Take the Bird Tapes’ Orioles History Quiz (Volume 1)

Here’s a (hopefully) fun test of how much you know about Baltimore’s baseball team

Before you dig in, a little background:

I think I’m safe in saying the vast majority of Bird Tapes subscribers are fans of the Baltimore Orioles. And they’ve been fans for quite awhile, it seems. I’ve learned that from communicating with so many of you during the two years I’ve posted interviews and articles about Orioles history.

There’s a whole lot of knowledge in the Bird Tapes community. But just how much?

I thought it was time to have some fun with that.

Putting together the Bird Tapes’ Orioles History Quiz (Volume 1), my goal was to make it not TOO hard but also not TOO easy. Hopefully, I’ve threaded that needle. Let me know either way. (Also, feel free to let me know how you fared, whether you nailed the quiz … or didn’t.)

Another of my goals with the quiz was to present questions that tell stories because Oriole storytelling is what the Bird Tapes are all about. Again, I hope I’ve done that.

Calling this Volume 1 implies that more volumes are coming, and indeed, my plan is to put together more quizzes in 2026.

OK, good luck!

QUESTIONS (the answers are below)

1. Can you name all three players in the iconic photo at the top of this post?
2. Which of these teams have the Orioles NEVER played in the World Series? (a) New York Mets (b) St. Louis Cardinals (c) Cincinnati Reds?
3. A tougher one, which of these teams have the Orioles never played in the American League Championship Series? (a) Chicago White Sox (b) Minnesota Twins (c) Detroit Tigers
4. In the 1960s, when Frank Robinson’s Kangaroo Court assembled after victories and assessed fines to Oriole players for various baseball crimes such as throwing to the wrong base or forgetting how many outs there were, who collected and held the money? (a) Frank Robinson (b) Brooks Robinson (c) Dick Hall?
5. Who was the most recent Oriole pitcher to win 20 games in a season? a) Mike Mussina b) Mike Boddicker c) Chris Tillman?
6. Of the hundreds of pitchers the Orioles have signed since 1954, who has the most career wins? (a) Jim Palmer (b) Mike Mussina (c) Dennis Martinez?
7. Who is the last Oriole not named Ripken to win the American League Most Valuable Player award? (a) Frank Robinson (b) Boog Powell (c) Eddie Murray?
8. “I’m a pitcher who signed with the Orioles and spent two seasons in the club’s minor league system but eventually won a Cy Young Award while pitching for someone else. Who am I?”
9. When Baltimore hosted the All-Star Game for the first time in 1958, which Oriole pitcher came out of the bullpen and threw three scoreless inning to preserve a victory for the American League? (a) Hoyt Wilhelm (b) Billy O’Dell (c) Steve Barber?
10. Did Earl Weaver ever get so angry at an umpire that he forfeited a game rather than back down and lose an argument?
11. Which of these players has never held the Orioles’ franchise record for home runs in a season? (a) Jim Gentile (b) Boog Powell c) Frank Robinson?
12. When did the Orioles finish in last place for the first time? (a) 1954 (b) 1955 (c) 1986?
13. Brooks Robinson was credited with 6,205 assists during his 23-year major league career. Did any of those 6,205 come on a direct throw from Brooks, playing third base, to Eddie Murray, playing first base? (a) Yes (b) No?

ANSWERS:

