Baseball Memories

I was born a Baltimore Orioles Fan and I will die one. Are you one, too? Do names like Jeff Ballard, Floyd Rayford and Kiko Garcia bring back fond memories? Do the names Juan Bell and Glenn Davis fill you with dread?

My mom, when she worked as a medical resident in New York in the late '50s, early '60s, went to Yankee games and remembers seeing Mantle and Maris and Whitey Ford. She said that scores would be broadcast over the hospital intercom and everyone talked about the Yanks.

My earliest memory of being at the ballpark was at Memorial Stadium. I was probably four or five years old. Do I remember seeing Brooks Robinson or Jim Palmer or Boog Powell? Nope. What I remember was my bother taking my Coke, in a cup with cellophane wrapped on top as they used to do in those days, opening it and drinking it himself.

My next baseball memory was at Candlestick Park. It was 1976 and I was six or seven. Do I remember the game? Nope. Although I remember it was a doubleheader and we left before the second game was done. What I do remember was they had a sort of bicentennial themed half-time show between games. And I think I only remember that because we have a few blurry photos in our old albums.

After that I remember trying to catch the O's when they played on The Game of the Week, which didn't happen so often. In those days though, Game of the Week was the only baseball on TV. No ESPN, Comcast, FoxSports or anything like that. So I remember watching whatever teams were on and listening to guys like Vin Scully and Curt Gowdy.

I remember looking in the paper the next day to see how the O's did. That was how we followed the team in those days. We'd read about call-ups from the minors and wonder what they looked like. My brother and I both imagined Larry Sheets was a small, fast African-American. Little did we realize he looked more like Li'l Abner.

I vividly remember first seeing the grass at Memorial Stadium when we went to a game in the early '80s. It was so very green and seemed to jump out at us when we walked out of the entrance tunnel.

My brother and I went to Opening Day in '89. This was the year after the O's Annus Horribilis, when we lost the first 21 games of the season. They were saying on the radio that some Boston pundit wrote that Clemens would throw a no-hitter. Well, we won the game 5-4 in extra innings and Cal hit a three-run homer against the Rocketman. That was also the first time I saw a President of The United States in person. President Bush threw out the first pitch and brought along President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

It wasn't until college that I began listening to games on the radio. I bought a semi-decent radio at Radio Shack and would carefully tune in the station at night. I remember one night I tuned in and thought I got the wrong station but it was definitely the O's game. So I listened to this wonderful voice call the action and thought to myself that this guy was really good. I learned later in the game that voice was Ernie Harwell's, who had called a couple of innings as a guest announcer. Not many people know that he called the first game ever at Memorial Stadium for the Orioles and the last game played there, for the Tigers.

I hope that I can add 2005 to my list of memories. It's been a long time since the O's were this good. Here's hopin'.