They’ll trot onto the field at Oriole Park on Saturday night, grayer and rounder and slower afoot than when they played. The crowd won’t care. To their fans, the aging 1983 Orioles are a team for the ages, one that 40 years ago took the town on a glory ride to its third (and most recent) world championship. That goal also beckons this year’s club, none of whose players were alive when their forebears won it all.
The Orioles of yore won 98 games, then dispatched the Chicago White Sox for the American League pennant. They lost the World Series opener to the Philadelphia Phillies, then took four straight before returning to Baltimore — by bus, no less — to be met by a joyous throng of 30,000 at Memorial Stadium.
“On the way back, every few minutes, [second baseman] Richie Dauer would stand up and scream, ‘Sixty thousand bucks!’ which was each player’s share,” said Scott McGregor, who pitched a 5-0 shutout in the Series finale. “Coming down I-95, on every overpass, there were people waving banners. And when we got home, it was crazy.”
Armed with bullhorns and cowbells, fans took to the streets, whooping and waving pennants. At the Inner Harbor, at Light and Pratt streets, revelers bottlenecked traffic, stopping cars to give drivers congratulatory hugs.
For the Orioles, it was a redemptive finish after losing the 1979 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates by blowing a 3-games-to-1 lead. Then, in 1982, they fell one game short of the playoffs, losing to the American League East champion Milwaukee Brewers on the final day of the season.
That afternoon, Cal Ripken, Jr. recalled, “Several of us just sat on the bench and watched Milwaukee celebrate. We thought, we’d come so close; where could we have made up one game? By the next spring, we were all on the same page. Our attitude was, don’t take any game for granted and just keep chugging.”
That band of brothers would go on to spawn broods of their own. Pitcher Mike Boddicker, who won Game 2 of the World Series, has 12 grandchildren, one more than right-hander Storm Davis, who won Game 4.
Time has claimed some and thrown others a curve. Gone are third baseman Todd Cruz, 1979 Cy Young Award winner Mike Flanagan and relief ace Sammy Stewart. Dauer and infielder Lenn Sakata have survived brain surgery. In April, Hall of Famer Jim Palmer fought off skin cancer. Closer Tippy Martinez has a new hip. And backup catcher John Stefero is set for knee surgery after the reunion.
“I’m walking around in pain now because, trust me, I’m not going to miss this [celebration],” said Stefero, a rookie in ‘83 who’d schooled at Mount Saint Joseph. “I want to be part of ‘us’ again.”
Did anyone not chip in that summer? The club was so even-keeled, no Oriole made the starting All-Star team, though both Ripken, a 22-year-old shortstop, and slugger Eddie Murray, who would finish one-two in AL Most Valuable Player voting, were named to the game as reserves, and Martinez made it as a pitcher.
“Our strength,” first baseman Murray would say, “is someone else doing it every day.”
In a September victory over New York, outfielder John Shelby gunned down two Yankees trying to score. Returning from a month off with a bum knee, outfielder Dan Ford slammed three home runs and added a bunt single. In two straight games down the stretch, Stefero’s base hits delivered walk-off wins. And in a 5-1 victory at Milwaukee to clinch the division, two fringe Orioles — catcher Joe Nolan and outfielder Jim Dwyer — each hit a home run.
They found novel ways to win. Against the Minnesota Twins, outfielder Al Bumbry plated two base runners with one sacrifice fly. The next day, the Orioles successfully laid down two straight sacrifice bunts. Once, Martinez set a major league record by picking three runners off first base in one inning.
Each man knew his role and did his job. In September, Martinez had pitched in six straight contests when, in mid-game, manager Joe Altobelli requested a seventh.
“Can you give me one inning?” Altobelli asked.
“I can’t even feel my arm,” the bullpen star replied. Nonetheless, Martinez — who’d had an appendectomy in July — took the mound.
“As I was warming up, Eddie [Murray] came over and said, ‘Where in the hell did you get that changeup?’ I said, ‘Eddie, that’s my fastball.’ He went back to first base and told the other infielders to back up.”
Martinez pitched a scoreless inning. The Orioles won the game.
“That year, you didn’t refuse the ball,” he recalled. “You did anything to help the team.”
Fans took note. Attendance swelled to 2 million for the first time. “Wild Bill” Hagy, the club’s scruffy but lovable poster boy, stood atop the dugout, posturing cheers to rev the crowd. Little rattled the players. In the clubhouse, before each home game, they gathered before the TV to watch “Wheel of Fortune” and pull a few pranks, like the time Stewart nailed Boddicker’s shower shoes to the ceiling.
