I truly believe we are the best fanbase in all of baseball

[NashLumber]

3 minutes ago, Chelsea_Phil said:

Make that 7 World Series !!!  Yes, I still have nightmares of  Ron Swoboda’s diving catch.

A friend of mine is Swoboda's first cousin! And he went to my mother in law's church in NOLA in the 90s or so. 

The Swoboda cousin is a Baltimore native and lifetime O's fan. I asked if he still pulled for the O's that Series and he replied he had to pull for his cousin. I don't think I could do that! I could pull for a cousin to do well, but I'd have to stick with my team. 

[DrinkinWithFermi]

20 minutes ago, RarityFlaherty said:

Definitely jealous of all you older guys who have seen the orioles win a World Series.

IKTF bro, I was born less than a week after the '83 WS ended, so my beloved Birds have never even played a WS game in my lifetime as my 40th birthday is starting to peek at me over the horizon.

>mfw

[RZNJ]

Of all of the great seasons (there were some) I remember 1982 the best.   It was Palmer's last hurrah.   He was injured, came back and won about 16 games.  The Orioles were pretty far out and kept gaining on the Brewers.   4 games out with 4 games to play head to head.  The O's sweep a DH on Friday and then win on Saturday.   The Sunday game would have been one of the great end of season comebacks in modern times.   Palmer facing Don Sutton.   A great matchup.   What happens?   Palmer gets bombed!  The season is over.  Earl Weaver's last season.  The team gets blown out and gets a long standing ovation after the game.   I think that was one, if not, the best memory of mine as an Oriole fan, although watching the final game of the 1983 Series is right there and the whole 1983 postseason.  Tito Landrum!  Mike Boddicker!   Eddie and Cal!

[now]

17 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I will say I didn't properly appreciate '83 when it happened.  As a then Orioles/Redskins fan I just figured that the good times were going to keep rolling. 

32 minutes ago, Too Tall said:

I was 26 in 1966 (you can do the math) - that was REAL excitement!!!!!!!!!! Come close since then but that was the first and best.

What '66 and '83 had in common was redemption from a few years of frustrating near misses. Heck, even almost unseating the Yankees in 1960 with the first of those implausible Why Not seasons of Baby Birds (a rotation hardly of shaving age), and another near miss in '64 (Brooks MVP) as well as '65. Same in '83, after the '82 heartbreaker, a talented squad in the split season of '81, a 100-win second-place finish in '80, the Pittsburgh debacle in '79, and losing out to Reggie-NY in '77 and '78. That context is what made those Series wins so special, so well deserved.

[Gurgi]

3 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Of all of the great seasons (there were some) I remember 1982 the best.   It was Palmer's last hurrah.   He was injured, came back and won about 16 games.  The Orioles were pretty far out and kept gaining on the Brewers.   4 games out with 4 games to play head to head.  The O's sweep a DH on Friday and then win on Saturday.   The Sunday game would have been one of the great end of season comebacks in modern times.   Palmer facing Don Sutton.   A great matchup.   What happens?   Palmer gets bombed!  The season is over.  Earl Weaver's last season.  The team gets blown out and gets a long standing ovation after the game.   I think that was one, if not, the best memory of mine as an Oriole fan, although watching the final game of the 1983 Series is right there and the whole 1983 postseason.  Tito Landrum!  Mike Boddicker!   Eddie and Cal!

I was there in the upper deck for the last game of 82.  Never will forget that day.   

[emmett16]

Man, Y'all are lucky!  I was 3 in '83 and have no recollection of that season.  My dad is still mad at me for having to go to the bathroom and causing him to miss Tippy Martinez picking off 3 base-runners in an inning.  All I have to go on are the "Ed-die" cheers from Memorial Stadium, Cal running around the bases at Camden, and Delmon young making the stadium shake.  I can't even fathom what it would be like to see the O's in the WS let alone win.  It would feel like the fabric of the universe had been ripped and we were stepping into an alternate reality.  

Regarding the OP - I'd say we are upper mid pack when it comes to fans.  I've had a chance to visit a lot of stadiums and there are some really great baseball towns out there: Boston (hate them to a fault but have to tip the cap to the fans support), New York (see Boston), Toronto (see Boston & New York), Milwaukee, Chicago, Minnesota, and St. Louis (best in my opinion).  

Edited August 5, 2022 by emmett16

[Number5]

1 hour ago, Too Tall said:

I was 26 in 1966 (you can do the math) - that was REAL excitement!!!!!!!!!! Come close since then but that was the first and best.

