September 1, 1979: Arrest at Orioles game spurs upgrades for fans with disabilities

The Minnesota Twins’ defeat of the Baltimore Orioles on September 1, 1979, didn’t make much difference to either team in the long run. The Orioles, leading the American League East Division by eight games, ended the season with the same lead and went to the World Series. The Twins, two games out of first place in the AL West, lost the next day and never got as close again. They finished the season in fourth place.

But something that happened off the field that night at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium had an impact that endures in public places throughout the city.

Before the game, Baltimore police arrested a 22-year-old fan named Thomas Turner for refusing to move his wheelchair off a grandstand ramp in Memorial Stadium’s Section 9.1 Turner said the stadium’s wheelchair seating areas were either too far from the action or required advance booking, so he’d decided to sit near friends instead. But team officials and police said Turner’s chair was blocking the ramp, creating a fire hazard. He was arrested on a charge of failing to obey a proper authority.2 The arrest touched off events—to be continued later in this story—that led to improved services for people with disabilities, at Memorial Stadium and elsewhere.3

But first, the story of the game that Turner didn’t get to see.

Earl Weaver’s Orioles, a consistently competitive team throughout the 1970s, moved into first place on May 18. Except for one day in early June, they had led ever since.4 They entered August with a 7½-game lead, saw it whittled down to 4 games in midmonth, then built it back to 8 by month’s end.5

The Orioles were in the midst of an eight-game home-and-home series with the Twins. The Orioles had taken three of four games at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium and had split the first two at Memorial Stadium. Team leaders included Ken Singleton, fourth in the AL in home runs with 32, and Mike Flanagan, leading the league in wins with 19.

Righty Jim Palmer, in his 14th season in the majors, got the start for Baltimore.6 The three-time AL Cy Young Award and AL Pitcher of the Year Award winner brought an 8-4 record and a 3.04 ERA into the game. Palmer had missed most of July and the first half of August with an elbow injury but was beginning to return to form.7 In the second game of an August 27 doubleheader, he’d come close to a complete game against the Twins, needing last-out relief help from Tippy Martinez to close out a 5-1 win.

Gene Mauch’s Twins, meanwhile, had improved from their 73-89 finish in 1978. They’d spent much of May in first place in the AL West, then generally lingered between two and five games out of first since then.8 Despite playing only .500 ball in July and August with a combined 30-30 record, the Twins entered September still in the hunt, trailing the California Angels and Kansas City Royals near the top of their division. Notable players included third baseman John Castino, on his way to sharing the AL Rookie of the Year award with Toronto’s Alfredo Griffin, and two veteran pitchers. Starter Jerry Koosman was third in the AL with 17 wins, while reliever Mike Marshall was leading the league in appearances (79), games finished (76), and saves (28).

Palmer’s opponent was righty Paul Hartzell, a Lehigh University product who came to the Twins in the offseason trade that sent Rod Carew to California.9 Hartzell was suffering from arm pain that cut his career short. He’d missed much of August and brought a 5-7 record and a 4.96 ERA into the game.10 Hartzell had beaten Baltimore 3-1 on June 5, with Marshall earning a save. That game dropped the Orioles into second place for a day by four one-hundredths of a percentage point behind Boston, the only day after May 18 that Baltimore had surrendered first place to another team.

Turner, a US Army veteran who had been injured in a car accident in November 1978, was one of 36,146 fans who came to Memorial Stadium that Saturday night.11 As he was being booked at a police station, the game got off to a quiet start. Both teams wasted two-out doubles—Baltimore’s by Singleton in the first inning, Minnesota’s by Ron Jackson in the second.

The Orioles assembled the game’s first run in the second, starting with a leadoff single by designated hitter Pat Kelly. Two outs later, Kelly stole second base, then scored on Billy Smith’s single to right field.12

Baltimore lost its biggest offensive weapon in the bottom of the third. After Al Bumbry flied out and Mark Belanger struck out, Singleton took offense to a pair of inside pitches from Hartzell, the second one at head level. He charged the mound as both benches emptied.13 Plate umpire Don Denkinger ejected Singleton.14 He was replaced at the plate and in right field by 23-year-old Mark Corey, making his major-league debut after hitting .249 with 10 homers and 30 RBIs in 92 games at Triple-A Rochester. Corey grounded to second baseman Rob Wilfong.

The score remained 1-0 until the fifth, when Minnesota’s Hosken Powell hit a one-out double to left field. After Dave Edwards struck out, designated hitter Danny Goodwin hit another double to left to score Powell. Butch Wynegar’s single past second baseman Smith and into right field brought home Goodwin for a 2-1 lead.15 Baltimore wasted singles by Gary Roenicke and Bumbry in the fifth and sixth innings; in the sixth, Corey grounded into an inning-ending around-the-horn double play.

Minnesota added a run in the seventh on Edwards’ leadoff homer, his eighth blast of the season, making the score 3-1. The extra run proved invaluable for the Twins, as Baltimore’s Doug DeCinces hit his 11th homer in the bottom half to cut the lead to 3-2.

Marshall replaced Hartzell to start the eighth and the Orioles rallied, as Weaver began to make strategic substitutions.

