Weekend in Baltimore

Just back from a visit to my hometown of Baltimore over the past weekend. I saw the Orioles win two and drop one to the Tigers. Except for the Sunday loss the trip was pretty much as good as it could possibly be. I hung with family and old friends, had some crab cakes (crab prices are out of sight!), some Italian food in Little Italy and generally enjoyed myself.

I took a ton of pics but I won't burden everyone with many of them. Just a couple of highlights.

Camden Yards of course is spectacular.

I got my first in-person look at the bronze statutes of Orioles stars.

And I hadn't seen the retired numbers outside the north gates before either.

My Texas-themed O's shirt was a conversation starter on Saturday. A couple of Baltimore's Finest found it amusing and we had a long baseball chat on Saturday morning as I walked back to the hotel from breakfast.

Saturday was also Maryland-themed Bird bobblehead nite.

These are the Crab Chippers I tried. Crab meat, some sort of cheese sauce, scallions and Old Bay seasoning over kettle chips. They were recommended and they were pretty good, especially with my Natty Boh.

It wasn't all baseball. I poked around the (now even more touristy) Harborplace...

Had a crabcake sandwich or two....

..and visited the Maryland Sports Legends Museum across from the ballpark....

It was a fun trip. I hope it's not another ten years before I make it back to my hometown.

I'm heading to Charm City!

It's been ten years since I attended a game at Camden Yards. I'll fix that with a visit at the end of July. I'll be seeing the Tigers come through Baltimore and I expect to make it out to at least two of the three games they play while I'm there. Hopefully all three. I just hope my recent terrible record of seeing my teams in person can be turned around.

The Texans lost each of the games I went to in 2014, my Houston Cougars lost more than they won in all three of the sports I watched live. The Orioles have gone 2-6 in games I've seen them play in Houston and the Rangers won five in a row before I drove up and saw them lose to the Stars in January. They had another win streak after that game. So it's not promising.

But I'll be there nonetheless. Should be fun. To get me in the right frame of mind I'm posting some Orioles cards sent my way by Shane of Shoebox Legends. I love Shane's blog and he seems like a really nice guy. The cards he sent are pretty much all new to me. Of course with my serious lack of modern cards it's not hard to hit something I don't have.

I looked up Brandon Snyder and read that the Orioles signed him to a minor league contract this spring. He's in the low minors, still chasing the dream. Good for him.

I had forgotten that Sam Horn was a Red Sox player before he was with the O's. I thought it was the other way around. I was losing my hold on big league ball about then so he's really just a name to me.

That's an Archives on the left and a Wilhelm Heritage on the right. I love any shot of Hoyt in an O's uni and this is a pic I haven't seen on a card before.

Hunter Harvey is one of the O's top pitching prospects. He's sidelined with arm issues right now. That's not good. The KMart Ripken! Oh that retail boxed set era. KMart no longer exists anywhere I've been in recent years but that was my go-to store when I was on my own for the first time. KMart furnished my first apartment.

Here are four horizontal ones I scanned together. The Brooksie is a 2015 Topps. If you look in my garage you'll see a file cabinet I used to use in my home office. I covered it with stickers like the Fleer stickers that Shane sent.

If I have one regret as a result of not following the Orioles (or baseball at all) very closely for a stretch it's that I missed out on most of Brian Roberts career. And that's a shame.

Thanks for the cards, Shane. I always appreciate your posts and look forward to many more.

Adam Jones, Flag Man

The neatest thing happened Tuesday night during the Orioles clinching celebration after winning the AL East. Adam Jones took an AL East Champs banner and went out to the warning track deep in the outfield at Camden Yards and dove into the excited pile of OPACY grounds keepers. I mean, who does that?
I was watching the MASN broadcast and grabbed a screen cap of it but I accidentally overwrote it with another one so I was happy to find a picture online:

AJ10 then proceeded to circle the field high-fiving and hugging fans, posing for selfies and finally giving a few fans his celebratory shaving cream pies. I did get a few screen caps of that:

This pic, from the Baltimore Sun I think, has more of the interaction.

Here are four of my favorite Adam Jones cards (they are also four that don't have the white-hot borders which my scanner hates):

All of these were sent to me by other bloggers over the course of the last couple of years. And for that I am grateful.

Paul Blair

Today in Baltimore Orioles fans are taking matters into their own hands and holding an unofficial 'Paul Blair Day' at Camden Yards. People will be displaying homemade 'We Love Paul Blair' signs. That's so 'Baltimore'.

Blair played for the O's back when every season seemed to be a good season and he played with class and flair. His ability to field the centerfield expanse in Memorial Stadium is a great memory for fans who were lucky enough to see him play. Maybe Willie Mays was better, maybe they were equals. But just being in that sentence says a lot about Blair. 

