Are there axioms that you try to follow as part of your everyday existence that, despite your knowledge of their truth, seem to escape your attention on occasion?  I think most of us find ourselves dealing with such an eventuality from time to time.

One night during the week of this year's Baltimore Orioles fantasy camp in Sarasota Florida, Craig Steffen, David Berson and I were treated to a fascinating discussion with someone in a position to know a great deal about the behind the scenes maneuvering in the Orioles front office.  I will not identify this person, or any of the specifics that were discussed; this was an "off the record" conversation.  Suffice to say that the three of us learned a great deal of information that has never been publicly revealed about a number of important negotiations and trends involving the Orioles, information that variously filled in a large number of blanks and shined an entirely new light on conventional wisdom.

The discussion specifics are the "trees" in this metaphor; the "forest" is the fact that we, as fans, rarely if ever know everything about what's going on, and even if we know most of the story, we often are missing at least one key piece of information.  Very seldom is the entire story publicly revealed, for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes "the entire story" is simply not revealed to the purveyor of information by any of those individuals who actually know the whole story.  Sometimes the reporting is sloppy.  Sometimes the reporter of the story has his own reasons for withholding certain aspects; sometimes he may be asked to hold back certain information.  Sometimes no one actually knows the entire story, including the primary participants.

Now, I'm aware of all of this, as I assume those of you reading this are.  But occasionally, unintentionally, I forget to apply the above axiom when thinking about what I hear or what I'm told.  I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I digress.

Over the past few years, I have no doubt that there have been occasions when the Orioles have made moves (or not made moves) that have seemed, at the time, to be inexplicable.  Some of these instances may remain inexplicable to this day.  I know that I've found myself feeling this way from time to time.  And I've found myself saying, that either there's something going on that I don't know about or these guys are stupid.

Well, "these guys" aren't stupid.  I mean...I know that.  I've had the opportunity, in person, to hear both Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan speak at length over the last year.  I've had the opportunity to converse with both of them.  These guys are decidedly not stupid.  Both struck me as extremely sharp and incisive.  Peter Angelos I haven't met...but he didn't become a wildly successful attorney by being stupid either.  

This isn't to say that any of these folks are infallible.  They are, after all, human and thereby imperfect.  But they aren't blithering idiots either; quite the contrary, in fact.

In other words...there's invariably "something going on that I don't know about."  I was reminded of this in spades a couple of weeks ago in Sarasota.  Most of the time I remember this on my own, at a time when it's directly relevant.  Occasionally I do not.  I shall endeavor to take into account this life's truism regularly in the future.  An axiom, in the end, is worth bearing in mind.

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