by DEAN BARTOLI SMITH

The young season was showing promise, but the Orioles ran into a reality check in Boston and suffered an increasingly ugly four-game sweep.

Over the last few years, the Birds have shown that they can lose in many different ways to the Red Sox. The Mother’s Day Massacre two years ago, in which a five-run lead was squandered in the ninth, may have cost a manager his job and still leaves a bad taste.

Friday may have been worse. The O’s led 7-0 in the second inning on Friday night with Jeremy Guthrie—the ace of the staff on the mound—only to lose 10-8. Down 6-0 on Saturday night, they showed signs of life before fading 6-4. Sunday’s game involved wasting a strong effort by Koji Uehara to succumb 2-1. Yes, the O’s can also lose a pitcher’s duel. They can also be embarassed, as they were yesterday, 12-1.

Meanwhile, injuries are piling up. Adam Jones joined Melvin Mora as the second Oriole on the big club to go down with a hamstring injury. Catching phenom Matt Wieters felt the twinge in AAA Norfolk and he is also nursing a tender hammy. With a small margin for error and a thin bench, injuries may factor heavily in the won-loss column this year.

If the Sox are not baseballs’ best–they are close. Part store-bought, part home-grown, and part Japanese—the Sawx have quietly built a formidable lineup with Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew, Jason Bay, and Mike Lowell. Manny Ramirez and his attitude are gone. No more playing left field in a lawn chair. He disgraced the game with his glove as though he were saying, “That ball went right by me, I guess I’ll go get it.”

Meanwhile, Big Papi—who is nowhere near the threat he was two years ago–and Dustin Pedroia can also swing the bat. And the pitching is solid, anchored by Beckett, Lester, Dice K, Wakefield and Papelbon. Harvard grad Theo Epstein and his “Moneyball” analyses continue to pay off and the Red Sox remain a case study of how to run a sports franchise.

Perhaps the only bright spot from the lost weekend was Sunday’s performance from Koji. His pitches flutter, dart, and flair like the golden snitch from a game of Quidditch in a Harry Potter movie—landing in the strike zone. The first Boston run scored on a catchable fly ball that found grass in right field. Though I promised not to get angry in a rebuilding year, my daughter’s Dora-the-Explorer mermaid doll took an unplanned journey across the room. And Trembley’s line-up card was a reminder of how thin our roster is, with Freel, Moeller, and Andino filling in the last three spots in the order. They will be lucky to last beyond the all-star break. More injuries could send this team into a scary slide.

The Red Sox lost the pennant a few years back because the Orioles beat them 12 times—and they haven’t forgotten that. The Yards will be filled with hordes of New Englanders this summer—many of them staying at the new “Boston Hilton” on the stadium grounds. The red letters against the blue-gray background add to the box-like, Bromo-obscuring architectural disaster. Sawx fans have replicated in droves all over the area—especially in Northern Virginia. I felt their pain during the World Series drought, heard the taxis honking in Central Park back in ’86, but enough is enough. I loved watching Yaztremski, Petrocelli, Tiant, Carbo, Scott and Fisk when the annual fold during the last month of the season became routine. Now, they are the class of the league—and a model we should aspire to.