When the Crowd Didn't Roar by Kevin Cowherd

Author:Kevin Cowherd [Cowherd, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO003030 Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History, SOC031000 Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska

16

Out beyond the left-field wall, so far away they appear to be in another zip code, a loud contingent of Orioles fans is on hand.

That they would show up here in their orange and black gear, faces pressed through the wrought-iron railings to get even a few inches closer to the action, surprises absolutely no one who pays attention to this franchise.

For fourteen dreary seasons, from 1998 through 2011, Orioles fans were forced to watch some of the most horrid big-league baseball on the planet, played by some of the most inept teams imaginable, led by a succession of frustrated, overwhelmed, and, in many cases, spectacularly incompetent managers.

Those were the fourteen losing seasons that spawned talk of a legendary “Lost Generation of Orioles fans,” which proved to be more myth than reality. Because still the fans came out. Maybe not in quite the same numbers as before. But there was no way that a majority of the base, as hard-core and devoted as any in the game, would turn its back on this team.

Yet not until after Buck Showalter—to many, the living incarnation of the sainted Earl Weaver, the best manager in franchise history—was hired in 2010 and Dan Duquette came aboard the following year did the losing stop. Then attendance at Camden Yards spiked even higher and the love affair between a city and its baseball team only deepened.

So they gather now behind the locked gates, peering past the bullpen picnic grove and the larger-than-life bronze sculptures of Orioles legends Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., and the feisty Weaver.

The view isn’t great. In fact it’s actually pretty bad, narrow and distorted, as if the knot of fans has been struck with a collective case of macular degeneration. But that’s not what this is about for these fans.

What this is about is an unwavering allegiance to a ballclub and the general mentality of Baltimore sports fans, who have a collective chip on their shoulder the size of a sequoia.

You won’t open the gates and let us in? they seem to be saying. Too bad. We’re showing up anyway. Sure, the whole country—hell, the whole the world—knows about the riots. And it’s making the city look like crap again. But we’ll be damned if it looks like nobody showed up to support our ballclub while all this was going on.

At the end of the first inning there are maybe four dozen spectators here; their numbers will swell and ebb as the game goes on.

Some were here for batting practice; many trickled in later. Following Baltimore tradition they yell, “O!” at the precise moment during the national anthem: “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?”

You do that in this town because it’s practically required by statute. Because if you don’t yell it at the top of your lungs you are no true fan of the Orioles and should probably be beaten with sticks.

“LET US IN!” someone cries now. But given all that has happened in this broken city over the past three days, it sounds more like a plaintive wail than a demand.

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