We’ll be the first to admit there’s a place for comedy on the baseball diamond. The Savannah Bananas, the barnstorming baseball team that plays the sport for laughs, will no doubt draw big crowds when they play two games at Oriole Park at Camden Yards this August. We’ll even concede that there’s something to be said for those weird moments when position players are forced to play the role of pitcher to spare an exhausted bullpen as happened on Easter Sunday as both Jorge Mateo and Gary Sánchez took the mound (with predictable results). It’s like a return to coach-pitch youth baseball but with big league salaries.

But make no mistake, that 24-2 holiday blowout against the Cincinnati Reds hurt. And it’s left Baltimore Orioles fans with a major case of the jitters. Hey, any team can get off to a cold start. They’re not the Chicago White Sox (thankfully). Sox fans woke up Monday morning to the harsh reality of a 5-win, 16-loss record while O’s faithful faced 9 and 12 and a mere 4 1/2 games behind the East-leading New York Yankees in a season that is not yet to the quarter-turn. Please.

There is some irony that this painful moment came one day after owner David Rubenstein’s bobblehead was passed out for free to fans one day earlier, of course. The marketing folks probably thought this was a genius stroke: a whimsical celebration of the new owner. Alas, it can also come off as arrogant as in, “Hah, money for toys but not for Corbin Burnes or Anthony Santander,” as both were lost to free agency in the offseason.

Still, fans probably aren’t pressing the panic button. Not yet. There’s too much ball still to be played. And those of us of a certain age remember those 1989 “Comeback Kids” when the Orioles went from a team that started a disastrous 0-21 the previous year to nearly winning the AL East. There’s too much talent with a roster of Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Cedric Mullins, Ryan O’Hearn, Ryan Mountcastle and, at some point, a healthy Colton Cowser to not expect better. Yet oddsmakers now give the team a .1% chance of winning the World Series.

Even in this crazy year, stranger things have happened. Who knew that the United States would pursue a tariff campaign that would throw the economy into uncertainty? Oh, right, we kind of walked into that one, didn’t we? Still, comebacks are in fashion whether it’s the first 40 games of the Major League Baseball season or the first 100 days of a new administration in Washington, D.C. Baltimore may yet bear witness to winning ways. As we happily observed 36 years ago, “Why Not?”