During spring training in '88, the Orioles didn't think of themselves as serious contenders for a division title, having lost 95 games the year before. But they didn’t expect the horror show that unfolded once the season began. Their lineup included Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, and Fred Lynn, and their starting rotation had Mike Boddicker, Mike Morgan, and Scott McGregor — all players with track records. New general manager Roland Hemond had overhauled the rest of the club since taking over in November, making six trades involving nineteen players. More than half of the Opening Day roster was new, including leftfielder Jeff Stone, a speedster the Philadelphia Phillies had once regarded as a future star.

“Damn right, we’re contenders,” manager Cal Ripken Sr. said optimistically near the end of spring training.

But that assessment was wrong, brutally wrong. And the Orioles found out immediately.

They opened the season before a packed house at Memorial Stadium on a warm, cloudless afternoon. Milwaukee beat them 12–0. “You can’t judge us off one game,” Boddicker said. But you could. After another loss to the Brewers, the Orioles went to Cleveland and lost four more games in a hurry. The series finale was tied in the fifth inning before the Orioles’ Joe Orsulak dropped a fly ball, leading to a Cleveland rally. In six games the Orioles had been outscored 43–7.

Ever the optimist, Ripken Sr. told catcher Terry Kennedy on the flight back to Baltimore, “We might be 12–12 soon.” The next day, after a morning court appearance to face a drunk-driving charge, the manager went to Memorial Stadium, sat down in his office to make out a lineup, . . . and was fired. It was the earliest in-season managerial firing in major league history, six games into the season.

Billy Ripken: “I heard it on the radio. I was driving to the park, maybe two o’clock. That’s kind of unsettling when you hear that on the radio. I’m glad no police were on Cold Spring Lane. I sped up pretty quickly to get to the stadium. Dad had told [trainer] Ralph [Salvon] to talk to me. Ralph said, ‘This has nothing to do with you. Don’t let it affect you. You have a job to do. Go out and do your job.’ I mean here’s a man [Senior] whose dreams had just been shattered, and he still thought enough to tell Ralph to tell me that.

“I changed my uniform and wore his number the next night. Nothing was easy. I mean, it was all very unfair. We’d been around the game a long time, and you know when something isn’t right, one guy gets fired instead of twenty-five. And that happens, and you know that. But in that situation, just six games, that didn’t seem like much of an opportunity—certainly not what other people seemed to get. I don’t know if they did it because he was the company man and everybody knew he would just go ahead and step down and say, ‘You’re right; it’s me.’ I don’t know. But it wasn’t the easiest thing to deal with. Looking back, there’s a lot of bitterness.”

Cal Ripken, Jr.: “I had a chance to win some of those [six] games, and I didn’t come through. One in particular: Doug Jones came in in a game in Cleveland, and I ended up hitting into a double play, but it was a situation where we could have done some damage and won a game. If you look at the scores, we could have gone 4–2 in those six games with certain luck. We only got blown out of a couple.”

Mark Thurmond: “Firing the manager after six games, frankly, I didn’t think that was appropriate. But it wasn’t my call. I mean, maybe spring training hadn’t gone that well, but we weren’t very good.”

Roland Hemond: “Senior was up against it, no question. There was a lack of talent. Mr. Williams asked me in the spring, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I’m really worried. This is the slowest club I’ve seen in some time.’ There wasn’t much a manager could do, because it wasn’t a good defensive club in the outfield. A slow club. [ Firing Senior ] was a very difficult day. I know it was difficult for him because he’d meant so much to the organization for so long. I brought him back the next year as a coach. If we didn’t have someone like Frank Robinson aboard already, maybe we wouldn’t have made the move as early as we did. But we had a capable and logical choice to try to get things going.”

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