About Me
I’m Ben and this is my blog. Anyway, 2008 makes this the third season that I’ve done this blog. I like the Orioles and I like writing, so after a friend told me I should do this, I decided to and here we are.
I live in South Carolina and I have my entire life. That might make you ask “Why you like the Orioles? The Braves are an hour and a half away and they’ve been a better team for awhile now.”
That’s true and I do have a soft spot for the Braves. I get down there a couple times a year since that’s the closest MLB ballpark around. But when I was a kid in the mid-80’s, my Dad got me an O’s hat with the cartoon bird. Me, being a fan of cartoons, loved the logo and thus liked the Orioles from there on out. Then I found out about Cal Ripken, Jr and haven’t turned back since. Its been a tough decade, but for first time since the Pat Gillick/Davey Johnson days, I feel like this team is finally heading in the right direction.
I’ve stuck with the team for this long, so there’s no giving up on them at this point.
I’m a fan of baseball in general. Its, without question, the greatest time of the year when the season starts. Games on everyday. Minor league games. Guys you’ve never heard of coming out of nowhere and becoming stars. Guys you’ve never heard of coming out of nowhere and having an amazing game or three and then vanishing into statistics. Teams having amazing seasons (maybe the 2008 O’s?) and teams that were supposed to have amazing seasons but tank. Pitchers duels. Slugfests. Managers get tossed. No hitters. Beautiful Ballparks…baseball has it all and its awesome.
Thanks for checking out the blog and keep on stopping by. Any fan of the Orioles are a fan of mine. If you have any comments, questions, want to get an ad, or just want to talk a little baseball feel free to email me at Oriolecentral at yahoo.com.
There’s clearly been a great outpouring of affection over the past two days for local legend Wild Bill Hagy. We’ve had new visitors to our blog (Roar from 34) who appreciate that we, and others, are remembering Hagy. There’s no guarantee that the Orioles will properly recognize Hagy, so I’m proposing that the Birds blogging community get together to organize an unofficial “Wild Bill Hagy Day” at Camden Yards. We all know that Wild Bill wasn’t a Camden Yards type guy. Neverthless, I think we should try and get the place good and rowdy in his memory.
I’m contacting O’s bloggers vy e-mail or directly through their sites. My thought is to order tickets as a group and then promote the gathering through all of our blogs. It’d be great to hold the event during the O’s final homestand against the Yankees, which also happens to be “Fan Appreciation Weekend.” And Hagy, being a loyal O’s fan, hated the Yankees most of all.
Do you think we could make one of those final three games “Wild Bill Appreciation Day”? I did a preliminary check on 30 tickets for the last game of the season and there were 30 available in the same Upper Reserve section. We could probably increase the number if we moved quickly.
Thoughts? Ideas? I’m sure we could get some local coverage of the event and make it even bigger than our dedicated circle of O’s fans. It’d be nice to have a grassroots baseball effort that celebrated the Orioles’ past rather than bemoan its present.