The Orioles’ signing of a 16-year-old from the Dominican Republic this week got me thinking about my missed opportunity. I blame it on Doc Edwards. To be honest, Edwards couldn’t have been kinder to me. In 1964, after he caught a Saturday afternoon game against the Orioles for the Kansas City A’s,...
This year has been unlike any other for me. Covering a team that has been far worse than anyone could have imagined, a midseason job switch that brought me to BaltimoreBaseball.com, and the deluge of Orioles trades and declaration of a rebuild. This was also the year that I lost my mother....
Years ending in “8” for the Baltimore Orioles tend not to go all that well. Their aftershocks have fared better. In 1968, the team underachieved enough for the front office to send manager Hank Bauer packing at the All-Star Break, two seasons removed from the 1966 World Series championship, and appoint an...
It was a 30-minute swim, but when it was over, there were ripples throughout the Baltimore baseball community. My wife, Barb, got in the water just before 4 on Tuesday afternoon to do laps while I sat near the pool on my laptop, checking for player movement as the non-waiver trade deadline...
My love affair with the Orioles started before I can remember. My father, who was a huge baseball fan before he moved to Baltimore in 1966, instilled his love of the game in me from birth. I arrived the day before the Orioles clinched their second World Series, against the Cincinnati Reds,...
Dr. Jon Simon was in his office late on a summer afternoon. He was there to discuss what an MRI revealed about a rotator cuff injury to a patient whose best pitching days were with a Wiffle Ball when the Orioles were winning four American League pennants and two World Series in...
Dear Manny, In a perfect world, we would look up at the stands in left field one day at Camden Yards, and there would be an orange number 13. We’d walk over to the statues beyond center field, and we’d see Cal, Earl, Frank, Eddie, Jim and Brooks. Then we’d see a...
Back when he was working for the Palm Beach Post, Rob Hiaasen would tell co-worker Frank Cerabino that they should go out for lunch. Cerabino knew what that meant. Hiaasen would drive to a park in West Palm Beach, open the trunk of the car and pull out two gloves and a...
I moved from New York to Timonium in 1965, not knowing much about the area. I was told there wasn’t much snow, then came the blizzard of 1966, when we got more than a foot. When we moved, we became Orioles and Colts fans instantly. They were our state’s teams. On one...
Forty-five years ago this month, I attended my first Orioles game. It was a momentous occasion for any lifelong O’s fan, but special for several other reasons, too. It was Father’s Day weekend and featured a near-historic pitching performance by Jim Palmer. An unfortunate error also occurred that cost me a game...