Alas, the Richard Hidalgo era has ended in Baltimore.
A couple of choice paragraphs from the article:
Hidalgo signed a minor league contract on Feb. 26, reported two days later and spent four days in uniform before leaving the team Saturday to be with his ailing wife. He never returned, and the Orioles released the frustrated outfielder Tuesday to allow him to pursue an opportunity in Japan.
"The way it was relayed to us through his agent was that he's not a guy that likes coming off the bench. He's a guy who wants to play every day," Orioles vice president Jim Duquette said. "He didn't have the desire to keep playing if it wasn't an everyday job."
An amusing attitude, coming from a guy who was one of the worst starting corner outfielders in baseball the past two years. I've got to think that his managers relayed to him that he's not a guy that they like putting in the starting lineup every day.
Anyway, I guess he'll head off to Japan, and we'll forget about him, and then he'll show up in someone's spring training camp in 2009 and we'll read about how the "new Richard Hidalgo" is here to show all the skeptics how wrong they were for doubting him, before he gets released again and joins Felix Jose in the Mexican League...