1. I’m guessing you had no trouble identifying Boog Powell in the middle. But what about the other two? That’s pitcher Harvey Haddix on the left side of the photo, with a glove on one hand and his other hand on Powell’s right bicep. A classic sly lefty, he was just 5-feet-9 and 170 pounds but used pinpoint control to win 136 games over 14 years in the major leagues. He finished his career as a reliever with the Orioles in 1964 and 1965. The player on the right side of the photo is none other than shortstop Luis Aparicio, a Hall of Fame inductee. Powell, Haddix and Aparicio were teammates in Baltimore in 1964 and 1965. The picture was taken in 1964, when Powell was just emerging as a Bunyan-esque slugger.
2. They swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966, lost to the New York Mets in 1969, beat the Cincinnati Reds in 1970, lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971 and 1979 and beat the Philadelphia Phillies in 1983. So the correct answer is the Cardinals.
3. They faced the Minnesota Twins in 1969 and 1970, the Oakland A’s in 1971, 1973 and 1974, the California Angels in 1979, the Chicago White Sox in 1983, the New York Yankees in 1996, the Cleveland Indians in 1997 and the Kansas City Royals in 2014. So the correct answer is the Tigers.
4. If you’ve listened carefully to the interviews in the Bird Tapes archive, you know this one. Dick Hall, the standout relief pitcher, revealed to me in our interview, recorded in 1999, that he was the court treasurer. What a scoop! No doubt, he was the perfect person for the job. A Swarthmore College graduate, he passed the CPA exam while still playing and spent his post-baseball life as an accountant in Baltimore.
5. Surprisingly, it isn’t Mussina, who is in the Hall of Fame and produced four seasons of 18 or more wins for the Orioles. But he never won 20 until 2008, when he was with the Yankees at the end of his 18-year career. Tillman was an ace in the 2010s but never won more than 16 games in a season. The most recent 20-game winner is Boddicker, who won 20 in 1984 — that’s right, more than four decades ago.
6. Very surprisingly, it isn’t Palmer, who won 268 games in his career, all with the Orioles. Mussina won 270, two more than Palmer, thanks to his string of 17 straight seasons of double-digit wins with the Orioles and Yankees. Martinez, with 245 career wins, stands third all-time in wins among pitchers originally signed by Baltimore.
7. Ripken is the most recent Oriole MVP, winning in 1983 and 1991. Other Orioles who’ve won are Brooks Robinson in 1964, Frank Robinson in 1966 and Boog Powell in 1970. Murray never won the award. So the correct answer is Powell. (Note: A former Oriole, Don Baylor, won the AL MVP award in 1979, finishing ahead of the Orioles’ Ken Singleton.)
8. That’s Dean Chance talking. Signed by the Orioles out of Wooster, Ohio, in 1959, he won 22 games for Oriole minor-league affiliates in 1959 and 1960, teaming with soon-to-be Oriole icons such as Boog Powell, Cal Ripken Sr., player-manager Earl Weaver and future GM Pat Gillick. But Chance departed the organization in an expansion draft; the Orioles thought he was too brash and left him exposed, famously protecting another pitcher named Arne Thorsland instead. (Thorsland got hurt and never pitched in the majors.) Chance won the Cy Young Award with the Los Angeles Angels in 1964, a feat all the more impressive considering baseball only handed out one Cy covering both leagues that year. (Each league had a Cy winner beginning in 1967.)
9. Wilhelm tossed the Orioles’ first no-hitter in 1958 and Barber posted the club’s first 20-win season in 1962, but it was O’Dell who pitched magnificently for manager Casey Stengel and the American League in the 1958 All-Star Game at Memorial Stadium. When I interviewed O’Dell for my book on Orioles history, he told me that Stengel thanked him four years later. Stengel was managing the Mets and O’Dell was playing for the San Francisco Giants when Stengel approached O’Dell in the bullpen before a game to offer his thanks.
