We’ll be back.

It’s the refrain every ballclub turns to in the moments after a season ends in abrupt, crushing disappointment.

The Orioles followed the script Tuesday night. In the wake of a 7-1 postseason bludgeoning at the hands of the Texas Rangers, they clung to the fact they had shocked the baseball world with 101 regular-season wins. More importantly, they said, the best is yet come.

Not since the franchise’s 1970s and 1980s heyday has an Orioles team won big in the present and had sound reason to believe it would win bigger in the future. The 2023 Orioles are not just spitting in the wind when they talk of next year, saying what they’re supposed to say as they process the close of a joyous run.

Their top two position players, catcher Adley Rutschman and infielder Gunnar Henderson, are 25 and 22, respectively. They have two young pitchers, Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez, whom manager Brandon Hyde believes could join the sport’s rarefied club of true No. 1 starters. They have the No. 1 prospect and No. 1 farm system in baseball.

General manager Mike Elias said only brutal competition in the American League East tempers his optimism for what’s to come.

“Do we have the talent and the organization to have another regular season as successful as our regular season was? Absolutely, but there’s other organizations out there trying too, and we’re gonna have 162 games next year and a lot’s gonna happen,” Elias said Thursday. “But I am exceedingly confident we’re gonna have another very competitive, entertaining, excellent season next year.”

That doesn’t mean the losses to the Rangers hurt any less for the time being. “I’m still pissed,” Hyde said twice as he spoke with reporters Thursday.

When he huddled with players on the final team flight from Texas, however, he wanted them to cherish their accomplishments and to feel the pull of what’s next.

“The guys who are going to be back, there’s going to be a lot to look forward to,” he said. “Because they’re really good players.”

The wider baseball world sees much promise in Baltimore.

“They need to look at all possible options to boost the rotation next year, but everything else is pretty much in place,” said Keith Law, a former Toronto Blue Jays executive who writes about prospects and team building for The Athletic.

That knowledge has allowed Orioles fans to savor a sweet year despite the bitter taste left by a playoff sweep.

Tim Cooke, 41, lives a few blocks from Camden Yards and called the last six months the most satisfying in his lifelong love affair with the team.

“You go back to 2014, when we got swept by the Royals, that hurt so much because it felt like the one shot for that team,” he said. “Here, we’re still theoretically a year early in terms of things coming together. I was talking to [my brother], and I said this truly is only the beginning. The embarrassment of riches we have in the minor leagues, the flexibility we have payroll-wise … and I know I’m a little biased, but we have the best front office. It’s set up for so much success.”

There is a flip side to all this optimism, the cold truth that many teams come close and never make it back. Or they assume, incorrectly, that one triumphant season will carry over to the next. Sometimes, the horizon is closer than anyone thinks.

Just ask the most famous Orioles of all, Cal Ripken Jr. After the club won the World Series in 1983, Ripken assumed that would be the norm going forward, and why wouldn’t he? He was a 23-year-old Most Valuable Player. Eddie Murray was in his prime. Ripken had grown up around the organization, watching his father coach the next crop of stars, who always seemed to refresh as the Orioles kept winning.

But most of the key players around Ripken and Murray were veterans, and there was no next wave coming. Within five years, the Orioles were unrecognizable, the worst team in baseball.

When asked recently about the current team’s splendid future, Ripken cautioned that the Orioles should “enjoy the moment.”

A look at the most successful teams from more recent Orioles eras reveals the wisdom in his words.

The 2014 club also won the AL East, only to be swept from the playoffs, albeit a round later, by the Kansas City Royals. “I think we can be even better,” center fielder Adam Jones said after the final defeat.

In fact, they dropped from 96 wins to 81 in 2015. They were back in the playoffs as an 89-win team in 2016, but that run lasted one game, with manager Buck Showalter leaving closer Zach Britton to watch helplessly from the bullpen as Edwin Encarnación hit a season-ending home run off Ubaldo Jiménez. They lost 87 games the next year and 115 the year after that, with their offensive core fading more rapidly than hoped and their promising starting pitchers either suffering injuries or failing to develop.

In 1997, the Orioles won the division but lost the AL Championship Series to Cleveland when closer Armando Benítez surrendered the only run of Game 6 on a home run by Tony Fernández. A few weeks later, Davey Johnson resigned the same day he was named AL Manager of the Year. The Orioles went 79-83 with a similar roster in 1998, kicking off a run of 14 straight losing seasons.

The 1997 team was built largely around stars in their late 20s or 30s, many of whom had signed as free agents and would be gone two years later. There was no robust crop of prospects to replace them. They were made to peak that season, not to last.

Elias, by contrast, has tried to build a club resembling those from the Orioles’ golden age, when Earl Weaver insisted the “Oriole Way” be taught at all levels and general managers Harry Dalton, Frank Cashen and Hank Peters ensured an ever-replenishing flow of quality players from the farm.

