BALTIMORE — As Mallory Rubin took her spot in front of Camden Yards’ mound Thursday night, she channeled her inner Adley Rutschman from his MLB debut. Ball in hand, ready to throw the ceremonial first pitch, Rubin didn’t rush. She looked around the crown jewel of a ballpark, took a deep breath, cracked a wide smile, looked in for the sign and fired home. The pitch was just a bit inside, but ...

Mallory Rubin speaks on stage at the "Now Playing" Creator Day hosted by Spotify at its Los Angeles campus on Nov. 13, 2024.

Presley Ann/Spotify/Getty Images North America/TNS

BALTIMORE — As Mallory Rubin took her spot in front of Camden Yards’ mound Thursday night, she channeled her inner Adley Rutschman from his MLB debut.

Ball in hand, ready to throw the ceremonial first pitch, Rubin didn’t rush. She looked around the crown jewel of a ballpark, took a deep breath, cracked a wide smile, looked in for the sign and fired home. The pitch was just a bit inside, but perhaps she was dusting off the imaginary right-handed hitter in the batter’s box.

Rubin’s life as an Orioles fan — the stories she heard from her father while growing up in Reisterstown, her love of the lowly teams in the early 2000s, the nirvana she experienced during the playoff runs in 2012 and 2014 — led her to Thursday as her work as The Ringer’s director of content and co-host of the “House of R” podcast collided with her Orioles obsession.

“It’s just in my blood. They’re the most important thing in my life, and they always have been,” she said only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Rubin’s life, both personal and professional, is engrossed in fandom — the art that produces it and the way it helps us make sense of this crazy world. On her podcast, which she recorded live from the ballpark Thursday alongside co-host Joanna Robinson after traveling from Los Angeles, Rubin analyzes movies and series from popular franchises such as Marvel, Star Wars, “Game of Thrones,” and many others. Some episodes run 2-3 hours, about as long as an MLB game.

“The reason that we talk about this stuff — ‘Game of Thrones,’ Marvel, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, football, baseball, basketball — is because the thing it gives you,” Rubin said. “Like, being able to travel, whether it’s for three hours during a game or into a fictional universe, and what it unlocks about your perspective, or how something one degree removed from your experience opens up something about your life. It can be a very, very personal, introspective, meaningful thing.”

For Rubin, her fandom of the Orioles and nerdy content aren’t separate. They’re intertwined. An Orioles game sometimes reminds her of “The Hobbit.” Or a character in Marvel can make her think of an Orioles player.

“People talk about Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones,” she said, referencing the Marvel villain and his nearly impossible quest. “You guys should learn about Brooks’ 16 consecutive Gold Gloves. Talk about an actual feat.”

When asked who the Orioles would be in the fictional universes she frequents, Rubin didn’t hesitate. She already had the answer. It’s a theory she’s been workshopping. The Orioles, in her belief, are the Targaryens from ‘Game of Thrones.’

“Only the most important family in the most important fictional universe,” she quipped.

Rubin then explained why during a three-minute pitch, during which she referenced her American League-only fantasy baseball dynasty team (on which she rosters Jordan Westburg and prospects Wehiwa Aloy and Ike Irish) as well as her father’s advice when she went to Syracuse about how to deal with Red Sox and Yankees fans.

“It’s easy for people to forget. Yeah, we’ve been down bad for a minute. But the mid-60s through ’83, you could make the case that they were the franchise. Certainly, that was true about the Targaryens,” she said. “Then everything went wrong. And then you have to work your way back.”

“I think the Orioles can sail back across the Narrow Sea, return to the Seven Kingdoms and make a play for the Iron Throne.”

Rubin knows her hope for the future isn’t shared by the entire fan base. When asked about the state of the club and fan base amid another underwhelming season, she noted how “loaded” the question was in light of the Rutschman trade. It was only four years and three months ago that Rutschman, like Rubin did Thursday before her first pitch, stood at home plate at Camden Yards and took a visual lap of his new home.

Now, Fenway Park is his home — a sentence that would’ve been inexplicable to Rubin and every other Orioles fan when Rutschman was the face of the rebuild and lived up to the hype by helping bring winning baseball back to Baltimore.

Rubin was almost numb to the Rutschman trade. Part of the reason, she said, is that her wound from the Orioles trading Manny Machado, also a franchise cornerstone, at the 2018 deadline, still hasn’t healed. But she understood the logic of the trade, and the hype about how good the Orioles’ return from the Red Sox was helped ease the disappointment.

“It’s sad to see Adley go because he was such a symbol of the rebuild and the newfound hope and the return to prominence,” she said.

Orioles fans, she said, have earned a winning ballclub after decades of mostly futility. Rubin watched year after year as the Orioles went 14 straight seasons without a winning record.

“As you will recall, those were very poor teams,” she said, listing off her favorite players from that era, including Chris Richard, Jay Gibbons and Larry Bigbie.

Then came the excitement of the Buck Showalter era — and the disappointment of falling short in the playoffs. The rebuild was difficult, too, but Rutschman and the other members of the young core presented hope. With hope, though, comes expectations, and those have largely gone unmet, especially in October. The Orioles haven’t won a postseason game since 2014, and their 10-game playoff losing streak is tied for the fourth longest in MLB history.

So if the Orioles are the Targaryens, then what are Baltimore fans? What fan base do the Orioles most mimic? A tough question, Rubin said, but she had answers. First, she floated Marvel fans because that fan base is so divided, and then she guessed Star Wars because that franchise, like the Orioles, oscillates quickly between disappointment and excitement.

“We’re down bad again,” she said about the state of Star Wars. Some Baltimore fans would say the same about the Orioles.

However, it’s important, she said, for a fan base — whether of a galaxy far, far away or the ballclub in their backyard — to express frustration when they feel it, and to do so in a measured way.

“Actually, when you love something genuinely, part of that is holding it to account,” Rubin said. “So I think it is OK to express disappointment. … I think there’s a way to be critical of the thing without being cruel to the people who make it.”

But for Rubin, she has too many Orioles memories to be mad for too long. Her childhood was filled with stories of the glory days of Baltimore baseball — “Orioles magic, Earl Weaver, the three-run homer, Eddie, Cakes, four 20-game winners.” The storyteller was her father, Barry.

“One of the things I love about the Orioles, even when they finish in last place, is no matter what, there’s something that I text my dad about the Orioles every day. And he does the same,” Rubin said. “It’s a tether that unites our family.”