Baseball Place No. 50: Sports Legends Museum; and Place No. 50A: Oriole Park at Camden Yards

There was much more work to do on Camden Yards when we arrived for our tour in 1992, but we could already tell something special was happening there.

And that's before there were plans for the Sports Legends Museum in Camden Station.

Josh Pahigian takes us the for spot No. 50 in his "101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out."

The station sat empty from 1971 until renovated in 2005. We saw some of the artifacts when they were displayed at the Babe Ruth Museum, which is just a couple blocks away.

The stationis even closer, sitting perpendicular to the stadium's famous warehouseand just steps from the outfield.

Since the museum wasn't open in 1991, I must present an alternative.

Alternative place No. 50A: Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Like I said in the earlier post, the Orioles could not have been more gracious to us when we arrived for the Baltimore leg of our epic baseball rpad trip.

A staff member was assigned to give us a tour of the under-construction ballpark. We got to wear hard hats and everything.

The ballpark had not yet been properly named, even though it was popularly called "Camden Yards."
The spot for home plate was already designated.

The view of downtown was a very different from what fans saw from the upper deck at Memorial Stadium.


John got some great shots from the upper deck.

Check out the neat details on the seats.

The concourses were wide and open.


Camden Yards looked like it was going to be a spectacular ballpark, and I've love to get there again to see how it turned out.

Baseball Place No. 18: Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum

Baltimore was a stop on our epic baseball road trip of 1991, and we packed our short time there with all kinds of side trips.

Aside from a game at Memorial Stadium and an under-construction tour of Camden Yards – expect those adventures to follow sometime in the coming weeks – we made sure we hit a couple museums along the way.

One of those, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, was tapped by Josh Pahigian as spot No. 18 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

The Babe was born in a humble row house at 216 Emery Street, a short walk from Camden Yards. You can follow a trail of painted baseballs to get from the stadium from the museum.

The museum opened in 1974 with help from the Bambino’s family, and grew to include artifacts from the Orioles and the Colts, and even the Maryland Baseball Hall of Fame.



Mickey Tettleton's performance-enhancers were said to be Froot Loops.

But those items in 2005 were moved to the Sports legends at Camden Yards museum, prompting the Ruth museum to revert its focus solely on the former Red Sox and Braves player, who might have spent some time with another team whose name escapes me.


Baltimore was a nice place, and we enjoyed some of the other sites. We took a quick walk through the outdoors part of the B&O Railroad Museum, and then drove up to Federal Hill Park, with its spectacular views of the city.

There's a chance John, Will and John were tired of posing for me my the time we got to Federal Hill park. But the Inner Harbor was fantastic.

We also explored the Inner Harbor, searching for the perfect crab cakes.

Baseball place No. 14: Doubleday Field

I choose to live in a very happy little world where George Washington never did tell any lies, where Kiss Alive was really recorded live and where no Mets player has ever taken steroids.

And I also believe that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture in beautiful Cooperstown, N.Y.

Deep down I know that the first George W. was a politician like the second, and Gene Simmons has confessed in recent years that there were in fact some studio touch-ups on the classic live album.

But no Met has ever taken steroids -- Guillermo Mota was just confused when he confessed in 2006, thinking he was on the other New York team.

But I absolutely, positively cannot accept that baseball was invented in Hoboken, N.J., as Congress resolved in 1953.

That’s because Cooperstown and Doubleday Field are just too perfect. We’re not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Josh Pahigian names Doubleday Field Place No. 14 in the 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.

The brick ballpark sits just a block away from the Hall of Fame, and, personally, I would have included them as one entry. But it’s not my book.

The cow pasture was christened Doubleday Field in 1920, with a wooden grandstand erected in 1924 and the present brick and concrete structure built in the 1930s as Works Progress Administration projects.

Major League teams played an annual exhibition on the field starting in 1940. The final game was supposed to be last season, but the Cubs and Padres were rained out. That would make the Orioles and Blue Jays to be the final big-leaguers to play on this slice of heaven, with the Orioles winning the 2007 contest.


The Mets have played in four Hall of Fame games, losing to the Senators in 1964 and the Brewers in 1975. They played to a 4-4 rain-shortened tie against the White Sox in 1982, and beat them 3-0 in 1992. Note, two Tom Seaver teams playing in the year he was inducted!

There are reports of an illegal Wiffle Ball game on or about the field late one afternoon in 1992.

Friend and colleague John Munson, wearing a jersey of his hero, Thurman, and a guy in a 1969 flannel Tom Seaver replica allegedly played catch and hit some balls where the Phinney cows once walked – and where Abner Doubleday most likely did not.
This appears to be photographic evidence if intent to play Wiffle Ball. Note the sign advertising the game between the Mets and White Sox.

