BALTIMORE—On Saturday night, Chris Davis joins the Orioles Hall of Fame, and he’s one of four players from his time to be enshrined.
J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones and Nick Markakis are already members.
“I think it was the chemistry,” Davis said of those team. “We obviously had talent. When I was traded over here, they had pieces, but I just think the team chemistry was so tight.”
Davis and pitcher Tommy Hunter, who introduced him at a luncheon on Friday, came from the Texas Rangers in July 2011.
“We were really good friends,” he said. “We cared about the game. We cared about winning, and we cared about winning the Oriole way, doing things the right way … and I think that goes a long way, especially over the course of a long season.”
Davis hit 253 home runs with the Orioles, leading the major leagues with 53 home runs in 2013 and 47 in 2015.
“We had a bunch of guys who had stuff to prove,” Davis said. “We had a lot of guys that were from other organizations that had been released or [drafted in the] Rule 5, and we leaned into that mentality, and I think it goes hand-in-hand with the mentality of the city of Baltimore.”
The Orioles had 14 straight losing seasons until they were a wild-card team in 2012.
“We went to the World Series in 2010 with the Rangers, and that was a great group of dudes,” Davis said. “But I had never experienced a fanbase like that … It’s just different here.”
The winning started at the end of the 2011 season when the Orioles knocked the Boston Red Sox out of playoff contention.
“We dogpiled on the field and we were the last place team in the division, so there was a sense of urgency, there was a sense of pride to come back and give these fans winning baseball,” Davis said.
In the 2012 season, the Orioles were 18-8 and locked in an extra-inning game with the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Out of pitchers, manager Buck Showalter turned to Davis, who had pitched in college for the 16th inning.
He pitched two scoreless innings, and the Orioles won in 17 on Jones’ two-run home run.
“It’s top three easily,” Davis said. “We were starting to get hot. We did get hot, and that carried us. Every season I feel like you have a certain event or a couple of events that stand out. That’s when it changed, and that’s when we knew, ‘Hey, we can compete,” and to go in there and play a game like that at Fenway against that team and come away with the win, that was huge for us, and we rode that momentum out through the rest of the season.”
Jones would often throw a pie in the face of a player who delivered a key hit when they were being interviewed on television, something that Davis enjoyed.
“I love pie, so I was always curious what the flavor was,” Davis said. “Just the ability to be ourselves in front of the fans, I think the fans really appreciated that.”
After his big 2015 season, Davis signed a club record, seven-year, $161 million contract, and his stats plummeted. After years of embarrassment on the field, he retired in August 2021.
“When I retired, I was beat up, physically, mentally, emotionally,” he said. “I was beat up, and the club was in a much different place. They weren’t necessarily trying to win. They were trying to develop, trying to re-establish. It was a rebuild, and so when I left, it was really hard because I felt like I had let a lot of people down.”
Davis has returned for other ceremonies but never as the center of attention.
“The hard times help me appreciate the good times even more. They helped me appreciate the good years and when we were winning baseball games and going on playoff runs and all that stuff,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure, but I was hopeful that they wouldn’t remember just the bad things. When I got the ovation and, of course, my face was on the big screen, I went ‘hmm.’ It was kind of closure for me.”
Storm Davis joins Chris
Pitcher Storm Davis also will be inducted on Saturday night. Davis pitched six seasons for the Orioles and was 13-7 with an 3.59 ERA in 1983, the year the Orioles last won the World Series.
Davis was part of an outstanding staff that included Jim Palmer, Mike Flanagan, Scott McGregor and Dennis Martinez.
“The way they carried themselves, the way they did everything, played catch, ran our sprints, everything mattered,” Davis said. “These guys were so professional, all I had to do was mimic them.”
Longtime Orioles scout and executive, the late Jim Russo, also will be recognized as the winner of the Herb Armstrong Award.
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