This spring, the city of Baltimore and diehard Orioles fans throughout Maryland proudly welcomed America’s pastime back to one of baseball’s most iconic and revered ballparks, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
With the 34th season of Oriole Park’s historic existence now underway, award-winning author and journalist Louis Berney takes us back to the mid-’80s when the future of Baltimore sports was in serious doubt. The Colts had left town 1984. The basketball Bullets had already pulled up stakes for D.C. in 1973. The Orioles under the ownership of Edward Bennett Williams had been a flight risk since he took over in 1979. And beloved Memorial Stadium was woefully out of season.
It was a time for vision, leadership and action. From here, Berney meticulously chronicles the intense collaboration between state officials and Orioles ownership that not only rejuvenated baseball in the region but created a new standard for every new ballpark in America. Below is an excerpt from Berney’s account of how the vision of Oriole Park at Camden Yards became a reality, from start to finish.
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Groundbreaking for Camden Yards was held on June 28, 1989. Gov. William Donald Schaefer, along with the Stadium Authority’s first chairman, Herb Belgrad, participated in the official ceremony. A wrecking ball, painted as a baseball, was used to get things rolling. A little less than three years later, the ballpark opened its gates to the Orioles and their fans.
The grand day, the launching of Camden Yards for Major League Baseball, the inauguration of the new park that helped keep the Orioles in Baltimore, came on April 6, 1992. It was a momentous day for the city and the state and its citizens, especially its baseball fans. And it was particularly significant for some of the people who played essential roles in making Camden Yards become a reality.
With the paint still wet on the new park, Bruce Hoffman, who became executive director of the MSA, received a call from the state police alerting him that Gov. Schaefer was arriving. Hoffman went downstairs to greet Schaefer and escort him up the elevator to a gleaming new sky box between the lower and upper decks. Schaefer sat in one of the seats in front of the sky box and surveyed the new structure, its steel girders and brick facade, the impeccably mowed green grass, the seats filling with tens of thousands of people.
“He had tears, running down his eyes,” Hoffman said. “He was so moved by that view. That made my day. I was as happy as I could be to see him that happy.”
Camden Yards also furthered Schaefer’s goal of keeping Baltimore a major league metropolis, a city that could make its citizens proud and that could win admiration from afar.
“In the end, the greatest gift William Donald Schaefer gave to Baltimore was a method of being optimistic about Baltimore’s future in the world,” Mark Wasserman, Schaefer’s senior aide, said.
It was also a very meaningful and emotional day for the unflappable chairman of the MSA, culminating four years of work, energy and single-minded devotion to a major civic project.
“Walking to the stadium that day, I was by myself, meeting my wife at the stadium,” Belgrad recalled. “I was overwhelmed, because I realized that I was going to the opening of the stadium, and I thought about what had gone before it. It was just a feeling of great satisfaction. It all caught up with me. I realized what I had accomplished.”
About the author: Louis Berney, who grew up in Baltimore, is a journalist who has reported from more than half the states and a dozen countries. He has written a book on the Orioles and edited a publication on 401(k) plans. He also served as press secretary to a governor of Vermont and a congresswoman from San Diego. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles