He Writes Songs About The Birds

Growing up in Baltimore, Barry Feldman dreamed of pitching for the Orioles. He had to settle for writing songs about them. It’s a good thing because he wrote some gems.

When Barry Feldman was growing up in Baltimore in the 1960s, he had two passions.

One was music — playing the guitar, singing and performing.

His other passion was baseball, which entranced him in two ways — playing the game (he was a pitcher) and rooting for his beloved Orioles.

“I was playing Wiffle ball with myself in the backyard by age 6, simultaneously announcing the games, ‘Hi everybody, this is Bob Murphy and Herb Carneal at Memorial Stadium, with Marv Breeding leading off for the Orioles,’” Feldman told me in a recent email exchange, referencing Oriole broadcasters and a second baseman from the early ’60s. “Then came statistics, predictions based on my own player ratings at age 8, Strat-O-Matic games, membership in the Junior Orioles and attendance at a 1966 World Series game. And I played organized ball every year starting at age 8, eventually becoming a top pitcher for my Baltimore County high school.”

He dreamed of playing for the Orioles at Memorial Stadium, re-creating the fantasy that Barry Shetrone, Tom Phoebus and John Miller experienced as Baltimore natives who wore the uniform of their beloved hometown team. Feldman kept playing after high school, walking on to the baseball junior varsity as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.

But soon, reality hit. He needed money to help with his college expenses. And his other passion offered him the opportunity to earn that money.

“I’d been very active as a singer-guitarist in high school, played Fagin in Oliver, was voted ‘Most Talented’ in my senior class. And by the summer before college, I was performing six nights a week at Baltimore bars,” he wrote.

As a sophomore at Penn, he had to decide between trying to make the baseball varsity and continuing to perform at Baltimore bars to earn the cash he needed.

“At my size, I calculated that my baseball career would be short,” Feldman wrote. “So I parted with the Don Drysdale plan and continued on the showbiz path, playing music and acting and directing plays.”

After college, with an economics degree in hand, he moved to Washington D.C., started a band and began writing songs. He met his wife, an artist, at a bar. They eventually moved to New York City and settled in Greenwich Village. That was decades ago, and Feldman is still writing and recording music. (Click here to check out his website: http://www.barryfeldman.com)

“All along, I was hoping to get a record contract. I eventually gave myself one and made some independent records,” he wrote. “I don’t really play gigs these days, nor do I have the technological or social chops to properly monetize my music. But I still write, sing, record, post and compile it.”

Over the years, his musical catalog has included “the requisite songs on relationships, rivers, fires, fountains, stampedes, dogs and mailmen, winners and losers, education, health care, voting rights, democracy …”

Plus … of course … the Orioles.

“It was inevitable,” Feldman stated in an email, “that I’d be inspired to write and sing some songs about baseball and the Orioles.”

His love for the team oozes through every chord of “Ode to the O’s” and “Stadium Memorial” and “Oriole Memorial Stadium Blues.”

Can’t count these days on nothing at all

‘Cept in Baltimore if you believe in baseball.

Feldman wrote that classic opening line to “Ode to the O’s” decades ago, which is remarkable considering how relevant it feels in 2026. The song is a lighthearted love letter, stuffed to the brim with the names of Orioles from different generations and jabs at every other major league team.

Here’s a link to an original version found on YouTube …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vyo-KRY1U

And here’s a link to an updated solo version …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK5Wm6h61_M

Though he has lived in New York for the past 30 years, Feldman’s love for his hometown teams has never faded. He walks the streets of the Big Apple and even ventures to games at Yankee Stadium wearing Orioles and Ravens caps.

“Risking my well-being … but just representin’” Feldman wrote.

But while his support endures, he unabashedly admits — and sings — that the Orioles’ Memorial Stadium era is his favorite. He wrote “Stadium Memorial” from his seat at the final Orioles game at the ballpark on October 6th, 1991.

“No doubt, the new ballpark’s gonna be perfect.

“But when I dream of baseball, it’s always set here.

“Gonna miss you, Memorial Stadium.”

Click here to hear “Stadium Memorial.” (The link takes you to the page from Feldman’s website that contains the lyrics. That page has a “sample” button that you can click to hear the song. Good luck listening without shedding a tear.)

“Stadium Memorial” is not to be confused with “Oriole Memorial Stadium Blues,” which Feldman wrote in 1987 and now describes as “a sort of comic attempt to help us fans deal with Oriole-related depression and hysteria from the shocking collapse of our perennial pennant challengers.”

Click here to hear “Oriole Memorial Stadium Blues.” (The link takes you to a page where you can read the lyrics. That page has a “listen” button that you can click to hear the song.)

To find all of Feldman’s baseball songs in one place, here’s a link to the baseball page on his website. He readily admits most of it was written, cough, a few years ago.

“Let’s face it, these songs are pretty old — like me, I’ve been told,” Feldman wrote. “But I hope a few can be meaningful in some way to some younger fans as well as those of age and maybe a few non-fans. If you’re a fan and under 40, you never saw a game at Memorial Stadium and never saw the Orioles play in the World Series. Admittedly, you may have been nagged about it by your parents.

“The songs are a little more involved, personal, and overstuffed than the more commercial or promotional Oriole songs, but they’re still written with the fan in mind. A picture that’s always stuck with me is, from hearing on my transistor radio, the legendary announcer Chuck Thompson mentioning, often it seemed, a lady in York, Pennsylvania, who listens to every Oriole game at home while keeping score. The image captured how much baseball and the Orioles can mean to a fan.”

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