“This is not the first time this place has been a state-of-the-art, top organization in baseball,” Elias said before the playoffs. “We have that again now. It took some work, took some pain, took some focus on infrastructure.”

That talent pipeline, fueled not just by astute draft choices but by fresh investment in Latin America, is the Orioles’ greatest hedge against falling off the pace they set this year.

It begins with No. 1 prospect Jackson Holliday and his .442 on-base percentage across four levels as a 19-year-old shortstop. He’ll have a chance to make the Orioles next spring as will outfielders Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser. For sheer power, look to 21-year-old corner infielder Coby Mayo, who hit 29 home runs between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk this year. Samuel Basallo, who hit 20 home runs and reached Double-A as a 19-year-old catcher, is the first fruit from the Orioles’ bolstered efforts in Latin America. Infielder Joey Ortiz is one of the top 50 prospects in baseball, and he might not find a place to play.

The farm system is not perfect. With Rodriguez now in the major league rotation, none of the Orioles’ elite prospects are pitchers.

“They’re going to have to trade some of this position player surplus for pitching,” Law said. “You just look, and they can’t play all these shortstops; they can’t play all these outfielders. This is the winter. … I don’t say any of this as a negative. I just say this is the one thing that’s going to have to be different over the next five years versus the last five.”

Even on the pitching side, the Orioles made great strides in 2023, with Bradish stepping forward, Rodriguez maturing from prospect to rotation fixture and John Means returning successfully from Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery.

“Our starting pitching is up and coming,” Hyde said, a terrifying thought for opponents if the Orioles’ hitting prospects are half as good as touted.

Las Vegas bookmakers will almost certainly set their over/under higher than 76 wins next spring. They’re done sneaking up on anyone, and that’s fine by them.

“I think we showed that we’re gonna be here for a long time, we’re gonna be here to stay,” said pitcher DL Hall, yet another top prospect who stepped forward late this season. “This organization isn’t a joke.”

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The 20th anniversary of the Alex Gonzalez Game is upon us, though few Chicago Cubs fans refer to it as that.

Gonzalez, the former shortstop who booted a potential double-play ball that contributed to an epic Cubs collapse in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series, was fortunate enough to find cover under the dropped foul ball by a fan that preceded his error.

Ditto pitcher Mark Prior and the rest of the ‘03 Cubs who helped fritter away a three-run, eighth-inning lead on Oct. 14, 2003, and then failed to get the job done in Game 7. Manager Dusty Baker and pitching coach Larry Rothschild dodged most, but not all, of the finger-pointing as well.

Steve Bartman famously took the fall, disappeared for 13 years, returned to accept a World Series ring from the Cubs, then went back into hiding for the last seven years. His face has not been on the internet, to anyone’s knowledge, and he has not profited off his moment of infamy.

While his story has been told in an ESPN documentary, alluded to in a PlayStation ad and rehashed in numerous newspaper articles over the last two decades, including a 10-year anniversary piece I wrote for the Tribune in 2013, Bartman has refused to talk.

Only on occasions such as this does his attorney and family friend, Frank Murtha, spring into action to reiterate that Bartman has nothing to say about that day or his life.

Murtha thought it would be over by now but admits he was wrong. The legend continues. You have to credit Bartman for staying underground after a life-changing event he easily could have cashed in on and for overcoming an ugly reaction from die-hard Cubs fans upset that their team blew a chance at the World Series.

Former Marlins outfielder Juan Pierre, who was on second base at the time, told me 10 years ago that the team thought nothing of the foul ball at the time.

“I saw where someone in the dugout said ‘Hey, let’s make this guy famous,’ ” Pierre said. “But I didn’t hear that. I definitely feel bad for him.”

Bartman did become famous, which might not have happened had the Cubs gotten their act together and held on in Game 6 or won Game 7 to make it a moot point.

But those things didn’t happen, and you can’t change history. Still, you can look back at the facts and change the narrative, which a popular TV show recently did.

So I had to ask Murtha if Bartman had seen a particular episode of “The Bear,” a Hulu show about a Chicago man named Carmy, played by Jeremy Allen White, who took over the family’s restaurant after his older brother committed suicide.

“I don’t know if he does, and I didn’t hear anything about it,” Murtha said. “But it’s not like I have search engines covering everything in the world.”

I have to believe Bartman has at least been informed of a scene that mentions his incident in a profane and hilarious conversation between two of the main characters.

In the episode, a grizzled businessman called Uncle Jimmy (played by Oliver Platt) gives an impassioned speech about the hazards of the industry, using the Bartman episode as a metaphor.

“Do you remember Alex Gonzalez, shortstop for the Cubs?” Uncle Jimmy says.

“Um, no, no, I don’t think so,” Carmy replies.