We had to play on that picturesque spot in that lovely little ballpark. Because we sure as heck are not going to play in Hoboken.

Baseball Place No. 7: The Green Monster

Getting the Green Monster ready before game in 1991.

There are many words you could have used to describe Shea Stadium. “Intimate” was not one of them.

It is, however, the perfect way to describe Fenway Park.

Technically, Josh Pahigian targets only one part of the ballpark, the “Green Monster” as stop No. 7 in his list of “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

But I don’t see how you could go without the entire Fenway experience. There’s a reason Ray Kinsella was sent to the Boston Red Sox’s home in “Field of Dreams.” It’s darn near perfect.

Boston was a little more than two hours away from our town in Connecticut, a longer drive, but do-able.

Rich overlooks the Fenway field.

Rich is a Boston native, attended hundreds of Fenway games and was happy to show me his stomping grounds during my three years there.

My only ballpark experiences at this point were Shea, the disaster in the Bronx and Busch Stadium in St. Louis. All were large, modern stadia surrounded by parking lots and garages with lights mounted atop multiple decks.

But we were practically on top of Fenway before I even saw it. Rich is a master at finding parking spaces tucked into the surrounding neighborhoods, and I vividly remember walking through the blocks surrounding the parks, past the bars and shops.

The streets were filled with vendors, and the smell of sausages, peppers and onion on huge grills beckoned. Rich pointed out that it is far better to enjoy the smell than to eat one of the sandwiches, especially with a two-hour drive home. He spoke from experience.

And there was a massive old souvenir store on Yawkey Way packed with some items that probably were sitting on those shelves for decades – my favorite kind! I picked up an ancient plastic snow globe that for some reason has a moving see-saw with a batter and pitcher. I treasure it.


We walked around the back to see the other side of the Green Monster, which was neither green nor monstrous from that angle. But we could readily see batting practice home runs flying both into and over the net.

We entered through a rear gate for our seat in the centerfield bleachers, and there was then-rookie Ellis Burks standing on the other side of a chain-link fence in the tunnel, happily talking to fans and signing autographs.

There’s really nothing to prepare for that first glimpse of the Fenway’s field from the inside. But I understood immediately when I read that colorful Athletics pitcher Joaquin Andujar reportedly stepped out of the dugout before his first game there and said, “What is this? Are we playing softball today?”

Rich took me on a tour, first of the seats behind the bullpens, where you can look through the slats into where the players sit. I was less than a foot from Phil Niekro, which I thought was really cool.

Rich pointed out the cool little quirks, such as the Morse code hidden in the lines of the scoreboard, and the spot at the end of the press box where owner Jean Yawkey watched the games.

We sat in a spot called “The Triangle, a small section of the bleachers framed by the mighty monster itself.

We often snagged seats either in that spot or near it, and I was always amazed at the interaction between players and the fans, who were so close to the action. There was heckling, but much of it was good natured and even funny. I remember Brett Butler of the Indians one night cracking up and turning around to smile and wink when he thought one was particularly good.

We were semi-regular Fenway visitors over the next three years, dividing our trips between Shea, Yankee Stadium and Fenway depending on who was in town.


Two visits in particular stand out.

I brought my wife to Boston for Valentine’s Day weekend the first year we were married, and it was brutally cold. Naturally, I had to show her Fenway, even though it was the dead of winter. And like Rich had taught me, I grabbed the first possible space I found.

“Aren’t we far from the stadium?” my wife asked.

“Trust me, we’ll never get one anywhere near the place. I speak from experience.”

Of course, every other time I experienced this was when there was a game, and we turned the corner to see block after block of empty street spaces.

Don't let the smile fool you. This person is in trouble.

I am reminded of this to this day. And I still apologize. It was really cold.

My last visit was memorable for different reasons. Fenway was the last stop on our 1991 ballpark tour with Will and our colleague John.

The game, against the Chicago White Sox, went back and forth, and of course included Frank Thomas, one of our favorite players.

Boston was up 8-7 when future Met Robin Ventura smacked his second homer of the game tie it in the ninth.

The game went to the 14th inning, when Ozzie Guillen opened with a single and was sacrificed to second. Ventura was walked, and Frank loaded the bases with a single. Dan Pasqua singled to bring Guillen and Ventura home. Then Frank, by no means a base-stealer was caught trying to swipe home.

Our man Frank goes up against Dennis Lamp.

Bobby Thigpen then came in and closed down Boston to give the Chisox a hard-earned win.

But we soon learned that Will's Civic (not John's) was broken into, with some thugs stealing one of his cameras and some of the film he had shot at some of our previous ballpark stops. It wasn’t pretty.

So I need to get back there one more time and leave Boston with a happier feeling.