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From 33rd Street to the Camden Yards: An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles
In this stirring account, award-winning sports writer John Eisenberg brings to life the epic saga of baseball's winningest franchise from 1960 to 1997. In From 33rd Street to Camden Yards, the Orioles' story is told using the voices of the players, managers, coaches, owners, and fans who helped make the Baltimore Orioles a secular religion in the city that calls itself Baseball City USA.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
John Eisenberg
16 books45 followersJohn Eisenberg is one of the country’s most acclaimed sportswriters. A native of Dallas, Texas and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he started out covering the “Friday Night Lights” for the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald in 1979. After rising through the ranks to cover pro basketball, he joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun in 1984. For the next 23 years he wrote columns in the Sun about the hometown Orioles, Ravens and Maryland Terrapins, and also covered major events such as the World Series, Super Bowl and Olympics. His honors included several firsts in the prestigious Associated Press Sports Editors’ contest. Since 2012 he has written columns on the Ravens’ website.
John has also authored 10 bestselling sports books, including The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Baseball’s Most Historic Record. Published in 2017, it was a finalist for the Casey Award, which honors the year’s best baseball book, and was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Literary Sportswriting Award, which honors the year’s best sports book. John’s most recent title is The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire. John has also written for Sports Illustrated and Smithsonian Magazine. He lives in Baltimore with his wife of 35years. They have two grown children and a grandson.
John has also authored 10 bestselling sports books, including The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Baseball’s Most Historic Record. Published in 2017, it was a finalist for the Casey Award, which honors the year’s best baseball book, and was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Literary Sportswriting Award, which honors the year’s best sports book. John’s most recent title is The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire. John has also written for Sports Illustrated and Smithsonian Magazine. He lives in Baltimore with his wife of 35years. They have two grown children and a grandson.
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July 13, 2024
From 1954 through the present day, major league baseball’s Baltimore Orioles have been a vital part of the life and culture of Maryland’s largest city. And if you are a baseball fan, or a student of Baltimore’s history (I am both), you will find much to enjoy in John Eisenberg’s 2001 book From 33rd Street to Camden Yards.
John Eisenberg’s journalistic and authorial credentials make him exceptionally well-qualified to research and write An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles (the book’s subtitle). The Texas-born Eisenberg spent decades as a sportswriter for the Baltimore Sun; when I was living in the Baltimore area back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I always looked forward to reading Eisenberg’s columns. He is an diligent interviewer and a thoughtful and detail-conscious writer, and those characteristics that I admired in his sports columns are also much in evidence throughout this book.
The Orioles’ beginnings in Baltimore were quite humble; when the erstwhile Saint Louis Browns relocated to Baltimore for the 1954 season, the Orioles generally continued with the Browns’ sad-sack ways. Seasons with 100 losses were the norm for a time, but Baltimore fans – who had waited more than half a century for Major League Baseball, ever since the original American League Orioles moved to New York in 1902 to become the Yankees – didn’t care.
And there were signs of hope even in those early years – especially after a soft-spoken Southern gentleman from Arkansas, one Brooks Robinson, arrived in Baltimore in 1955 and immediately showed an amazing degree of talent at third base. Brooks brought to the team not only his preternatural abilities as a fielder, but also an equable, even-tempered disposition that helped him to help the team through good times and bad. When the “Kiddie Corps” Orioles of 1960 contended for the pennant until the season’s final weeks, only to fall short at season’s end, Brooks took it all in stride, saying that “We’d had a real good year, our first good year, and we felt there were more good things to come” (p. 109).
Brooks Robinson was right – there were indeed many more very good things to come for the Baltimore Orioles. What Eisenberg refers to as the Orioles’ “Glory Days” – the period from 1966 to 1971, when the team won four American League pennants and two World Series titles – got a crucial catalyst when the Orioles acquired Frank Robinson from the Cincinnati Reds. Cincinnati had considered Frank Robinson “past his prime,” but in Baltimore Frank Robinson became a Triple Crown winner and a vital team leader.
As Eisenberg puts it, “the Orioles emerged as a dominant team, a powerhouse, even the American League’s best club” (p. 197). He focuses on the leadership of the legendary manager Earl Weaver, a wild character who was forever “chain-smoking cigarettes, riding the umpires, playing the odds, and pulling strings” (p. 208). Weaver himself, in one of the book’s many passages of illuminating interviews, provides a fun example of his aggressive behaviour toward umpires, citing a time in Minnesota when umpire Bill Haller threatened to throw him out of a game for smoking on one of the ramps leading to the playing field:
“When I took the lineup card out the next day, I went out there with a candy cigarette in my mouth – you know, like I was smoking it. That was better than smoking a lit one, I guess. There were four guys in the [umpiring] crew, and two laughed, and the other two just stood there with a straight face. I don’t think Haller thought it was too damn funny. He ejected me the same day.” (p. 210)
Yet Eisenberg emphasizes that behind the showmanship, Weaver was a canny, hard-working strategist and tactician, always looking for whatever fine points of the game might give the Orioles the edge. For instance, “[I]nstead of relying on overall batting averages and pitching statistics, he obtained each Orioles batter’s average against individual pitchers, and also each Orioles pitcher’s numbers against opposing batters. Then he made his moves accordingly” (p. 208).
