On the day Brooks Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, it felt like the emotional outpouring of a kind of extended family.
On one side of this massive crowd in Cooperstown, New York, there was Mayor William Donald Schaefer and Baltimore County Executive Don Hutchinson leading cheers, and over there on the other side, a cab driver out of Dundalk named “Wild Bill” Hagy was contorting his body to read something resembling “ORIOLES” as thousands hollered back at him.
“And then I count another blessing,” Brooks Robinson told the big gathering between cheers. “That is Baltimore. That is Baltimore. .… I share this day with my adopted home town. … Baltimore, thank you, I love you all.”
Was there ever a more heartfelt connection between a ballplayer and town as Brooksie and Baltimore? Or a nicer way of saying it than Brooks’ line when they unveiled one of the statues of him downtown: “I don’t think of you as my fans. I think of you as my friends.”
And was there ever a greater heartache over a ballplayer than there was yesterday when the awful news broke that Robinson, at 86, had died?
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See Also: Orioles Legend Brooks Robinson Dies At 86
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles