The defeat was pure agony. Two outs away from being able to clinch a division series tonight, the Orioles now find themselves fighting for survival.
“It breaks your heart,” said rookie starter Miguel Gonzalez, who pitched seven masterful innings and left with a 2-1 lead that the Orioles’ bullpen gave away — or Raul Ibanez simply took away — as Baltimore lost, 3-2, to fall in a 1-2 hole in the best-of-five ALDS.
“It’s pretty much win or go home,” center fielder Adam Jones said.
The Orioles to a man all vowed to fight with the same resiliency that got them here in the first place. And manager Buck Showalter presented the same feisty face as his players, claiming there was “no knot” in his gut.
“Is that what I’m supposed to do? Is that what conventional thinking is? Well, they may. We don’t live in that world. We’re so impressed with all our guys tonight, played a great game in a tough situation,” Showalter said. “And they’ll come out and compete tomorrow.”
They have to. Win or go home and all that.
“It’s just a tough loss,” catcher Matt Wieters said. “Just get ready to play tomorrow.”
The Orioles have been late-inning masters all season, making extra-inning games their private playground — except against the Yankees. The Orioles are 16-0 in extra innings against everybody not calling The Bronx home. Against the Yankees, they are 0-3.
But the Orioles say they will draw upon the resolve they have learned during their season.
“It definitely helps we went to Texas in the one-game playoff in a win-or-go-home situation,” said right fielder Chris Davis. “We can draw on our experience there. We’ll put this behind us and get after it tomorrow.”
And so all thoughts of the disappointment would die on the bus back to the hotel last night, Jones insisted.
“We’re going to have the same attitude, the same mentality, we had since spring training,” Jones said. “It’s a tough loss. There’s no such thing as an easy loss. At this point, you’ve got to flush it out. On the bus ride, guys will think ‘I did this, I did this.’ Then let it go, strap it on, tee-high and let it fly. That’s what Buck’s been telling us. Got to be resilient at this point in time.”