Weaver’s managerial style was part of what came to be termed “the Oriole Way” – emphasizing fundamentals on the field and sound player development via the minor-league system. The “Oriole Way” contributed to the bringing forward of great players like pitcher Jim Palmer, and Baltimore fans celebrated the team’s two World Series wins, over Los Angeles in 1966 and Cincinnati in 1970.
A period of decline in the mid-1970’s gave way to the time of “Orioles Magic,” from 1979 to 1983. Cal Ripken Sr. had made many great contributions to the team’s success as coach and scout throughout his career, and Eisenberg writes that “It is tempting to say Cal Ripken Sr. made his greatest contribution to the Orioles when his son Cal Jr. was selected in the second round of the amateur draft” (p. 309). Cal Ripken Jr.’s career encompasses the Orioles’ move from one era to another – to the time when they would win two more American League pennants and one more World Series title in 1983, against the Philadelphia Phillies.
I remember attending games at Memorial Stadium during that 1983 season – driving up from Bethesda with my friends to watch the stadium shake when first baseman Eddie Murray came up to bat, with thousands of fans chanting “Ed-die! Ed-die!” It made me sad when Eddie Murray, a long-time fan favourite, was traded to the Dodgers in 1989. Eisenberg characterizes this situation by writing that Murray “had been feuding with the media, the front office, and even the fans for several years” (p. 399) – but I don’t think that characterization of those times is quite fair to Murray.
It is good that Eisenberg gives Murray an opportunity to tell his side of the story, and I found Murray’s testimony compelling when he stated that “the talk shows had started to get out of hand….The media wasn’t the same. It had gotten to the point where negative stuff sells, and I know our city and our club wasn’t used to that. That started to separate the guys and the way they felt about playing there” (pp. 399-400).
Murray’s words take on particular persuasive power when one reflects that, in 1984, the Baltimore Colts NFL team had made a sudden midnight relocation to Indianapolis, leaving the Orioles as the only major-league team in town. Given the team’s mid-1980’s decline from the recent times of Orioles Magic – with lowlights like the 0-21 losing streak that kicked off the 1988 season – the negative tone of life around the Orioles in that time starts to make sense.
Since those times, the salient points of Baltimore Orioles history have related to things other than the winning of AL pennants or World Series titles. There was, for example, the move from old Memorial Stadium to the new Oriole Park at Camden Yards for the beginning of the 1992 season. Camden Yards was purpose-built exclusively for baseball, in a manner that harmonized beautifully with the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad warehouse and other aspects of surrounding Baltimore architecture. It was praised in its time as a masterwork of stadium architecture, and it still deserves that praise today. There were other highlights in the 1990’s – Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games record on September 6, 1995; Brady Anderson achieving the unique distinction of hitting 50 home runs and stealing 50 stolen bases during the 1996 season – but Orioles fans still wait for a fourth World Series flag to join those from 1966, 1970, and 1983.
John Eisenberg, as mentioned above, is an indefatigable interviewer, and he juxtaposes his interviews quite cleverly – so that, when two members of the Orioles organization see a controversy or an interpersonal disagreement differently, the reader can look at the two interviews side by side and decide for themselves whose testimony seems more accurate.
From 33rd Street to Camden Yards brought back, for me, many happy memories of my life as an Orioles fan. I was pleased, for example, to learn that among the many Baltimore Orioles games that I have attended was the one that is still considered the greatest game in Orioles history – August 24, 1983, when, in extra innings, relief pitcher Tippy Martinez picked off three Toronto Blue Jays runners in a row, paving the way for a Baltimore comeback victory that propelled the team toward a successful pennant run and a World Series title (its last to date). Eisenberg’s book evokes quite well the vivid history of the Baltimore Orioles.
John Eisenberg’s journalistic and authorial credentials make him exceptionally well-qualified to research and write An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles (the book’s subtitle). The Texas-born Eisenberg spent decades as a sportswriter for the Baltimore Sun; when I was living in the Baltimore area back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I always looked forward to reading Eisenberg’s columns. He is an diligent interviewer and a thoughtful and detail-conscious writer, and those characteristics that I admired in his sports columns are also much in evidence throughout this book.
