The Orioles made it official: Both of their 500-home-run players, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, will be gone in 2006. Not that it comes as anything near a surprise. I saw Palmeiro on the street corner the other day holding a sign that read, "Will pinch-hit for food". Poor guy. The hardest blow—excuse the pun—was that Viagra pulled out and he no longer gets those comp'ed freebie prescriptions. How deflating!

So ends the first and only occurrence of 500-homer teammates in baseball history. The O's go from career home run leaders with 588 (Sosa) and 569 (Palmeiro) dingers to Javy Lopez with a measly 252. Sosa and Plameiro are second and third among active players in taters. That is, if they are still active (and I won't even mention Vaigra this time).

That's a 336-homer shortfall for the Baltimore team home run leader. That made me wonder what the largest drop in team home run leader. Eh, it's the offseason—what ya gonna do?

Here are the greatest one-year declines in team home run leader:

By the way, the Oriole home run leader before Rafael Palmeiro hit town was Tony Batista with 182. That was the seventh largest increase in homers by a given team's leader. Here are the largest:

And in one last attempt to beat this dead horse, the orchid for most homers by two teammates must be wrested from the Sosa and Palmeiro and be awarded to….guess who?

Well, it's kind of unfair. It's basically Barry Bonds' teammate du jour. Actually, three of the top four slots fall to Barry and some other dude (* indicates a potential free agent):