It's been a few days now since O's general manager Andy MacPhail made his now famous "not a suicide pact" proclamation, threatening to send the club's struggling ballplayers to Norfolk if they didn't start hitting.

Forget for a minute that the suicide pact line may be the coolest phrase ever uttered by anyone in Balmer. Certainly the coolest by a sports upper-management type.

MacPhail's point is well taken, and he's certainly giving voice to the tens of fans who watch and love the Orioles, but is that his place? Peter Schmuck has an interesting, rational take (as usual) on MacPhail's threat. And maybe I agree with him.

This is not Peter Angelos's team or Dave Trembley's team. Pete pays the bills and Dave just rents space in the dug out.

No, this Balmer squad is 100 percent Andy's.

On the one hand, that gives him the right to discipline his own children. On the other, as Schmuck writes, what good does it do to add pressure to the young players he's chosen to stock this team with?

Even as I write, I go back and forth. It seems to me that if you're choosing a career as a professional baseball player and you're blessed with enough talent to make it to the Big Leagues, you ought to be able to handle a little extra pressure put on top of you by the boss. Use it as fuel. Don't athletes love that "nobody believed in me" crap? And it's not as if every other working professional doesn't live and work under at least a modest fear of screwing up so bad that they lose their job.

Luke Scott is hitting .177 right now. Do you think if I got less than 18 percent of my facts correct I'd have much of a career in journalism?

Stop snickering. The answer is no.

But professional sports are a tremendously different animal. Every day these guys go out and play in a fishbowl in front of thousands. Every day, win or lose, they come back to the clubhouse to face questions from a bunch of guys who probably couldn't jog a mile without keeling over. The athletes can't even go and blow off steam by having a drink for fear of someone snapping a picture.

What are you doing drinking on a game night?? Don't you know you're a role model?!?

Ballplayers are already under a great deal of pressure. Not "Mr. President we need the launch codes" pressure, but pressure still.

But they're paid well for it. And while I have a great deal of sympathy and admiration for individuals who by such great percentages live appropriately so directly in the public eye, after 13 years of losing baseball, I just can't take any more.

I'm with Andy. Are you?

www.deadspin.com has a running series called "Stories that Don't Suck" where they link to well written articles (often having to do with sports) which can be found in their entirety somewhere on the web.  It is by far the best thing about their website (even better than Drew's Funbags, which kick a sizeable amount of ass themselves) and has never failed to provide at least one piece per posting that has furthered my appreciation for the written word more than anything since turning on the subtitles during The Lord of the Rings in blu-ray.  I think it's high time we here at www.thebaltimorons.com (tell your friends) stole the idea and occasionally put up links to writing that challenges you in a way our mindless drivel could only dream of.

Feel free to put up any links to pieces you've read in the comments section, it doesn't have to be sports related.  I promise you I will read every single one of them, so long as they aren't links to purchasing a full book somewhere.  Don't feel rushed though, any of the three of us will probably post one of these whenever we stumble across something particularly inspiring.

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved by Hunter S. Thompson

  A take on the most decorated horse race in the world by one of the craziest sons of bitches the universe has ever known.  Much more of a commentary on the pagentry surrounding the derby than the derby itself.  Seriously, there are over 7,000 words and only ten of them are "horse".  Also, Hunter S. Thompson may have had a drug problem. 

Gareth Thomas... The Only Openly Gay Male Athlete by Gary Smith

  This is a great piece of writing because it focuses on what we can't learn ourselves (the incredible story of Thomas), less on what we should be thinking about ourselves (what this means for sports in general) and no time on trying to force morality down our throats.  To keep something incredibly complex simple enough to feel; that's why writing can be gooder than television.

You're welcome, Balmer.

Clearly, the O's were just waiting for the boys at www.thebaltimorons.com (tell your friends!) to call them out. Nick Markakis wanted to know I wasn't happy with a .260 average, despite all those walks. Adam Jones wanted to know that I didn't want anymore bubble-blowing if he didn't hit higher than his listed weight.

Luke Scott doesn't seem to be a loyal reader of this website, given his 1-for-10 with seven strikeouts over the weekend while the rest of the offense broke out.

That's OK. I'll take 2-for-3.

In all seriousness, the team's weekend turnaround is pretty remarkable, and it highlights a point that we've made in the past week: This is not a bad baseball team. It just needs its best players to perform as if they actually are the best players.

Nick-o has certainly rebounded after his worst April since 2007 and is hitting .313 with a .401 on base percentage to go along with two homers and nine RBIs (Kakes, by the way, is not the perennial slow starter we implied he was in last week's podcast, though that was the case the first two years of his career. But the right fielder hit .381 with a .460 OBP and 22 RBIs in April last season, and batted .293 with a .430 OBP in 2008. He suffered a nosedive in May each of those seasons, though, so let's hope this year's .284, .385 April isn't the best we'll see for a month.)

And Jones, whose swing has been more wild than an Armando Benitez fastball through much of the season, is hitting .333 in his last 27 at bats spanning the past week.

A 4-2 week versus the Yankees and Red Sox certainly does something for a team's confidence, especially considering that the team more than doubled their season win total in those six games.

Yeah, April was that bad.

And while it may be unfortunate that the Birds arrive in the Bronx tonight instead of, say, Kansas City where the team could perhaps more easily build on its success, perhaps there isn't a better time to be facing the Yankees.

Coming off the first three-game sweep of the Red Sox in Baltimore since 1974, team confidence certainly hasn't been higher this season. Hell, you might have to go back to Miguel Tejada's first incarnation as an Oriole back in 2004, when the Birds swept the Yankees at Camden Yards early in the season, to find a team flying much higher.

That was a different season. The O's were in first place in the American League East until the All Star Break that year before a monumental collapse.

This season, the Birds aren't even within sniffing distance of fourth place. But for the first time in a year that started with some hope of tangible improvement by the rebuilding team, the young O's are starting to play with just enough promise to make us think that taking two of three in the Bronx isn't completely ludicrous.