The Orioles’ beginnings in Baltimore were quite humble; when the erstwhile Saint Louis Browns relocated to Baltimore for the 1954 season, the Orioles generally continued with the Browns’ sad-sack ways. Seasons with 100 losses were the norm for a time, but Baltimore fans – who had waited more than half a century for Major League Baseball, ever since the original American League Orioles moved to New York in 1902 to become the Yankees – didn’t care.
And there were signs of hope even in those early years – especially after a soft-spoken Southern gentleman from Arkansas, one Brooks Robinson, arrived in Baltimore in 1955 and immediately showed an amazing degree of talent at third base. Brooks brought to the team not only his preternatural abilities as a fielder, but also an equable, even-tempered disposition that helped him to help the team through good times and bad. When the “Kiddie Corps” Orioles of 1960 contended for the pennant until the season’s final weeks, only to fall short at season’s end, Brooks took it all in stride, saying that “We’d had a real good year, our first good year, and we felt there were more good things to come” (p. 109).
Brooks Robinson was right – there were indeed many more very good things to come for the Baltimore Orioles. What Eisenberg refers to as the Orioles’ “Glory Days” – the period from 1966 to 1971, when the team won four American League pennants and two World Series titles – got a crucial catalyst when the Orioles acquired Frank Robinson from the Cincinnati Reds. Cincinnati had considered Frank Robinson “past his prime,” but in Baltimore Frank Robinson became a Triple Crown winner and a vital team leader.
As Eisenberg puts it, “the Orioles emerged as a dominant team, a powerhouse, even the American League’s best club” (p. 197). He focuses on the leadership of the legendary manager Earl Weaver, a wild character who was forever “chain-smoking cigarettes, riding the umpires, playing the odds, and pulling strings” (p. 208). Weaver himself, in one of the book’s many passages of illuminating interviews, provides a fun example of his aggressive behaviour toward umpires, citing a time in Minnesota when umpire Bill Haller threatened to throw him out of a game for smoking on one of the ramps leading to the playing field:
“When I took the lineup card out the next day, I went out there with a candy cigarette in my mouth – you know, like I was smoking it. That was better than smoking a lit one, I guess. There were four guys in the [umpiring] crew, and two laughed, and the other two just stood there with a straight face. I don’t think Haller thought it was too damn funny. He ejected me the same day.” (p. 210)
Yet Eisenberg emphasizes that behind the showmanship, Weaver was a canny, hard-working strategist and tactician, always looking for whatever fine points of the game might give the Orioles the edge. For instance, “[I]nstead of relying on overall batting averages and pitching statistics, he obtained each Orioles batter’s average against individual pitchers, and also each Orioles pitcher’s numbers against opposing batters. Then he made his moves accordingly” (p. 208).
Weaver’s managerial style was part of what came to be termed “the Oriole Way” – emphasizing fundamentals on the field and sound player development via the minor-league system. The “Oriole Way” contributed to the bringing forward of great players like pitcher Jim Palmer, and Baltimore fans celebrated the team’s two World Series wins, over Los Angeles in 1966 and Cincinnati in 1970.
A period of decline in the mid-1970’s gave way to the time of “Orioles Magic,” from 1979 to 1983. Cal Ripken Sr. had made many great contributions to the team’s success as coach and scout throughout his career, and Eisenberg writes that “It is tempting to say Cal Ripken Sr. made his greatest contribution to the Orioles when his son Cal Jr. was selected in the second round of the amateur draft” (p. 309). Cal Ripken Jr.’s career encompasses the Orioles’ move from one era to another – to the time when they would win two more American League pennants and one more World Series title in 1983, against the Philadelphia Phillies.
I remember attending games at Memorial Stadium during that 1983 season – driving up from Bethesda with my friends to watch the stadium shake when first baseman Eddie Murray came up to bat, with thousands of fans chanting “Ed-die! Ed-die!” It made me sad when Eddie Murray, a long-time fan favourite, was traded to the Dodgers in 1989. Eisenberg characterizes this situation by writing that Murray “had been feuding with the media, the front office, and even the fans for several years” (p. 399) – but I don’t think that characterization of those times is quite fair to Murray.
It is good that Eisenberg gives Murray an opportunity to tell his side of the story, and I found Murray’s testimony compelling when he stated that “the talk shows had started to get out of hand….The media wasn’t the same. It had gotten to the point where negative stuff sells, and I know our city and our club wasn’t used to that. That started to separate the guys and the way they felt about playing there” (pp. 399-400).
Murray’s words take on particular persuasive power when one reflects that, in 1984, the Baltimore Colts NFL team had made a sudden midnight relocation to Indianapolis, leaving the Orioles as the only major-league team in town. Given the team’s mid-1980’s decline from the recent times of Orioles Magic – with lowlights like the 0-21 losing streak that kicked off the 1988 season – the negative tone of life around the Orioles in that time starts to make sense.
