Fear Factor

After a 13-2 Red Sox win over the Baltimore Orioles, Our Man Shank accentuates the positive.

No one knows where this Red Sox season is headed. Every time the Sox start to slide, they do something to make you think maybe they can play deep into October. Case in point, Tuesday night’s 13-2 win over the Orioles. We know that this season is a gift, and suddenly there’s hope that it might be magical.

The only thing I know for sure is that somehow, someway, the Orioles are going to be a factor. That’s just the way it is with these two teams as we prepare for the final month of the 2013 baseball season.

The Sox crushed the Orioles Tuesday night but are still scheduled to play the Buck Showalter All-Stars eight more times in the final 29 games. The Sox finish their season with three games at Camden Yards, a schedule quirk that scares all thinking Red Sox fans.

Need we remind anybody that it was in Baltimore that the wheels fell off at the end of September 2011? Remember Robert Andino? The Sox lost two of their final three games in ugly fashion, triggering the departures of Terry Francona, Theo Epstein, Jonathan Papelbon, Marco Scutaro, Josh Reddick, and Heidi Watney. New England’s nuclear baseball winter led to the worst Red Sox season in 47 years.

And it all started in Baltimore.

There is considerable hardball history involving these Eastern Seaboard franchises.

Ted Williams hit his final home run against the Orioles in 1960. Willie Tasby — the guy who once took off his spikes while playing during a thunderstorm — played for both teams. The great Earl Weaver Orioles of the 1970s annually tortured the Red Sox, especially in 1974 when the Sox held a seven-game lead on Aug. 23, yet finished third, seven games behind the surging Birds.

Weaver tried to scare a nervous Sox Nation again a year later when he came to Fenway to face the first-place Sox in September and warned, “We’ve crawled out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi.’’

This is how Shank will continue to 'criticize' the Red Sox - keep bringing up the negative stuff from the past, and avoid direct mention of Red Sox management and ownership.