What's your favorite interaction ever with an Orioles player, coach, or manager?

[Orange]

21 hours ago, pdiddy said:

The Indians game? That’s so cool! 

My recollection is that both starters fired a one hitter and the difference was ours was a Harold Baines dinger to CF.  O’s won 1-0.  I think it was the Twins, perhaps?  Hard to remember exactly... I was a little overwhelmed.  I think it was 94, maybe 95. 
 

An even better memory was 93, though. I was dating the granddaughter of Chuck Thompson’s wife’s best friend. Somehow the whole family, including grandma moved to Florida... but grandma and granddaughter came back to Baltimore to visit for like a month and stayed at the Thompson’s. I won’t bore you with the details about being alone at Chuck’s house with the girl... y’all care more about the absolutely surreal experience of driving to an Orioles game in the backseat of Chuck Thompson’s car. I mean it was normal to hear his voice driving to the stadium, but not because he was driving!

Edited March 15, 2020 by Orange

[Greg Pappas]

6 hours ago, Roy Firestone said:

Some of you know of my Brooks Robinson friendship for about 50 years....Here us the moment I put into words about what kind of man he was...to me...and to everybody who ever knew him:

 

Beautifully done Roy.  Thank you kindly for sharing. 

One of 400 trillion possibilities, it was you who were gifted Life.
You enter the world crying, and leave the world, dying…
and the choices you make in-between will define you, for eternity.
Make it… special.

Brooks certainly did.

[Number5]

I've got two.  

When Brooks was elected to the HOF he made appearances at Crown stations to give out and sign posters for fans.  My wife and I went and he was so friendly.  At the time he was announcing games with Chuck Thompson on tv and my wife told him he looks much better in person than he does on tv.  Brooks said "Yeah, those tv cameras sure make you look fat!"    Everybody there broke out laughing.  We still have the posters hanging downstairs.

As a boy, the Orioles had a clinic at Memorial Stadium for Little Leaguers.  Two kids from each area Little league got to go, and I was lucky enough to be one of the two from my league.  Jim Gentile gave a talk on hitting and Milt Pappas on pitching.  I was the tallest kid there, so Diamond Jim chose me to be his guinea pig on hitting.  He knelt on one knee behind me and positioned my body, feet, arms etc.  As he was doing so he said, "When I say OK, you go ahead and give it a rip."  At one point, as he's getting me set up he inadvertently said, "OK, that ought to do it."  Well, when I heard "OK" I swung as hard as I could.  Gentile was barely able to duck out of the way.  There was a stunned silence for a moment and I was mortified.  One man there said "Wow, that would have made the front pages of the Sunpapers."  And everyone let loose with a relieved laugh.  Gentile was very nice to me, though.  He said, "Don't worry about it, you did exactly what I told you to do.  Good job.  Now, lets try it again."  Milt Pappas then talked about pitching and showed us various grips.  He showed us the curve ball and told us not to try to throw a curve until we were 14 years old.  Yeah, right.  You know what all of us were doing as soon as we got home.  Then we all had great seats for a Sunday afternoon ballgame.  It was a great day.  I don't know if they still do things like that.

[PaulFolk]

2 hours ago, Orange said:

My recollection is that both starters fired a one hitter and the difference was ours was a Harold Baines dinger to CF.  O’s won 1-0.  I think it was the Twins, perhaps?  Hard to remember exactly... I was a little overwhelmed.  I think it was 94, maybe 95. 

It was probably this game on Aug. 2, 1995: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL199508020.shtml

Mussina threw a four-hitter, not a one-hitter, but the rest of the details line up: the opposing starter (Paul Menhart) threw a one-hitter and Harold Baines' HR was the only run in a 1-0 O's victory.

[MongoBoy]

20+ years ago, I was at the horseys in Saratoga for the Travers Stakes, I think.  Some guy was walking around with a number 8 Etchebarren jersey.  Thinking it was a joke, I go up and put my arm around him and say, "Hey, Andy.  How ya doing?"  Guy turned around, and son-of-a-bitch, it was Andy Etchebarren.  And I could tell just because of his eyebrows.

And now I see that he passed away recently.

[tntoriole]

I used to go to Bluefield to see the rookie Orioles play.  Don Buford was the manager there for awhile and before one game he was out helping the tarp roll off...I just walked out and introduced myself and mentioned to him that I was a kid sitting in the right field bleachers when he hit the 1st inning, second pitch homer there off Tom Seaver in the 1969 series.  He said  “Yep, then it all went south”  and we shared a laugh.  He said he was guessing slider rather than fastball off Seaver there and barrelled it up.  He also talked about his basestealing method...very analytical about pitchers and their tendencies. 

[TommyPickles]

I think I've told this story once before on here, but definitely the time I met Adam Jones.

