Whatever your opinion is of our selection for the 2023 Mo Gaba Sportsperson of the Year, at least we didn’t choose Deion Sanders.
I’ve always thought that it might be fun to give a little space in the Best Of issue to tell everyone about how our decision came about. It’s just that in order to do that, you more or less have to address everyone who WASN’T selected and point out their perceived warts. But this is a Best Of issue, not a “Here Are All The Reasons Why This Person Was Good But Not Quite Good Enough” issue.
So I have no interest in telling you about why anyone else wasn’t selected.
Instead, I’d like to tell you a little bit more about why I think Brandon Hyde was a tremendous choice for this honor.
As you’ve read in this issue, there was no shortage of memorable moments throughout the course of the Orioles’ season. It was a magical ride full of genuine thrills. And what made the team so special is that so many players were significant contributors for various stretches throughout the year. Let’s not forget that after the first month of the season, we thought Jorge Mateo might be MVP. Of the league.
Everyone played a part. Even players we wrote off at one point (see Mountcastle, Ryan) proved to be major contributors. But there was something that stood out even more than just the on-field product. For as good as Félix Bautista and Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman and Kyle Bradish were, the real star of the team was, in my eyes, joy.
Not as in “it was joyous to watch the team,” either. Although it was. It was joyous as hell. But joy as in “it was so much fun to watch how much joy this team played with.” The homer hose, the celebrations after hits, the general camaraderie. It permeated. The “Splash Zone” became the hottest club in Baltimore. We belted out the “ooooh-oooooh” in “Sweet Escape” as Henderson came to the plate. We were prepared to take the streets to defend the honor of Kevin Brown.
The joy translated. It started on the field. It started with the relationships the players enjoyed with each other and then went from there. We wanted to be a part of it. We wanted to share in it. We canceled plans because we … just wanted to sit at home and watch the Orioles. We wanted to spend our summer evenings with our friends. We weren’t really all that excited about the start of football season because, quite frankly, it was going to have to take some of our attention away from the joy we were experiencing with the Orioles.
The word we came up with was “culture.” We can’t define if the Orioles won BECAUSE of their culture or if the culture developed because they were winning, but we know the two walked hand in hand. We totally intertwined the two concepts. We referred to it as a “winning culture.” And it was. But the culture was about more than just the winning. These guys genuinely seemed to love being part of what was happening in Baltimore. And we sure as hell loved being a part of it by proxy.
I’m not fully qualified to be able to define how great of an X’s and O’s manager Brandon Hyde is. He seemed to push an awful lot of the right buttons this season, even when I questioned certain lineups or in-game decisions he made. He seemed to get an awful lot, if not most of them, correct. But what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that this culture didn’t exist in Baltimore in spite of him.
He might not be individually responsible for creating the culture we loved in Baltimore. But he certainly deserves credit for embracing it and fostering it. He never seemed to try to squash it. He never came across as someone whose ego needed to be fed. He allowed for the “culture” to BE the winning culture, and the entire city was better for it.
I’m glad we chose to recognize the entire team as the “Team of the Year.” But to me, the choice of Brandon Hyde is the best reflection of the team’s culture and the joy we experienced throughout the year because of that culture.
And no one could better embody an award named after Mo Gaba than by reflecting joy.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles
Issue 284: December 2023 / January 2024
Originally published Dec. 13, 2023