There were hiccups: The Orioles weathered two seven-game losing streaks. Once, they failed to score for 20 consecutive innings. Injuries and bad judgment played havoc with the pitching staff: Flanagan, who won his first six decisions, tore knee ligaments and missed 2 1/2 months, several days fewer than Palmer (strained back, tendinitis). Martinez had his surgery. In July, Stewart was arrested and charged with drunken driving on the Baltimore Beltway. Still, the Orioles forged ahead.
Two midsummer trades proved key. They acquired Cruz, a deft-fielding third baseman, who debuted by hitting a three-run home run and a three-run double. At the August trade deadline, they traded for Tito Landrum, an outfielder whose 10th-inning home run against the West Division champion White Sox in Chicago clinched the AL flag. (There were only two divisions at the time.)
“Pinch me before I get out of here and make me believe it really happened,” Landrum said in the champagne-soaked clubhouse.
The World Series began with a 2-1 loss to the Phillies. Altobelli called the defeat “a disadvantage, only momentarily.” Game 2 hinged on the right arm of rookie Boddicker, an Iowa farm boy and 16-game winner whose nondescript fastball belied a team-high five shutouts and 14 strikeouts against the White Sox in his most recent start.
Forty years later, Boddicker remembers the tumult he felt before taking the field.
“The World Series was chaotic, with so many interviews, autographs to sign and all that stuff,” he said. “But as soon as I took the mound, it was like somebody let all the air out of me. What a relief. I thought, thank goodness I’m where I belong; I can just relax now and do my job.”
Boddicker spun a three-hitter and knocked in a run as the Orioles won, 4-1. Then they triumphed, 3-2, rallying to give Palmer the victory in relief — his last win in a stellar 19-year career.
Next up: Davis, a 13-game winner and the youngest Oriole. Phillies fans unloaded on the 21-year-old. Warming up in the bullpen, Davis’ ears burned. Still do.
“I’d not been introduced to some of the words that I heard, especially from the age [of those] they were coming from,” he said. ‘At one point, I actually stopped throwing. I thought, wow, these people are very intense.”
So was Davis. He pitched five innings, allowed three runs and earned the 5-4 win.
“I knew I didn’t want to suck, but not for my own sake,” he said. “I didn’t want to let my teammates down.”
His team one game from glory, McGregor, 29, took the stage. With 18 victories, he was the Orioles’ linchpin. But the night before, McGregor found himself harking back to 1979, when the Orioles also led the Series, 3 games to 1, then stumbled. Deja vu?
“I couldn’t sleep,” McGregor recalled. “I was tossing and turning and thinking, ‘No way is that going to happen again.’ Finally, I got my brain in the right place. I told myself, ‘Give it your best shot and don’t panic.’ All I wanted was to keep us close.”
McGregor pitched a shutout, Murray hit two prodigious home runs and catcher Rick Dempsey hit one. When Ripken squeezed a soft line drive for the final out, McGregor pumped his fist. For the first time since 1970, the Orioles were world champs.
True to form, the MVP of the Series was an Everyman. Dempsey, who hit .231 that year, finished the Fall Classic batting .385 with five extra-base hits, a record for a five-game Series.
“I’m the only guy who ever won [the award] while being pinch-hit for twice [in the Series]” Dempsey quipped afterward.
At noon the next day, Baltimore paraded the Orioles through town for 100,000 screaming followers as ticker tape and confetti rained down on the caravan of antique cars carrying the players. Signs trumpeted, “Ate ‘Em Alive In 5″ and “We Made Philly Look Silly.” Fans with orange hair stood out in the crowd. Outside the Walters Art Gallery, someone placed an Orioles cap on the head of the statue of the museum’s founder.
At City Hall Plaza, Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson introduced each player as well as Altobelli, the laissez-faire skipper who’d replaced Earl Weaver and whom owner Edward Bennett Williams privately called “Cement Head.” The Orioles knew better; the smartest thing their rookie manager had done, they said, was to not change a thing.
“I just tried to keep the club pointed in the same direction it has been going for the last 25 years,” Altobelli said that October.
“Joe let the players play,” Boddicker recalled. “We knew what to do. Toward the end of a game, pinch hitters like Benny Ayala and Jim Dwyer would grab a bat before they were even asked; they knew their jobs.
“We were family. That’s what I like about [the current] Orioles team. You see them laughing; they genuinely like each other. They believe in themselves and they’re having fun, like us. And ours was a magical year.”
More than one of those Orioles wondered whether 2023 might be the same.
Orioles 40th anniversary celebration
In a pregame event at Camden Yards on Saturday, just before the 7:05 p.m. game against the New York Mets, the Orioles will mark the 40th anniversary of the team’s 1983 World Series title. The ceremony will feature more than 20 returning players from the 1983 championship team, including Orioles legends and National Baseball Hall of Famers Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken Jr. Fans should be seated by 6:20 p.m.
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