[emmett16]

1 minute ago, Number5 said:

I really wish I could have seen Brooks play live!  Did he really have a 48'' vertical as it appears in this photo? lol 

[Frobby]

21 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Of all of the great seasons (there were some) I remember 1982 the best.   It was Palmer's last hurrah.   He was injured, came back and won about 16 games.  The Orioles were pretty far out and kept gaining on the Brewers.   4 games out with 4 games to play head to head.  The O's sweep a DH on Friday and then win on Saturday.   The Sunday game would have been one of the great end of season comebacks in modern times.   Palmer facing Don Sutton.   A great matchup.   What happens?   Palmer gets bombed!  The season is over.  Earl Weaver's last season.  The team gets blown out and gets a long standing ovation after the game.   I think that was one, if not, the best memory of mine as an Oriole fan, although watching the final game of the 1983 Series is right there and the whole 1983 postseason.  Tito Landrum!  Mike Boddicker!   Eddie and Cal!

That was the year I graduated law school, and after taking the bar exam I went on an 8 week trip with a buddy of mine (also an Orioles fan) to Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.   When I left on the trip the O’s were pretty far out of it.  It was very hard to get baseball news in those countries; usually the best we could do was find an International Herald Tribune that, by the time it reached these far-off places, had news of games from 4-5 days before.  But we were able to see that slowly, surely, the O’s were climbing back in it.  On the last leg of our trip, a week in Tahiti, we found out that the O’s were within 3-4 games of the Brewers and finishing their season by playing them.  We decided to cut our Tahiti trip short by 2-3 days and fly to the West Coast in time for the final game, not knowing if it would be relevant or not.  So we get to LA late at night and find that the O’s swept a doubleheader and it’s all coming down to the final day, just as we hoped.  I crashed at a friend’s house, and at game time, turn on Game of the Week, only to find that they’re broadcasting a Dodgers-Giants game out there!   So, I didn’t get to see the final game I’d left Tahiti and flown thousands of miles to see!   But maybe that was a blessing considering how the game went.  They did break into the Dodgers-Giants game to show the postgame scene at Memorial Stadium, which was goose-bump raising.  But I was still pretty resentful.  

[Number5]

7 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

I really wish I could have seen Brooks play live!  Did he really have a 48'' vertical as it appears in this photo? lol 

Adrenaline.    

This was probably the happiest sports-fan moment of my life.

[NashLumber]

52 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

I really wish I could have seen Brooks play live!  Did he really have a 48'' vertical as it appears in this photo? lol 

Brooks was good enough at basketball to be recruited to play at Arkansas if memory serves. And even Mark Belanger had to weigh between a college basketball scholarship to UConn and pro baseball. 

 

[Too Tall]

I played industrial league basketball in the 60's on the Eastern Shore. Winter of '67, we played the Orioles basketball team (that was how some of them staid in shape then) in Salisbury for charity. I can tell you first hand, all those guys were good at b-ball too. Had a party afterwards. Man, the memories from that time. Till '69 of course.

[SteveA]

2 hours ago, NashLumber said:

Brooks was good enough at basketball to be recruited to play at Arkansas if memory serves. And even Mark Belanger had to weigh between a college basketball scholarship to UConn and pro baseball. 

 

Mike Flanagan actually played D1 college basketball, for UMass.  His teammate was a guy named Julius Erving.

[survivedc]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Those 2012-16 teams were fun, but you could just tell that window was going to shut, as Duquette kept making short term moves and the team made several incorrect choices about who to lock up or not.   And, the factions in the organization were problematic.  Now it seems like everyone is singing from the same sheet of music, the front office has been patient and the stage is set for a longer and more successful run.   Really, the only disadvantage I see compared to 2012-16 is that the AL East is stronger now.   But, with the more balanced schedule starting next year, that won’t be as big an issue as it could have been.  

By the end sure but between 2012-14 it was a good young team with some exciting young prospects waiting in the wings. It wasn’t really until after the 2014 season that the short term moves started to look questionable. Those 3 seasons were fantastic.

[JR Oriole]

I agree that after the 2014 season, it really changed.  They let Nelson Cruz, Nick Markakis, and Andrew Miller all walk.  And they signed Travis Snyder.  An ALCS team that lost to the Royals by a grand total of 6 runs and was missing Machado, Wieters, and Davis for that entire series was given no chance to get better in the offseason. Compare this to the 1995 offseason, when we added Roberto Alomar to a very stacked but underachieving team and immediately got better.

My favorite Orioles teams of the last several decades were the 1989 and 2012 teams.  Just so many great memories from those seasons.  Had they won titles in 1997 and 2014, those teams would have vaulted to the top of the list.  I really felt those were our years to win it all.