History and Legacy

Eddie Murray sat on a stool in front of his locker in the visitor's clubhouse at Veterans Stadium before Game 5 of the 1983 World Series. His wrists were hurting him, and so was his batting average. In Game 1, he had been embarrassed by Phillies rookie pitcher Charlie Hudson, who had struck Murray out and showed him up at Memorial Stadium by pumping his fists and going through a show on the mound after he got Murray out. He would be facing Hudson again that night, but his mind was on more than his own personal quest for redemption.

Rick Dempsey was getting his equipment ready so he could warm up that night's starting pitcher, Scott McGregor. He had a year's worth of aches and pains to deal with — 137 games of squatting behind the plate — but he was feeling no pain. Dempsey had emerged as the hitting star of the Series. But he was thinking about the same thing Eddie Murray was mulling over quietly.

McGregor was going over the Phillies hitters in his head. He had already faced them once in Game 1, in which he pitched brilliantly but lost 2–1. If he could have been anyone that night, it would have been Don Larsen in 1956 — because McGregor wanted to pitch a perfect game, if that was what it took to win this game. He was thinking that because he was also thinking about something else — the same thing that Eddie Murray and Rick Dempsey were thinking about.

Nearly every man in that visitor's clubhouse had the same subject on his mind — history.

History hung over the 1983 Baltimore Orioles squad like a ghost over a graveyard. History was like a shot of adrenaline through their bodies and a vice on their chests. History was their inspiration and their greatest fear.

It wasn't ancient history. It was the history that many of the players in that room had experienced firsthand during seven days in 1979 and three days in 1982 that drove this 1983 team — the culmination of the so-called "Oriole Way" — to this point in October 1983.

In 1982, the Baltimore Orioles came from eight games behind in the American League East in the middle of August to tie the first-place Milwaukee Brewers in the 161st game of a 162-game season. The entire season — from the first day pitchers and catchers reported in mid-February to a crisp early October day in Baltimore — came down to just one game in Baltimore, before 50,000 screaming hometown fans at Memorial Stadium.

The Orioles lost 10–2.

"When we lost that last game in 1982, there wasn't a guy on that ballclub that didn't believe that we would come back and win in 1983," Murray said, reflecting on that disappointing day in October.

It may have been the loss in 1982 that inspired these players from the day they reported to spring training in 1983, but it was the fear of 1979 that ate at their guts as they waited to play Game 5 of the World Series.

In 1979, the Baltimore Orioles led the Pittsburgh Pirates three games to one in the World Series, with Mike Flanagan, a 23-game winner and the AL Cy Young Award recipient, taking the mound for Game 5. It seemed like a lock. The Orioles lost 7–1. Then they lost 4–0. What had been a 3–1 Series lead now came down to a seventh game between the two teams. Who would pitch for Baltimore in Game 7 in 1979? Scott McGregor.

The Orioles lost 4–1.

"We were disappointed for quite a few years," Dempsey said. "Finally, we got another chance to get back there. When we were up 3–1 in Philadelphia, there wasn't a sound in that clubhouse. Everyone was thinking the same thing: that we were not going to let what happened in 1979 happen again. It was an eerie quietness. We had thought about it for four years."

History, in the form of tradition, was always very important to the Orioles organization. It is how the Oriole Way of doing things — training players how to play the game the same way, and the right way, from rookie league ball all the way to the major leagues. It had become one of the richest traditions in baseball, yet the Orioles did not have a long and storied past, like the Yankees or the Dodgers. The Orioles came and went around the turn of the century — from the 19th to the 20th — and didn't exist in Baltimore again until one of the worst franchises in the history of baseball was sold and moved, about 50 years later.

The origins of a Baltimore Orioles baseball team date back to 1883, when a second version of the Lord Baltimores, playing in the American Association, changed the name of the club to the Orioles, after the official Maryland state bird. The franchise joined the National League in 1892 and fielded one of the great 19th-century baseball teams, managed by Ned Hanlon and boasting such legendary baseball men as John McGraw, Dan Brouthers, Hugh Jennings, and Wee Willie Keeler on the roster and managed by Ned Hanlon. They won three National League pennants from 1894 to 1896. But the franchise folded after the 1899 season.

Two years later, the Orioles were revived and joined the American League. But it was a short life, and after two seasons the team moved to New York and became the Highlanders. That team would later change its name. They became the New York Yankees — a historical fact that stuck in the throats of Orioles fans years later when the Yankees became the Orioles' most bitter rival (and they remain so).

Another version of the Orioles — a minor league club — began play in Baltimore in 1903, this one in the Eastern League and then in the International League from 1912 to 1953. Early on, the owners considered moving the franchise out of town. Those early 20th-century Orioles were managed by Jack Dunn and briefly featured a young Baltimore native, a big kid pitcher named George Herman "Babe" Ruth. The Babe had grown up just a few blocks from the current home of the Orioles, Camden Yards. (In fact, the tavern owned by Ruth's father was on the site of the new ballpark.)

Baltimore would remain a minor league baseball city until Bill Veeck was forced to sell his dismal St. Louis Browns, a major league team, to a group in Baltimore led by Mayor Tommy D'Alesandro. They moved the franchise and played in a renovated Memorial Stadium in 1954. That was the first year of the existing Orioles franchise in Baltimore.

The team struggled in those early years, losing 100 games in its first season (54–100), finishing 57 games out of first place behind the Cleveland Indians, who won 111 games that year. The Orioles didn't have a winning season until 1960, when the team went 89–65 and finished second. But the club was on its way to developing a strong farm system that would be the envy of...