Memorial Stadium was demolished in 2001
Memorial Stadium was demolished in 2001
Memorial Stadium was the home of the Baltimore Orioles of the American League.
Memorial Stadium was built in 1947 as a football stadium, but baseball came to town in 1954, when the St. Louis Browns became Baltimore Orioles, and Memorial Stadium took them in. The Orioles played there through the 1991 season, after which they moved into the ground-breaking Camden Yards. The park is set in a quiet, residential neighborhood (at least it was in 1983), and we had to park on the lawn of the high school across the street.
My trip to Baltimore in 1983 was actually my very first ballpark adventure, undertaken at the frighteningly young age of 18. A friend went with me as we headed south down I-95 to Baltimore to see the Orioles take on the Texas Rangers. The Orioles wore those great caps back then; orange, black, and white with the goofy Oriole head logo. Much nicer than the boring ornothologically correct bird they wear on today's hats.
Fools that we were, we didn't get directions to the stadium, figuring that road signs would lead us there. Wrong. We saw no signs directing us to any stadium whatsoever. Just before entering the Harbor Tunnel, we bailed off of I-95 and started wandering aimlessly through neighborhoods, completely lost. Then, in a miracle of Moses-like proportions, we came across a road sign that actually had a map directing travellers to the ballpark.
I have very little memory of Memorial Stadium as I only took a few pictures and I didn't write about the trip as I do now. I know the Orioles won and that we liked the ballpark, although we really had nothing but Shea Stadium to compare it with. So, based on a vague and scattered collection of memories, I will give it a rating of...
Yes, this is actually a Baltimore Orioles ticket