We were assembling joggers for the seven participants from Athletes Serving Athletes to compete in the marathon relay of the Baltimore Running Festival when I realized we were in the shadows of The Warehouse at Camden Yards. Except we weren’t really in the shadows, we were in the dark before sunrise, when...
Many of my early childhood memories were of pieces of vacations, astronaut missions and Orioles baseball. I grew up an ardent, avid, passionate (some would say obsessed) baseball fan. The ’60s and ’70s were good times to be a baseball fan in Baltimore. That was the Golden Age of the Orioles, to...
I was at Yankee Stadium for Game 4 of the 2017 American League Championship Series between the Yankees and Astros. I truly get the hardships for many high-paying fans to get to the stadium for a 5 p.m. game. There were many empty seats at the first pitch—hardly a one for the...
You know the clear plastic sleeve on older wallets? The part where people keep their driver’s license or other form of ID easily accessible? All it takes is a flip of the wrist to show the guy at the bar you’re of age or pick up a package at UPS. That’s where...
In my professional career — one that has now spanned more than 10 years — I’ve only “played hooky” from work once. (Apologies to AOL, my employer at the time.) The date was Sept. 13, 2012, and the Orioles were in the midst of an exciting push toward the playoffs that caught...
Passion and compassion. Passion for one’s team. Compassion for its players, when it’s evident the struggle is real. A Sports Illustrated story about Chris Davis triggered these thoughts as the Orioles come home to play the Houston Astros in their final games of the season. It’s fan appreciation weekend in a season...
Last week was the end of an era for my family. For the first time since April 1955, someone other than a Dubroff owns what was our house in Brooklyn. My mother lived there for nearly 63 years, and neither my brother, his children nor I had any interest in keeping it....
Before organized sports became, well, organized, the kids in our neighborhood did it ourselves. We loved to be outdoors playing ball during the day and hide-and-seek at night. There were a lot of us close to the same age and a lot of parents who had simple rules — be home for...
During an Orioles game in the 1980s, Keith Mills, Mike Marlow and I sat toward the back of the press box at Memorial Stadium. We had worked together at The News American in the 1970s and were swapping stories as quietly as we could, although not quietly enough. We each had worked...
Having enjoyed games at a variety of major and minor league stadiums, none with a dome, it seems to me that, more than any other sport, baseball offers something to delight all five senses. After all, baseball’s venues offer some spectacular sights. What fan can forget the first time they saw rich,...