The National Pastime takes on an added dimension when your team is doing well, becoming a soul-massaging diversion from the ubiquitous bad news of the day. The Orioles’ recent success has shaken loose memories of glory days gone by — and spurred hope for the future.

Sitting with my grandkids on a muggy summer day, I recall going to my first game, in 1953, a minor-league affair in the old one-level Municipal Stadium on 33rd Street. I had just turned 10. The Orioles were playing birds of a different feather, the Rochester Red Wings. I felt a mild burst of anticipation as I walked up the gray concrete ramp, and a slight sense of wonderment at the sudden sight of a vividly emerald-green field and a rickety old scoreboard.

At that age, I certainly wasn’t aware that Baltimore had been a minor-league powerhouse in the 19th century, both in the American Association and later the National League, which won championships in three consecutive seasons (1894 to 1896). Nor was I conscious of the fact that, for the first half of the 20th century, Baltimore was strictly a minor-league town. But in 1954 Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro and other civic leaders, who had longed for a modicum of national recognition, persuaded Bill Veeck, then owner of the hapless St. Louis Browns, to move his team here. Veeck was hardly a reluctant suitor, anxious to escape the crosstown shadow of the decidedly more successful Cardinals.

A brand-new upper deck was quickly added to Baltimore’s ramshackle Municipal Stadium, which was renamed Memorial Stadium in honor of all fallen American servicemen. The renovations were completed just in time for Opening Day in 1954: Thursday, April 15th.

It was an especially momentous occasion, aided in no small measure by 70 degree weather and abundant sunshine. Schools were closed, and thousands of Baltimoreans young and old jammed city streets for a 90-minute parade up Charles Street from downtown. The fledgling Birds’ sat atop old-fashioned floats as they rode to their new home, all along the way signing autographs, handing out photographs and tossing Styrofoam balls to the jubilant crowd.

The game started soon afterward, before a full house of 46,000 — about the same number of people who packed Camden Yards last weekend.

The Opening Day starters were mostly journeymen: Bob Turley (pitching), Clint Courtney (catching), Eddie Waitkus (first base), Bobby Young (second base), Vern Stephens (third base), Billy Hunter (shortstop), Gil Coan (center field), Sam Mele (left field), Vic Wirtz (right field). The roster also included the team’s first Black player, a left-handed pitcher named Jehosie Heard.

In the third inning Courtney, the Orioles’ squat, stocky and bespectacled catcher, hit the first home run in modern team history, a solo shot in the third inning. And the Orioles went on to beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-1, thereby ending the day in a tie for first place in the American League. They ended the season in last, though, winning 54 games and losing 100.

But the most memorable highlight that year had to be the Orioles’ midseason 10-0 shellacking of the long-reviled Yankees. Being born in Baltimore meant that you disdained the so-called Bronx Bombers, that somehow you’d been tutored in utero about how New York had stolen the old minor-league champion teams of the late 19th century and renamed them the Yankees — as evil a deed back then as when Robert Irsay absconded with the beloved Colts football franchise 30 years later in 1984.

There were so many moments over the years: Jim Palmer’s no-hitter; Gus Triandos trying to catch Hoyt Wilhelm’s magical-butterfly knuckleballs with a comically oversized mitt; or Wilhelm himself dodging a swarm of mosquitoes in the middle of a muggy summer night game. I listened to iconic announcer Chuck Thompson’s velvety voice calling Jim Gentile’s two bases-loaded home runs in consecutive innings in May of 1961 and saw Frank Robinson become the first and only player ever to hit a home run completely out of Memorial Stadium, some 540 feet, in May of 1966 (the exact spot soon marked by an orange and black flag reading “HERE”). I also witnessed that year’s “Baby Birds” demolish Dodger aces Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale on their way to winning four straight games of the 1966 World Series and happily gawked at Brooks Robinson creating a one-man defensive highlight reel on his way to winning the MVP award during the 1970 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

A few months ago I’d idly promised my grandkids that I’d take all of them to the World Series if the Orioles made it there this year. Fat chance, I thought back then, what with a flock of no-name new Baby Birds: Cano and Cowser, Mateo and Mullins and Mountcastle, Hays and Henderson, Rutchman and Santander.

But here we are in first place, of all places. If we do make the series, I’ll happily buy the best seats I can get, and all the refreshments they want.

Kenneth Lasson (klasson@ubalt.edu) is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Baltimore.

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