The best endorsement I can make of Blair is that my father, a DiMaggio fan who also saw Mantle and Mays in their prime, used to sing Blair's praises whenever we'd see him play.

Blair passed away over this past winter which was a pretty sad one overall for the team. Also lost were part owner Tom Clancy and most tragic of all, Orioles director of public relations Monica Pence Barlow died of cancer at age of only 36.

Like many people I had hopes that the team would wear a memorial patch for Blair but when that didn't happen some media types and Orioles fans began a grassroots campaign to set up a night of celebration of Blair's career. It's going to happen tonite against the Yankees. Here are a couple of stories about it.

My little tiny tribute is a Paul Blair scan barrage. RIP, Motor Mouth.

A Nice Package, Part Two ;-)

My family first moved to Houston in the summer of 1967, early July to be exact. I was heading into my sophomore year of high school and I was the one family member that hated the idea of pulling up our New Jersey roots and heading down here. I pretty much figured that being summer I wouldn't know anyone or even get a chance to know anyone my age until school opened. And a new school itself was not something I relished.

But Houston had baseball, and with the Orioles struggling following the great 1966 season, I decided to throw myself into following the Astros, just because. We were in a hotel for a few days before our moving van arrived and I remember cutting out Astros game stories, box scores and pictures from the Houston papers, the now-defunct Post (where I later was employed for many years) and then afternoon published Chronicle.

Those clipping turned into a scrapbook of the second half of the Astros' dreary 1967 season. I wasn't new to this. I had kept New York Ranger scrapbooks for years. Which brings me to the card at the top of the post. It was part of the Nachos Grande group break and it is why I was happy I dealt the Twins for the 'Stros as my 'second' team. I would never seen it otherwise. It's a 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball Home Run Heroics Eddie Mathews.

It's a gimmick card, sure, but it commemorates Eddie Mathews  500th homer which he hit in a Friday night game on July 14 of that season in Candlestick Park. I don't specifically remember listening to that one but I listened to just about every Astros game that year after we arrived. What I do remember (and probably still have stored somewhere) is the newspaper account of Mathews' milestone. Those were the highly competitive days when newspapers held deadlines until the West Coast games were finished before going to press.

So when this card came out of the stack from Chris I really got a kick out of it when I realized what it was. There are a couple of others in the break that are worth mentioning, for differing reasons.

This is Dave Crouthers, a 2001 3rd Round pick of the Orioles. After the 2004 season, with a 30-25 minor league record, the O's tossed him along with Mike Fontenot (who?) and Jerry Hairston, Jr. into the trade for Sammy Sosa. This may be the most obscure autograph card I own but in looking at that trade I did discover that both Crouthers and Hairston played for Southern Illinois. I also now know that Hairston played for the Orioles for seven seasons and then for two teams for two seasons and five teams for one season. So there.

This is Annette Charles. I have no idea who she is or why she has a card and I don't care either. Plus she's rather unattractive in a Pat Nixon sort of way. 

Pinnacle Press Cal Ripken. Any Ripken is a good Ripken. That stance is #845 of the 1252 different ones that Cal used in his career.

And finally a 'laundry' card of Rafael Palmeiro. In August 2005 I was driving my family from NYC to Baltimore on our monumental East Coast vacation when the news broke that he'd been suspended for steroid use. When we attended the games at Camden Yards the sign congratulating him on 3000 hits was still up. But he wasn't playing.

Of the cards that I received as part of Chris' 'trade stack', this is my favorite:

It's a 2005 Upper Deck Classics Lyman Bostock. He was a talented young outfielder for the Twins and Angels who was shot an killed in 1978 in a case that was the result of Bostock being in that too familiar 'wrong place, wrong time'. He'd only played four seasons in the bigs when he died. If you are a fan of the powder blue double knit era, this is a card for you.

Here are a few others with quick observations:

I liked Frank Viola with the Twins. But wearing that terrible Met road uni with the shoulder stripes? Ugh. Still kind of a neat card. Looks like he's charging a bunt.

There is no way this guy hit 50 homers in one season. He's the bat boy. I don't believe he was juiced but I'm totally convinced the ball was. It was part of baseball's attempt to pull fans back into the game.

EDIT: The more I look at this card the more I'm convinced it actually IS the bat boy.

I don't know Kevin Foster but that's a screamin' Cubbie throwback, isn't it? 

Chris Sabo, without his goggles. He just looks weird like that.

 btw....THIS is Chris Sabo.

Cliff Floyd pulling a hammy, again. He does Sirius fantasy baseball radio shows. He's pretty good at it. Funny and insightful. Better than he was at staying healthy.