posie.

Posie — no, not named for Buster Posey, but cute idea — is one year old and came to the Center last year, the victim of head trauma. While healed, she still has problems with her balance, and so cannot be released. She has become a permanent resident at the Center.

She was lucky that she received life-saving care. She’s a lucky opossum. Just the good luck the Orioles will need this season to get them over that 10-win mountain. I have sponsored Posie through the Wildlife Center’s Caring for Critters program in honor of the Orioles. You can sponsor Posie or a bear cub or any number of Center education animals. They could use your help. Learn more about the Center’s sponsorship programs here.

— Opossum photos courtesy of The Wildlife Center of Virginia.