Why (and When) did You Become an Oriole Fan ???

[OFFNY]

On 12/25/2016 at 3:40 PM, KylOriole Ren said:

 

This will be my first year giving baseball a go. I've never been into the sport until now, but for some reason I got bit by the BB bug and wanted to get into it.

I went with The Orioles because they're one of the hometown teams and all of my friends boost them.

 

o

 

Glad to have you on board.

 

o

[Ohfan67]

Maybe start a "When did you start regretting that you were an Oriole fan?" thread?

[OFFNY]

52 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

 

Maybe start a "When did you start regretting that you were an Oriole fan?" thread? ) 

 

o

 

if the Orioles went 2-160 in a single season, I would never regret becoming a fan of their as I did in October of 1971.

 

o

[flaoriolesfan]

My grandfather would listen to the Orioles on his old AM radio and I would go out to his trailer window to get updates (started about 1970) He would keep me informed of all Oriole news including the day he told me they had traded Doug DeCinces for "Disco" Danny Ford and called up a kid from Rochester named Cal Ripken. Even when Cal started out cold my Grandpa said he had a real good feeling about the kid. Pops made me an Oriole fan.

[Woody Held]

Born and raised in Baltimore, my dad was a diehard fan.  He and I would listen to the games on WBAL on the radio.  Back then you were lucky to have 10 games a year on TV.

i can remember my first game from 1962. Orioles played the White Sox’s  Milt Pappas pitched and threw a 1 hitter.  Boog Powell played left field and hit a  homer .  John Orsino hit a three run homer

[Ohfan67]

4 hours ago, OFFNY said:

o

 

if the Orioles went 2-160 in a single season, I would never regret becoming a fan of their as I did in October of 1971.

 

o

Note the Smiley face emoji. 

[OFFNY]

27 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

 

Note the Smiley face emoji. 

 

o

 

I noted it. 

 

o

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

6 hours ago, Ohfan67 said:

Maybe start a "When did you start regretting that you were an Oriole fan?" thread?

30-3 loss against the Rangers comes to mind.  

I don't regret being an O's fan, but after that loss I was convinced I would never see a good Orioles team again. 

[BamaOsFan]

Born and raised in North Alabama and became an avid Orioles fan because of television. The supreme success of the Orioles in the late 60s and 70's put them on the tube constantly. As a young sports fanatic I played everything available and watched everything related. Saturday baseball became Orioles baseball.

Never forget seeing the a depiction of the Oriole Bird crying up behind Walter Cronkite when they lost the World Series in 69. Then the joys of beating the Reds in 70, then the letdown to the Pirates in 71.

Still the Orioles were the team to hate for others because of their success.

Been a diehard ever since. Been to Baltimore 6 or 7 times to OPCY and Memorial Stadium and annually head to Sarasota every spring.

Looking forward to 2019.

Edited October 3, 2018 by BamaOsFan

[Mondo Trasho]

Even though I was born and raised in Northern Va, both my parents are from the Baltimore area and were O's fans. My mom actually got kicked out of the 1983 parade for jumping on stage and trying to convince Tippy Martinez to give her his hat. So I pretty much grew up rooting for the O's.

Some of my fondest memories are firing up the old SNES and playing Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball and playing the World Series as the Orioles back when I was a kid. Then  my brother and I world go outside and play home run derby. Great times.

 

 

[ExileAngelos]

My dad was not a baseball fan so I took it up on my own around 11 which was 1982.  Just flipping around and saw Chuck Thompson and Brooks on channel 20 here in northern Virginia and I was hooked. 

[OFFNY]

o

 

The most interesting contingent of Oriole fans to me are the ones who grew up in northwestern New York State, and became Oriole fans because of the team's affiliation with the AAA-Rochester Red Wings.

 

o

[Ruzious]

I grew up in MD about equadistant between the Senators and the O's - but in a neighborhood that identified more with the Senators.  But in 1967 or so, my Dad brought me to an O's game and got me a little O's trash basket, and that was it forever.  I still have that trash basket in my bedroom.  

[big_sparxx]

I had no connection.... and still really don't have any connection with Baltimore. I was a kid living in Canada, and went to my first game at Tiger Stadium. It was in 1976 and we beat Fidrych. He was awesome.... but we won.... I can't even remember the score. Tiger Stadium was this monolithic place, and Detroit seemed so... big. Fidrych was a god to the tiger fans.... I'll never forget it. 

 

I've been an O ever since.

[WillyM]

I grew up in upstate New York, in the Albany area.  A lot of people were Yankees fans, but there were Red Sox fans, Giants fans, and Dodgers fans (this was the mid-1950's).  So there wasn't any one team that everybody rooted for.

My father subscribed to Sports Illustrated magazine.  In either 1955 or 1956, when I was six or seven years old, SI's preseason baseball issue included full-color pictures of all the major league teams' uniforms.

I decided it was time for me to choose a favorite team.  My favorite color was orange, so I looked to see which team's uniform included more orange than anyone else's.

And the Orioles, with the orange script Orioles across the chest, with the little orange bird and the orange bill on the cap, were the clear choice.

Some years later, I found out it was possible to order an Orioles cap by mail for 75 cents.

I wrote out a nice letter, as professional as I could make it look in my childish scrawl, and got out three quarters to put in the envelope with the letter.  Then I put a stamp on the envelope and hurried to the mailbox to send it off to Baltimore.

And when I got back home, I found my three quarters still sitting on the kitchen table.  I had forgotten to enclose them with the envelope.

The Orioles sent me the cap anyway.  I wore it proudly for many years.

Considering the number of times I've gone to Memorial Stadium and Camden Yards in the ensuing years, I'd say sending me that cap was a pretty good investment for the Orioles.