Since those times, the salient points of Baltimore Orioles history have related to things other than the winning of AL pennants or World Series titles. There was, for example, the move from old Memorial Stadium to the new Oriole Park at Camden Yards for the beginning of the 1992 season. Camden Yards was purpose-built exclusively for baseball, in a manner that harmonized beautifully with the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad warehouse and other aspects of surrounding Baltimore architecture. It was praised in its time as a masterwork of stadium architecture, and it still deserves that praise today. There were other highlights in the 1990’s – Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games record on September 6, 1995; Brady Anderson achieving the unique distinction of hitting 50 home runs and stealing 50 stolen bases during the 1996 season – but Orioles fans still wait for a fourth World Series flag to join those from 1966, 1970, and 1983.
John Eisenberg, as mentioned above, is an indefatigable interviewer, and he juxtaposes his interviews quite cleverly – so that, when two members of the Orioles organization see a controversy or an interpersonal disagreement differently, the reader can look at the two interviews side by side and decide for themselves whose testimony seems more accurate.
From 33rd Street to Camden Yards brought back, for me, many happy memories of my life as an Orioles fan. I was pleased, for example, to learn that among the many Baltimore Orioles games that I have attended was the one that is still considered the greatest game in Orioles history – August 24, 1983, when, in extra innings, relief pitcher Tippy Martinez picked off three Toronto Blue Jays runners in a row, paving the way for a Baltimore comeback victory that propelled the team toward a successful pennant run and a World Series title (its last to date). Eisenberg’s book evokes quite well the vivid history of the Baltimore Orioles.
October 1, 2024
In short, Eisenberg wrote a true tour de force. In the making of this tome, a comprehensive history of the Baltimore Orioles from 1953 to 2001, Eisenberg interviewed over 90 former Orioles players, coaches, and front office staff, capturing an oral history that injects the whole book with stories, personality, and heart. Knowing that no one eyewitness account ever captures the true story, Eisenberg comes at even the most divisive topics, from the team's slowness to integrate black players in the 1950s to the modern failings of the Orioles under Peter Angelos' ownership, in a moderate and scholarly matter, never taking a single source's word as law and approaching issues from multiple perspectives. While the book positively oozes with city and team pride, Eisenberg does not shie away from criticizing the team at times, especially when it comes to the color barrier and the city of Baltimore's racist politics in the 1950s and 60s. The writing itself is plenty gripping on its own: his account of the 1966, 1970, and 1971 world series in particular, as well as several other individual games of particular importance, were accounts that really glued me to my seat even when I knew what was going to happen. Eisenberg excels at focusing on key moments that make even 50-plus-year-old games come to life and has keen insight into what games within a 162 game season to focus on.
I have been stammering a bit here to come up with any real criticism. I think Eisenberg's approach captures both the facts of the game and the human element that makes baseball worth watching. Unlike a lot of sports writers, Eisenberg seldom drags his audience down into the quagmires of baseball statistics, choosing instead to focus on how the great players came to be and how they reflect on their time than the robotic quantitative jargon that so often induces coma even in devout baseball fans like myself. This is a book about the people who made the Orioles one of the great franchises of the 20th century and the city that came to love them. Every MLB team deserves a book like this.
I give "From 33rd Street to Camden Yards" 5 stars. No notes.
I have been stammering a bit here to come up with any real criticism. I think Eisenberg's approach captures both the facts of the game and the human element that makes baseball worth watching. Unlike a lot of sports writers, Eisenberg seldom drags his audience down into the quagmires of baseball statistics, choosing instead to focus on how the great players came to be and how they reflect on their time than the robotic quantitative jargon that so often induces coma even in devout baseball fans like myself. This is a book about the people who made the Orioles one of the great franchises of the 20th century and the city that came to love them. Every MLB team deserves a book like this.
I give "From 33rd Street to Camden Yards" 5 stars. No notes.
April 21, 2009
Just an outstanding sports book, with plenty of detail and insight from the participants themselves. I loved learning more about the history of the team, and Eisenberg put the comments in perspective. Many of the major players are heard from, including Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer. Peter Angelos also offers his views, though he probably should have stayed quiet.
October 18, 2014
So, I'm an O's fan now and I needed to bone up on my O's knowledge. This oral history of the O's was pretty intense. I got a little bit into the book and then decided to rely on Jojo to educate me in baseball history, so this book should be noted as partially read, but I'm probably not going to go back and read it again. Therefore, I'm not putting this on my to read at a later date list. It's read, but not 100%. Some good info altogether.
September 15, 2014
This was great. I'm not an O's fan, but a baseball fan and this was a very interesting book. I was very surprised about the input from the various players and management through the decades - it was really thorough. I highly recommend it to all baseball fans.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews