Greenbook: A Local Guide to Chesapeake Living -Issue 11 | Page 64

FINAL THOUGHTS
For my husband, the promise of summer comes when he can wash his car in the driveway
without risking frostbite. For me, it's the rev and hum of a far away lawnmower.
F
Baltimore Memorial Stadium Abandoned circa 2000.
or our family, the dream of humid days, spice
crusted crabs and steamed Silver Queen that's
worth burning your fingers for is marked by
Opening Day at Camden Yards. If we can, we
pull the kids out of school and take them to the
game. It’s called Orange Flu. It’s contagious you
know.“So I’ve got that going for me, which is
nice,” concludes Fackler. Money isn’t everything.
When I was a school-aged girl, my father drove me from
our home in Howard County into Baltimore for Orioles
games at Memorial Stadium. I scanned the potholed streets
for parking. Eventually we would find a boy perched on a
metal folding chair, sitting by a rubber orange cone in front
of his row house. Dad would crank down his window and
cheerfully hand the boy five bucks. Placing his right arm on
the back of the bench seat we shared, straining his gaze over
his right shoulder, with an easy swing of the wheel he would
masterfully glide the Buick into the spot.
Along our walk to the stadium, Dad would buy a bag of
peanuts, which back then cost a dollar. He would marvel at
what a great deal he was getting. “It’s three times that in the
stadium!”
Once, when I was six years old, Dad took me to a post-
season game. The Colts had not yet cowardly deserted us on
their Mayflower coach, so the O’s diamond shared the same
field with a painted gridiron. The game was played on an of-
ficial diamond with a 50-yard line running right through it.
Dad and I sat way up in the concrete and steel nosebleeds,
bundled under scratchy wool stadium blankets. We shared a
Thermos of scalding cocoa we brought from home.
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GREENBOOK | SUMMER 2017
Copyright, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, MD-1111-64
When Memorial Stadium was demolished in 2001, the
new stadium was located right downtown. Camden Yards was
built as a major baseball tourist attraction. It had a sort of
Disneyland feel compared to The Grey Lady. There were res-
taurants, a shopping promenade, and teakwood bars staffed
by friendly bartenders. Curlicued emblems representing ear-
ly Baltimore Baseball adorned the end of each row of seats.
There were crabcakes!
Dad purchased a season package of 2 seats about 10 rows
behind home plate. Tim Russert sat right behind us. We were
in Clancy’s section. Fancy Clancy, the beer man who worked
the stadium for over forty years and says opening day is like
Christmas for him. NPR once ran a national feature on the
way Fancy Clancy sold beer during games, which is into a cup,
or even two, behind his back. He’s since become a larger than
life character with spotlights in major papers and on ESPN.
We were in the stadium on that mysterious night when
all the lights went out. Everyone speculated that Cal Ripken
was unable to start that night, and worried that his working-
man’s streak would be broken. The lights were never fully
operational that night, even though other lights in the city
worked just fine.
Our seats at Camden Yards were a disarming place for
Dad and I to visit. Behind home plate, concerns of pending
adulthood were discussed in simulcast with keeping stats and
mechanically passing hot dogs down the row. Should I take
the SATs again? Should I change majors? Explain the Roth
IRA. I’m worried about... These topics all seemed appropriate
at the ballpark, when discussed between sips of a draft beer in
a clear plastic cup, surrounded by fellow Baltimoreans.