10. The answer is YES. It’s impossible to fathom now; a manager willingly forfeiting a game would blow those algorithms that front offices hold so dear. But Weaver did it on September 15, 1977, at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, out of concern for the safety of his players. The Orioles were in a pennant race, desperately needing wins to keep pace with the Yankees and Red Sox. Playing in a light drizzle, they fell behind the Blue Jays, 4-0, through five innings. Weaver approached Marty Springstead, the umpiring crew chief, with whom he endlessly argued through the years. The grounds crew had put tarps over the mounds in the Blue Jays’ bullpen, located down the left-field line, and secured the tarps with concrete blocks. Weaver asked for the tarps and blocks to be removed, citing safety concerns since the bullpen was so close to the field. (Orioles outfielder Andres Mora had stumbled over the mounds and injured his back the day before.) Springstead initially balked at removing the tarps and blocks, then eventually had the blocks removed and one tarp peeled back. That didn’t satisfy Weaver because a tarp still covered one mound; Blue Jays manger Roy Hartsfield had demanded as much in case he wanted to warm up a pitcher. Springstead told Weaver he could play the game under protest, but after 20 minutes of arguing, Weaver pulled the Orioles off the field, threatening to forfeit. He gave the players the choice back in the clubhouse, and they voted in full support of their manager. Forty-eight years later, it remains the only deliberate forfeit by a major league team.
11. In 1954, the Orioles’ first season in Baltimore, Vern Stephens led the club with (drum roll) eight home runs. Yes, Memorial Stadium was cavernous. Gus Triandos then took possession of the record, hitting 12 home runs in 1955, 21 in 1956 and 30 in 1958. Jim Gentile blasted that to pieces, hitting 46 in 1961. But his record only stood for five years, until Frank Robinson hit 49 as part of his Triple Crown season in 1966. That record stood for three decades until Brady Anderson hit 50 in 1996. Chris Davis surpassed that with 53 in 2013 — a record that still stands. So, for those scoring at home, the record passed from Stephens to Triandos to Gentile to (Frank) Robinson to Anderson to Davis. Thus, even though Boog Powell had four season of 30-plus home runs for the Orioles and won a league MVP award in 1970, he never held the club record for home runs in a season.
12. This is something I dug up that surprised me. The Orioles came to Baltimore from St. Louis, where, as the Browns, they were sad-sack losers, as evidenced by their last-place finishes in 1947, 1951 and 1953. (There were eight teams in the American League.) With that in mind, the Orioles surely finished last when they lost 100 games in 1954 and 97 in 1955, right? Wrong. They finished seventh in both seasons, ahead of the Philadelphia A’s in 1954 and the Washington Senators in 1955. Then they started improving under Paul Richards, and once they posted their first winning season in 1960, they were perennial contenders for a quarter-century. Somewhat incredibly, at least to me, they didn’t finish last in their league/division for more than three decades after they arrived in Baltimore. They finally took to the basement in 1986, when they lost 42 of their last 56 games under Earl Weaver to finish last in the AL East. (The league had split into two divisions starting in 1969.) A postscript, they’ve recorded 10 last-place finishes since that first one, the most recent coming in, yes, 2025.
13. Hall of Famers from different eras, Brooks and Eddie were born 19 years apart and debuted in the major league 22 years apart. But they were teammates on the Orioles in 1977, when Eddie won the AL Rookie of the Year award and Brooks was in his final season. (He retired that August.) Since they were teammates for a year, it seems inevitable that they combined on a 5-3 putout at some point. But they didn’t. I went through the box scores and play-by-play accounts of every Oriole game in 1977, and the correct answer to the question is NO. Eddie broke in as a designated hitter because the club still had Lee May playing first base and Earl Weaver didn’t want to move him just yet. Eddie didn’t play much at first that year. And Brooks, at age 40, was firmly on the bench, with Doug DeCinces having taken over as the everyday third baseman. Brooks did still play now and then, but literally every time he did — as I said, I looked it up — May or someone else was on first. Brooks and Eddie were in the infield together just once that season, on July 30, 1977, on a Saturday night in Seattle. Ross Grimley pitched for the Orioles and the Mariners hit into a ton of groundouts, but none of the balls went to Brooks at third before he departed the game via a pinch-hitter in extra innings in a contest the Orioles won, 5-3. The two future Hall of Fame inductees were part of a 5-4-3 double-play in the sixth inning, but not once did Brooks throw the ball directly across the diamond to Eddie to record an out.