I have been reading letters to the editor lamenting the Orioles’ woes. Writers Patrick Lynch and George Hammerbacher have been explicit in their criticisms of the Orioles’ missteps. Certainly, 2025 has not been a banner year for David Rubenstein, the Orioles’ primary owner. Dismissed from the Kennedy Center by President Donald Trump, he now faces an Orioles team in freefall.
In the 1960s, I was a Junior Oriole, which, if my memory is not failing, entitled me to attend nine Orioles games a year. It also provided a coupon for a free Gino’s Giant and a coupon for discounts at Bacharach Rasin, a local sporting goods store. One vivid memory was attending a game with a friend. When the friend’s mother arrived in front of Memorial Stadium to pick us up, a man with a crew cut asked if she would give him and several other men a ride to the Holiday Inn downtown. They were Chicago White Sox players who had been tardy in meeting the team bus. My friend and I were ordered to sit in the rear cargo area of the station wagon. We passed around slips of paper, which the players signed. One signature, I remember, was Tommie Agee. Of course, I lost the signatures.
Later in 1983, I attended the civic celebration in front of City Hall to celebrate the Orioles’ World Championship. I don’t remember much of that day except the crowd was so huge and dense I found myself uncomfortable. The crowd was so thick you couldn’t control your position. What, I remember thinking, if some dope fires a gun in the air? A stampede, with people trampled, I concluded. I muscled my way out of the crowd.
Forty-two years later, I hunger for another World Series championship, though I doubt I’d attend another celebration. Idiots with guns are entirely too common now.
— Mark Plogman, Pikesville
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