Baltimore fans don’t need a reminder about how long it’s been since the All-Star Game was played in Baltimore, but if MLB needed a hint it got a big one in the best possible way on July 10.
It came before, during and after the Home Run Derby, the one-time sideshow that’s become a signature event of All-Star week. They’ve been staging this spectacle for almost four decades, ever since 1985, and as ESPN reminded us over and over, none is remembered like the one 30 years ago at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, when Ken Griffey Jr. launched a drive that hit the warehouse beyond right field.
One of the participants in that still historic event remembers the impact it had then — and can only imagine what it would be like if MLB ever decides to return. Tom Brown was a coach in the Orioles’ minor league system when he served as the pitcher for Griffey and Juan Gonzalez, the two finalists in the contest that year.
“It was incredible,” Brown recalled via phone the day after this year’s Home Run Derby. “What an experience to be throwing to those two guys, especially with all the excitement of the fans and anticipation about hitting the warehouse. That’s what all the talk was about then, wondering who might do it. At the time I don’t think anybody doubted it was only a matter of time.”
As a comparison, some were saying something similar back in 1966, when Frank Robinson hit a ball completely out of Memorial Stadium, then in its 13th season as a big league park. When the Orioles left 25 years later, it was still a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Griffey’s warehouse wallop came during Oriole Park’s second year of existence. Thirty years later, nobody has been able to duplicate that experience.
“All these years later can you imagine what it would be like to have [the Home Run Derby] there again?” asked Brown, who knew that experience but can only wonder what might be ahead.
He has a lot of company, and yeah there probably are a few who can imagine what the feeling might be like. What they can’t seem to imagine is when MLB will get over the MASN hang-up and get around to putting OPACY in the rotation. Before this year, the last time Seattle had the “midsummer classic” was 2001, when Cal Ripken Jr. was the MVP in the final All-Star Game of his Hall of Fame career — eight years after the Camden Yards experience.
Back then the Home Run Derby was still a novelty, but Camden Yards was the perfect setting. In addition to the mystique of the warehouse, the second deck club level in leftfield posed a stiff challenge of its own. Before Griffey hit his historic shot off, Gonzalez christened that area in left-center field. It took awhile for the unlikeliest candidate of all, ex-Oriole then Angel Rex Hudler, became the first to reach that level in a regular-season game — and it still has been done only a handful of times.
But the warehouse remains untouched since Griffey’s blast July 12, 1993, much to the surprise of Brown, and most other observers.
“I don’t think anybody doubted that it would be hit,” said Brown, who still today vividly remembers the atmosphere of 30 years ago.
“They had a different format then,” he said, “and we had to wait until after each ball left the park before throwing another pitch. It made it tough getting into a rhythm.”
When the announcement came that Junior had hit the warehouse, Brown remembers the vocal explosion of the fans. “It was so much fun to be part of that, a great experience,” he noted.
Brown was well-known as a strike-throwing machine by Orioles hitters and it was Ripken who recommended him to both Griffey and Gonzalez.
“That was a nice compliment,” said Brown, whose major league career consisted of a two-week stint with the Mariners in 1978, “but it was kind of like the end of my career — throwing home runs, except I was getting paid to do it.”
He did such a good job that he made sure to get some personal memorabilia. He bought a Camden Yards All-Star jacket that both players signed, along with individually signed balls. The jacket has never been worn, except for a picture pose on the 30th anniversary of a highlight from a career in baseball that spanned more than half a century.
His playing career in the big leagues lasted only those two weeks, but even though he never made it back, Brown had an impactful career as a coach at every level of the minor leagues. He was highly regarded as a quietly effective pitching coach with a fatherly figure reputation who impacted many future big leaguers, including Ben McDonald, the Orioles’ No. 1 draft choice in 1989.
There are a lot of fond memories in Tom Brown’s memory bank — including the time throwing home run pitches was a good thing.
Jim Henneman can be reached at JimH@pressboxonline.com
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Tom Brown