From 33rd Street to Camden Yards : An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles

The winningest baseball franchise from 1960 to 1997, the Orioles are a beloved team that encompasses each of the game's major issues of the last half century--integration, free agency, drugs, labor strife, and runaway salaries. In From 33rd Street to Camden Yards, Baltimore Sun columnist John Eisenberg brings to life the epic saga of this amazing team through the recollections of those who were there--the players, managers, coaches, and owners. Includes 16 pages of photos.

Most "oral histories" tend to be rather boring and well, talky, usually filled with a lot of "me, me, me." Perhaps it speaks to the true nature of what the Orioles organization used to be that the men interviewed tend to sound honest, intelligent and even modest at times.

This is really a fun book - one filled with funny, sad and insightful tales of a different era of baseball. Unfortunately, some players where no longer around to be interviewed (I would have loved to hear what Mark Belanger had to say) and others, it seems, refused to talk (who wouldn't want to hear Reggie Jackson talk about his one season in Baltimore!?).

If you're an Orioles fan, you really can't go wrong with this book. And if you're a baseball fan, I urge to pick this up because you'll begin to understand just what the Birds have meant for Baltimore and for baseball in general.


Great History Lesson of the Orioles   June 24, 2003
This is a great history lesson of the Baltimore Orioles that was easier than I accepted to read. The book is more from the prospective of the past players, coaches & owners than from the author and gives a "real" look into the times of the Orioles beginning after the move from St. Louis, to the glory days of the 60's & 70's to the downward spirial of the late 80's and thru the up's and downs of the 90's. Also, the author gives us how the "Oriole Way" was developed. Awesome detail and some funny passages. I would recommend, even to the non-Oriole fan such as myself.


A Few Too Many Missing Links But A Great Read Regardless   October 29, 2001
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

Until Peter Golenbock [the unparalleled master of the baseball oral history - refer, if you doubt me, to "Bums" (about the Brooklyn Dodgers), "Dynasty" (the New York Yankees of 1947-64), "The Spirit of St. Louis" (the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns), and "Fenway" (three guesses)] decides to get the job done, this will have to suffice for an almost comprehensive history of the Baltimore Orioles, one of the more class baseball franchises - at least, since they moved from St. Louis for the 1954 season. (For those whose lives have been lived on Uranus for half a century, the Orioles are the erstwhile Browns.)

The good news: It's as good as it gets for discoursing upon such phenomena as the team's first horrendous season in 1954. (The 1954 Orioles were the 1962 Mets of their day: they dropped over 100 and the fans loved them anyway, and the Birds didn't lack for a little colour, either.) It's even better for giving the closest insight we are likely to receive so far about Oriole minor league pitching legend Steve Dalkowski - Dalkowski (a roommate of future Los Angeles Angels rookie star/playboy Bo Belinsky) threw bullets which have people suggesting long since that he might have been harder than Herb Score (who didn't survive, thanks to an altered pitching motion ruining his arm, in the wake of that nasty line drive off his face) or Sandy Koufax (who finally found the plate in 1961 and became a Hall of Famer and the second deadliest lefthander of them all other than Lefty Grove), except that he could neither handle nor stay away from his booze. (Dalkowski today is widowed and nearly incapacitated for living on his own.) You will also get a pretty good idea as to why Milt Pappas (who made his bones with the Orioles' legendary "Baby Birds" pitching staff of the late 1950s-early 1960s, only to be the key man in the Frank Robinson trade), despite the claims by many including himself, will never be elected to the Hall of Fame: he suffered a terminal case of Billy Loes Syndrome (Loes was legendary for saying he didn't have to win 20 because they'd expect him to do it every year if he did it once; Pappas was a classic disciple - and he thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame???).

On the other hand, you get a little too much of paradoxical and (some Oriole fans say) toxic owner Peter Angelos, while you get an awful little about an awful lot of significant things around the club. Particularly, Brooks Robinson: Nothing is said of perhaps the signature that nailed it down about how popular and how respected Robinson was - Robinson, run bankrupt thanks to some investment errors in the 1970s (the reason why he hung on for two final seasons despite his obviously being through) and sworn to pay every dollar back he owed, got a huge bolt of help and love from Baltimore when the news leaked out.

Still, you do get a lot of goodies, particularly the dominant Oriole teams of the mid-to-late 1960s-early 1970s, and you get especially an insight you haven't had in too many places - how it felt to be on the receiving end of the 1969 Miracle Mets' World Series mojo. (The Orioles, as you might expect, were and remain gracious and slightly awed by that defeat.) And you get some very good workings into precisely what it was that made such men as Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, and Cal Ripken, Jr. what they were.

Give it a pull. Despite the flaws, you will not be able to put it down.