Introducing the Bird Tapes Podcast

The Bird Tapes archive currently consists of 41 interviews with former Oriole players, front office executives, managers, scouts, broadcasters and sportswriters. I started my Orioles history project on Substack by posting my vintage interview (circa 1999) with Brooks Robinson over a year ago. My conversation with legendary Orioles newspaper beat writer Richard Justice, recorded in 2025, is the most recent to get posted.

The interviews already in the archive are listed below, and I’m in the process of recording a bunch more that will be posted in the coming months.

It takes a paid subscription to access most of the interviews, and thus far, listeners have only been able to hear them within Substack. But starting today, with the debut of the Bird Tapes Podcast, paid subscribers will have more varied listening options — a big upgrade that several subscribers have suggested.

When I publish an interview as a podcast, listeners can download it to their device via a private RSS feed and listen on their favorite audio player. They’ll also be able to listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and several other popular podcast platforms. Episodes of the Bird Tapes Podcast will appear in all of those places.

I’m celebrating the introduction of the new format by making my vintage interview with Eddie Murray (circa 1999) available to all subscribers today. I’d like free subscribers to hear what a paid subscription provides, namely, access to a set of interviews about Orioles history that is unavailable anywhere else.

After today, it’ll take a paid subscription to listen to most of the interviews as I roll them out via the Bird Tapes Podcast in the coming months.

To be clear, the vintage interviews with Eddie, Brooks, Earl Weaver and many others are the same interviews I’ve posted at the Bird Tapes over the past year, now available in a format that gives you more listening options. But in 2025 I’m augmenting my vintage interviews with a set of new conversations, recorded in 2025, with former Orioles such as Al Bumbry, Fred Lynn and Tippy Martinez. Those will all be published as podcasts.

If you’re fine with how things have worked so far, you don’t have to do a thing. You can listen to any of these podcast interviews within Substack.

But if you want to hear the interviews on other audio players or apps, click on the three-dot link in the image at the top of this post and follow the directions.

It takes a few clicks to link your Substack account to Spotify, which will enable you to listen there. Click on this link for instructions.

Click on this link for instructions on how to listen to episodes in podcasts apps other than Spotify. I’m still working to get the podcast up and running on several apps. Feel free to reach out individually with any questions or if you need help.

The interviews in the Bird Tapes archive are listed below. I’ll post them one by one in the podcast format in the coming months as a feature for a paid subscription.

Vintage interviews (recorded in 1999 and 2000): Brooks Robinson, Ernie Harwell, Earl Weaver, Frank Robinson, Paul Blair, Dennis Martinez, Boog Powell, Cal Ripken Jr., Harry Dalton, Jim Palmer, Jim Gentile, Mike Flanagan, Steve Barber, Eddie Murray, Ken Singleton, Frank Cashen, Milt Pappas, Davey Johnson, Billy Hunter, Elrod Hendricks, Hank Peters, Rick Dempsey, Ron Hansen, Don Buford, Peter Angelos, Dick Williams, Dick Hall, Johnny Oates, Walter Youse, Joe Durham, Joe Hamper, Jackie Brandt, Joe Foss, Barry Shetrone.

New interviews in the archive (recorded in 2025): Al Bumbry, Dan Duquette, Fred Lynn, Jon Miller, Gregg Olson, Tippy Martinez, Richard Justice. (Coming soon: Scott McGregor, Janet Marie Smith, Dan Shaughnessy and many more.)