Charm City

It's 6:30 Saturday night and I'm in a car on 95 North, halfway between Washington and Baltimore, just like Meg Ryan in fucking Sleepless in Seattle. Crusty today, that's what I am. Crusty.

We're on our way to watch the Baltimore Orioles play the Minnesota Twins. I don't care much about baseball anymore, and I really don't care about American League baseball, especially during the Stanley Cup playoffs. But it's a beautiful night and we have free tickets, so here we are.

I like Baltimore. It's a little rough around the edges right now but it'll be back. I like the harbor and the industrial brick buildings and the Domino Sugar sign and the Bromo Seltzer tower and Fort McHenry and of course, Camden Yards. Camden Yards is a great ballpark, even if you're not an Orioles fan.

We're in our seats now, waiting for the second game of a twi-night doubleheader. It's still light out at 7:45 and the sky is almost perfectly clear and it's starting to get a tiny bit cold but I'm wearing a warm sweater and I'm perfectly comfortable, halfway through a very lovely draft beer and surrounded by happy Baltimoreans on a holiday weekend.

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We don't come to Orioles games very often, but when we do, they tend to be memorable. I visited Camden Yards for the first time on September 19, 1998. It just so happened that Cal Ripken Jr. had started to feel a little tired, and had decided to end the famous streak, on that very night.

Ripken’s absence from the starting lineup didn't attract much attention. At that point in his career, he had begun to slow down a bit, and he wasn't playing all nine innings of every game. But the stadium began to buzz a bit when the sixth inning came and went with no Cal. By the eighth inning, all of Oriole Park was on its feet. No other player has come anywhere close to breaking that streak, and it's not likely that any player ever will.

In 2015, Baltimore exploded in fury in the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death.  On April 25, my husband and sons and a friend were at an Orioles game. It was another Saturday night in spring, this one much colder. I'd been outside all day at my older son's track meet, and I gave up my ticket because I couldn't bear the thought of sitting out in the cold for three more hours. I watched the game on TV, hoping to see my family in the stands, so I was watching as the non-violent protests turned non non-violent, and the Baltimore PD shut down the stadium and surrounding neighborhoods, preventing fans from leaving the ballpark. They were allowed to leave 30 minutes later, and everyone made it home safely.

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Oh my God. The Old Bay fumes are killing me. Welcome to Baltimore.

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So one more game, on September 11, 2015.  The Orioles scored 10 runs in one inning, including two grand slams, against a Kansas City Royals team that didn't know what hit them. That's two grand slams in one inning, not one game. BTW, I looked it up and that has happened a lot more than you'd probably guess. The Orioles won that night.

Still one of my favorite pictures--
it's actually my lock screen photo. 

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4-0, Twins, after 2 innings. We might not stay for the whole game. But this is an enthusiastic crowd. 

Wait, did they just score 6 more in the very same third inning? Because it's 10-0 now.

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When it comes to American League baseball, we are the fairest of fair-weather fans. At 14-0 in the fourth inning, we packed up and drove home, with the windows open to the breeze and the radio playing top 40 until we were close enough to DC to find the radio broadcast of the Capitals game. It's nice to get out of town once in a while, but it's nicer to be home.