“Right, and it’s a shame you don’t think so,” Uncle Jimmy says. “But I’m going to explain why you don’t think so.”

Uncle Jimmy goes on to explain the circumstances of the Game 6 loss, calling the grounder to Gonzalez an “easy grab, no (bleeping) brainer kind of thing” that led to the Cubs falling “apart at the seams.”

When Carmy asks himself out loud why he doesn’t remember Gonzalez, Uncle Jimmy delves into the earlier play of the fly ball down the left-field line that a fan dropped as left fielder Moises Alou approached the wall.

Carmy quickly realizes he was referring to Bartman, and he nods knowingly. Uncle Jimmy tells him the reason he couldn’t remember Gonzalez’s name was because “everybody and their mother wants to blame the (bleeping) guy instead of the actual (bleeping, bleeping bleeps) who (bleeped) it up.”

Those bleeping bleeps, of course, were the rest of the Cubs.

The scene was perfectly written and well-acted and might have been the best defense I’ve ever heard of Bartman’s accidental appearance in Cubs lore. Kudos to “The Bear” for giving Bartman’s side after all these years.

Most Cubs fans have come around to Bartman’s side, realizing he was just an unlucky person sitting in the unlucky seat where Luis Castillo’s fly ball would land. But that doesn’t mean his name won’t be remembered long after Gonzalez and the other Cubs who contributed to the loss are forgotten.

The Cubs tried to make amends in 2017 when they gave Bartman a 2016 World Series ring, whether it was done with good intentions or just virtue signaling to show what benevolent guys they are.

Bartman and Murtha drove to Chairman Tom Ricketts’ office to pick up the ring with president of business operations Crane Kenney and president of baseball operations Theo Epstein also in the room.

That was supposed to bring closure to the incident, and to some extent it did.

Bartman issued a statement that day expressing his “heartfelt thanks” to Ricketts, Kenney, Epstein and the entire Cubs organization,” calling the gesture “the start of an important healing and reconciliation process for all involved.” Bartman mentioned his wish was to “prevent harsh scapegoating and to challenge the media and opportunistic profiteers to conduct business ethically by respecting personal privacy rights and not exploit any individual to advance their own self-interest for economic gain.”

The Cubs also invited Bartman to appear in the victory parade, which Bartman politely declined because he didn’t think it was appropriate to take any attention away from the players.

I asked Murtha if Bartman ever wears the ring.

“I kind of doubt that he does,” he replied, adding he never has asked.

The media has mostly ignored Bartman over the last seven years, expect perhaps when other so-called “Cubbie Occurrences” happen, such as Seiya Suzuki’s missed fly ball that helped lose a game in Atlanta last month during the Cubs’ wild-card chase. One ESPN.com reporter stalked Bartman for a story many years ago, but otherwise he has been left alone.

When I reached out to someone who had helped Bartman escape Wrigley that fateful night, the person declined and said “Please leave him alone.”

His name still pops up from time to time, though not as often as the first 10 years after the incident.

A front page of the Tribune with a photo of Bartman’s drop and the headline “The Mitt Hits the Fan” was signed by Alou and framed by a Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse attendant. It resides in his office in the visitor’s clubhouse at American Family Field to this day, viewable to any Cubs player who walks past.

In April the Miami Marlins promoted a “Steve Bartman Appreciation Day” on social media for a series against the Cubs, but the idea was quickly squelched after Kenney contacted the Marlins to voice a complaint. In September a fan wore a Bartman outfit, with the distinctive green turtleneck and old-school headphones, and sat behind the plate during a Cubs-Colorado Rockies series at Coors Field. Hardly anyone seemed to notice, even though he was in almost every TV shot.

But when the subject of the 2003 Cubs comes up, it’s impossible to ignore his name. I recently asked former Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano, who lost Game 5 in Miami that would have clinched the NLCS for the Cubs, if he ever felt sorry for Bartman.

“No,” he said. “It could’ve been Paul Sullivan or Carlos Zambrano, it could’ve been anybody else. His name popped up, and he became famous after the incident.”

Zambrano added that he didn’t think Bartman did anything wrong.

“It was just the natural reaction of the fans,” he said. “You see the ball, you want to grab the ball.”

He stopped for a second and thought about how long ago it was.

“Twenty years ago, wow,” he said. “But we have to turn the page and celebrate ‘16.”

The Cubs got their rings in 2016. Baker earned his first ring last year with the Houston Astros and is working for another. Prior got one in 2020 as pitching coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers and also is back in the postseason.

It sounds as if Bartman has come out OK and moved on as much as possible. Maybe he’ll write a book someday and explain how he felt going through it all.

Or maybe not. The longer time passes, the more people will have forgotten the true story of the foul ball that changed one man’s life and left a scar on Cubs fans.

But scars heal, fortunately, and life goes on.

The worst of times never last forever.

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