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1 week ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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Forty-one states and nine countries. By my count, that’s where my work travels took me during my 23 years with the Baltimore Sun. I was lucky. My time at the paper (1984-2007) coincided with a golden era for sportswriting, an era when editors at major newspapers didn’t blink at sending reporters and/or columnists to faraway places in search of good stories.
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2 weeks ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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Coming off a long road trip, Orioles manager Paul Richards scheduled an offday workout at Memorial Stadium on September 20th, 1956. In fact, he scheduled two workouts, one in the morning and one after lunch. He wanted his players in the right mindset for a strong season-ending push. The day dawned sunny and warm, giving way to perfect conditions for the morning workout. But strong winds began to gust around midday, prompting Richards to cancel the afternoon practice.
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3 weeks ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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When the Orioles were at their very best as an organization in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Bobby Grich and Don Baylor exemplified just how superior they were. Smack in the middle of a six-year run in which Baltimore’s roster of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers won four American League pennants and two World Series titles, the club drafted and developed two of the game’s most outstanding prospects.
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1 month ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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When I debuted the Bird Tapes nearly a year ago, I had a shoebox full of plastic microcassettes containing recordings of rare interviews with figures from the history of the Orioles. The figures ranged from the legendary (Brooks, Earl, Frank, etc.) to the not-so-famous (Barry Shetrone) and also included front office executives, a broadcaster (Ernie Harwell) and even an owner (Peter Angelos).
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1 month ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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In the chapter on Steve Dalkowski in my 2001 book on Orioles history, I quoted numerous people who’d played with or seen the legendary fireballer. Boog Powell, Steve Barber, Milt Pappas, Barry Shetrone, Earl Weaver, Walter Youse, Harry Dalton and others eagerly recalled him and told stories. Their memories of Dalkowski still burned bright. But one voice was absent from the chapter. There wasn’t a single word from Dalkowski himself.
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1 month ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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Suddenly, it just made sense. I had a free companion ticket on Southwest Airlines that was about to expire, which meant I had to figure out somewhereto go in late February — and preferably, it would be somewhere warm as this year’s colder-than-usual winter lingered in Baltimore. And considering all that, when one possesses, as I surely do, a condition best described as “baseball on the brain,” there really is only one option. Spring. Training.
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1 month ago | 
birdtapes.substack.com | John Eisenberg
As a manager back in the day, Earl Weaver helped push Baltimore’s baseball franchise to the forefront of the American conversation. The Orioles never basked in the limelight more than when Weaver was in charge, leading them to four pennants, a World Series victory and a long run of winning seasons between 1968 and 1982. Now, more than a decade after his death, Weaver is again bringing attention to the Orioles — the history of the Orioles.
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1 month ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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In the long chronicle of Orioles history, Steve Dalkowski is the greatest mythological figure. No one else comes close as a source of baseball tales that sound completely made up. “Saw him strike out 24 and walk 18 one night.”“On a crappy little field with dim lighting in Tennessee, he threw a fastball that the batter never saw. Ball hit the guy in the head and bounced back onto the field, landing near second base. Shattered the guy’s helmet.
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2 months ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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Jim Palmer was so polished as a young pitcher that he wasn’t old enough to vote when the Orioles promoted him to the major leagues for the first time. In 1965, when Palmer arrived (and the voting age was 21), the club assigned him a road roommate who was literally twice his age. “I was 19, he was 38,” Palmer recalled in his Bird Tapes interview. The roommate wasn’t any old baseball codger. It was Robin Roberts, a future Hall of Fame inductee.
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2 months ago | 
baltimorebaseball.com | John Eisenberg
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The Orioles’ acquisition of pitcher Mike Cuellar before the 1969 season is rightly considered among their shrewdest and most important moves. He immediately shot to the top of a rotation that gave the Orioles residence in baseball’s highest echelons for years. And the biggest piece they gave up for him was Curt Blefary, a former Rookie of the Year outfielder whose star was falling fast because he could only hit fastballs. What a deal.