In 2018, my best friends and I went down to Orioles Spring Training for my bachelor party.  Jones had long been my favorite player and this was set to be his final season with us. 

One night after the final game of the Spring season we were out at a bar in Clearwater shooting pool.  We all had O's gear on and were enjoying our first time in town.  A bartender came over to us and was like, "you guys call yourself O's fans?"  We weren't really sure what he was getting at.  Maybe it was some playful shit talk for the team's last place finish in the 2017 season.  "Umm yea. Definitely." I said.  He laughed, "and you didn't even notice that's Adam Jones over there at the bar?"

Sure enough he was over at the bar with a group of friends.  He seemed to be the only player there.  We didn't want to bother him or ask for a picture or anything like that, but we decided at least I should go say hi.  My friends were like, "it's your bachelor weekend, you might as well, dude."  So my best friend and I sheepishly walked over and said "Excuse me, Mr. Jones, we just wanted to say you're our favorite player and we hope you have a great season!"  He was super cool about it.  He turned away from his friends, shook our hands, thanked us kindly, and was real nice.  

It was a small moment, but it was super cool.  Jones is the man.

[DrungoHazewood]

I don't have too many, but Tony gave me a press pass to go to Fanfest in 2003.  That happened to be the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry.  I was in the back room watching the coverage of that with Rick Dempsey.  We didn't say a lot to each other, but it was kind of surreal.

[Orange]

On 3/15/2020 at 10:49 AM, PaulFolk said:

It was probably this game on Aug. 2, 1995: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL199508020.shtml

Mussina threw a four-hitter, not a one-hitter, but the rest of the details line up: the opposing starter (Paul Menhart) threw a one-hitter and Harold Baines' HR was the only run in a 1-0 O's victory.

Yes, that’s the one!  Four hit shutout... okay that works... I remember Menhart was a hard luck loser that day since his only hit allowed was a HR and lost 1-0. 

[Bradysburns]

I once interviewed former O's pitcher Jason Johnson at Camden Yard. It was for a magazine about living with diabetes, and how his insulin pump had helped him on the field, etc. Not only was Jason a very good pitcher for us, he was an amazingly cool guy. Couldn't have been more level-headed, down-to-earth and genuine. He walked around the Warehouse like an intern rather than the multimillionaire athlete he was. Terrific dude. 

[Chuck A]

For me, I met and spoke to Chuck Thompson under the stands in Memorial outside of the Hit and Run club for about 30 minutes talking baseball.  He could tell I was a fan of the game and honestly I could listen to that man talk for hours and hours.

I ran into Johnny U at Harundale Mall in the early 80's, I asked him if he could sign a card for me but I had to run to our car to get it.  It is the only APBA football card of his that he said he had ever signed.  He waited about 10 minutes for me to return.  We then talked about that game and he was genuinely interested .  Fond memories.

 

[BirdinBama]

I was at the wedding of a friend's son in 2015. His son was getting married to Mike Boddicker's absolutely gorgeous daughter, and the wedding was in Kansas City. I'm sitting at the hotel bar and Eddie "Friggin" Murray sits down next to me! Of course, I bought him a beer! He was most gracious, as was Mike Boddicker. 

I told Eddie that I watched him carry the team on his back so many times.

[Legend_Of_Joey]

I think you all already know my favorite interaction. 

[BarclaySouthway]

Elrod Hendricks, who has to be one of the all-time fan friendliest Orioles, would always BS with the fans in the centerfield seats at Camden Yards when he was the bullpen coach.  We talked with him quite a few times when we sat out there.  One time, Ellie was by the fence, and I saw Jeff Tackett (the backup catcher in those days) warming somebody up in the pen.  Tackett had recently made an appearance in the movie "Dave," where Kevin Kline played a presidential look alike who has to pretend to be the president in some kind of emergency.  Kline throws out the first pitch to Tackett in one scene.

I told Elrod that Jeff Tackett should have gotten the best supporting actor award for being in "Dave" because I actually believed he was a major league catcher.  Well Elrod thought this was hilarious and said, "Wait a minute."  Then he went and got Tackett to come over and said, "Tell him what you just told me."

I didn't have the heart to repeat my joke to Tackett.  He barely was a major league catcher and wasn't long for the bigs.  I just told him he was great in "Dave."  Elrod was mock-pissed and said, "Aw man, that's not what you said before," laughing the whole time.

Elrod was a real good guy.

[Redskins Rick]

Rick Dempsey.

4 guys were attending a conference in Albuquerque, NM. We wore our Orioles hat and one free evening we hit the AAA Dukes.

Dempsey was managing that team at the time and during the 7th inning, we had decent seats several rows behind their dugout, we yelled at Rick, he gave a curtsy wave.

We pointed at our hats, he broke out into a big huge grin and waved us down to the rails, and he shook our hands, and asked us where we was from.

It was pretty cool.