There were plenty of seats available in the upper deck above left field at Camden Yards on Tuesday — and plenty of perspective, too.

The crowd gathered to watch the Orioles lose 1-0 to Kansas City in the Wild Card Series opener numbered 41,506 — lower than eight regular season games this season. It was most sparse in section 372, where childhood friends and lifetime O’s fans Mike Kramer and Jeff David of College Park watched the frustrating outcome together.

It may have been the rainy weather, but compared to last season I felt Camden Yards took time to warm up. The player introductions were muted, and though there was a strong Baltimore “O!” during the national anthem, there seemed to be an early restlessness that took a while to quell.

But a few innings in, Kramer told me, it was just as spirited and loud as it was for Baltimore’s ALDS last season, equal to those he’d been a part of in the 2010s.

“It sounds as loud as any other playoff game,” he said, gesturing toward the field. “We’re just waiting for something to happen.”

He was hoping for a burst of offense that never came. Everyone was. As the game wound toward a listless end, though, those words stuck with me.

We’re just waiting for something to happen.

The wait is now 10 years — the last time the Orioles won a playoff game.

The baseball postseason is a fickle beast, and this is only the second run for the team that emerged from a long rebuild. There hasn’t been time for a pattern to truly develop. But nine straight playoff losses isn’t good enough for a city starved for wins in October. Getting shut out isn’t good enough for a team that Baltimore wants to believe in.

I don’t love it when a ballpark isn’t packed for the playoffs, but Major League Baseball has helped create that situation with odd first pitch times on weekdays during working hours (Houston, too, had a non-sellout crowd of just over 40,000). It’s not great when seats in the upper deck fall to $12 on the secondary market, as one woman who was kicking off work early told me.

It’s worse when nobody even bothers to buy them.

Sure, the fan base has felt a bit tentative lately. But it’s hard to stomp your feet when you’re walking on eggshells.

The Orioles’ post-All Star stretch of 33-33 baseball was rugged, marred by injury and regression in the close-game scenarios that the team did so well in last season. But as the roster has gotten healthier in the last few weeks, that regression piece is starting to feel more pertinent. Tuesday’s Game 1 was another example of the Orioles failing to capitalize with runners on, and even in scoring position.

Tuesday’s efforts left fans imagining only hypotheticals. If Ramón Urías runs the bases a little more aggressively on Cedric Mullins’ single in the fifth, maybe. If Mullins squares up his off-the-wall double a little bit better in the third, maybe. If Anthony Santander puts a good swing on the ball with two runners aboard in the eighth, maybe.

But it’s tiring when all the Orioles have produced in their last four playoff outings is maybe. All the missed potential runs the fan base down. Corbin Burnes, in what may turn out to be his final game with the team, was magnificent Tuesday — and got nothing to show for it.

It has been 10 years since the Delmon Young double, long enough that there are adult fans who don’t really remember the last time the Orioles delivered a clutch hit in the postseason. Of all the Orioles contributors in that game, only Kevin Gausman is still in the majors today.

As fun as it is to dust off that memory, it would be more rewarding to create new ones.

We stretch to characterize the Orioles to make sense of the shortcomings. Last year, the thinking went, the team was too young. Reflecting on the 2023 season this week, manager Brandon Hyde characterized it as a “fairy tale,” where the regular season wins came easier than they should have, and he hoped this year they’d prove — after months of scuffling at .500 ball — that they’re made of tougher stuff. Even I talked myself into that one.

Now they just have one game left to prove it.

In the clubhouse, Mullins said he didn’t think the Camden Yards crowd had leveled off: “It still felt very special.” While Corbin Burnes pitched a hell of a game, Mullins was forced to acknowledge the Orioles offense wasn’t very special. His message to the clubhouse, he said, will be to bottle the energy of their surroundings, with thousands of screaming fans twirling orange towels to charge up an overcast afternoon.

“Let the crowd feed the energy to allow you to focus on what you’re trying to do,” he told me.

The Orioles are trying to set a new precedent. Since the Wild Card Series format began, all eight of the teams to win Game 1 of the series have advanced to the ALDS, seven of those in sweeps.

If they can defy the odds, we’ll know these Orioles are indeed exceptional.

If they can’t even win one playoff game in five tries, though, it’s hard to second-guess the folks who decided $12 was too much to spend on a seat to witness the disappointment firsthand.