Earl Weaver and Jim Palmer were doing commentary on a game some years back when Earl got to talking about how hard it was to manage a team. Palmer cut him off. “What are you talking about, Earl? You had me, McNally, Cuellar and Dobson. That’s 80 wins right there. All you had to do was figure out how to win 15 more.”

Now Dobson, the fourth member of maybe the greatest starting rotation in history, is dead. Given how the game has changed, we’re not likely to ever see anything like that ’71 Birds’ staff again. (With luck, we’ll never see anything like those uniforms again, either.)

Pat wasn’t a career Hall of Fame type guy, but one of the great things about sports is that people can jump up and have legendary moments or be part of something significant, something larger than their individual talent. As a guy who grew a big O’s fan, the 1971 rotation will always be one of my favorites…

RIP.

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