With one out, John Lowenstein batted for Rick Dempsey and singled to center field. Wayne Krenchicki, in his eighth major-league game, ran for Lowenstein. Shortstop Roy Smalley’s bobble of Bumbry’s grounder put Orioles on first and second.16 Veteran pinch-hit specialist17 Terry Crowley, batting for Belanger, was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Kiko Garcia ran for Crowley.

If not for his ejection, the switch-hitting Singleton would have batted next. Two days earlier, he had driven in the game-winning runs off Marshall in a 5-4 Baltimore win.18 Instead, Bob Molinaro pinch-hit for Corey. Molinaro had played in three previous major-league seasons but was making his first big-league appearance of 1979, having been picked up on waivers from the Chicago White Sox two days before. Like Lowenstein and Crowley, he was a left-handed hitter against the righty Marshall. Here, Weaver’s magic ran out. Molinaro grounded into a double play, Wilfong to Smalley to first baseman Jackson.

In the top of the ninth, the Twins wasted a two-out single by Goodwin. It was their 10th and final hit against Palmer, who went all the way, striking out four while issuing no walks. Marshall returned to pitch the bottom half. Eddie Murray, 0-for-4, lined to shortstop and Kelly struck out looking. DeCinces singled to left field, but Roenicke’s long fly to left wrapped up the game in 2 hours and 32 minutes.19

Hartzell earned his sixth win of 1979 and, as it turned out, his last of 27 big-league victories.20 Marshall earned his 29th save. He went on to lead the AL with 32, earning AL Fireman of the Year honors in his final season as an elite reliever.21

As the Orioles pushed on to the World Series, the case of Thomas Turner remained in the news. He was found guilty in October and fined $50 plus court costs, though the financial terms were suspended. When Turner appealed, the case was dismissed at the state level in February 1980.22 He continued to attend games at Memorial Stadium in the fall of 1979, both to publicize his cause and to root for the Orioles.23

Turner and an organization representing people with disabilities filed suit in federal court to push for better accommodations at Memorial Stadium. The city and team cooperated: A week after the arrest, the city’s parks director and an architect toured the ballpark with Turner to identify potential places to expand wheelchair seating.24 In April 1980 the Orioles agreed to provide 80 additional wheelchair spaces in various sections of the ballpark, 30 parking places, and 15 toilets for fans with disabilities.25

After the Baltimore Sun pointed out that public transit offered limited options for fans with disabilities to get to and from games,26 Turner and an attorney sued a state transit agency to obtain expanded services. “It doesn’t matter how many handicapped ramps you build if people can’t travel from A to B,” Turner said. Later, Turner served on advisory boards regarding special seating at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, as well as the city’s football stadium, M&T Bank Stadium. He also pushed for safety measures for the disabled in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor neighborhood.27

Turner’s arrest roughly coincided with the arrival of Edward Bennett Williams as Orioles majority owner in August 1979. After Williams’s death in 1988, Turner wrote a letter to the Sun, saluting the owner’s commitment to improving access for fans with limited mobility. Turner noted Williams’s “untiring respect for human rights and dignity,” adding, “We have lost a friend.”28

Turner later competed in equestrian competitions for those with disabilities, and patented a motorcycle and sidecar that could be operated by people with paraplegia. He died in 2014 at age 57.29

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game. The author also reviewed interviews given by Turner to Baltimore TV station WMAR on September 5 and 6, 1979, available through the Internet Archive. The photo included with this story is a screen shot from the September 5 interview.

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL197909010.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1979/B09010BAL1979.htm

https://archive.org/details/WMAR-RAW-001-007

Notes

1 Seating diagrams available online indicate that Section 9 was down the left-field line, about halfway between third base and the left-field foul pole.

2 “Paraplegic Is Arrested in Stadium Seating Dispute,” Baltimore Sun, September 3, 1979: C16. In an interview with Baltimore TV station WMAR on September 5, cited in the Sources section of this story, Turner said he intended to find out whether wheelchairs were mentioned in the city’s fire code. “I always considered obstacles, like, boxes,” he said. “I’m a human being.”

3 The federal Americans with Disabilities Act now forbids discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. The intent of the law is to provide people with disabilities the same rights and opportunities as others. However, the law was not passed until 1990, 11 years after Thomas Turner’s arrest at Memorial Stadium. ADA National Network, “An Overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” accessed August 2023.

4 On June 5 the Orioles dropped into second place by a scant fraction behind the Boston Red Sox. (Boston had a .608 winning percentage, compared with .604 for Baltimore.) The Orioles regained first place the next day.

5 At the start of the month, the Boston Red Sox were in second place; by the end of August, the Milwaukee Brewers had moved into second.

6 Palmer made his major-league debut in 1965 but missed the entire 1968 season.

7 Palmer also reported suffering from back and forearm soreness that season. Alan Goldstein, “Palmer Goes on Disabled List,” Baltimore Sun, July 20, 1979: C7; Terry Pluto, “‘Spiderman’ Palmer Dazzles Twins,” Baltimore Evening Sun, August 28, 1979: C5.

8 The Twins fell as far as 6½ games back on June 20 and 21, but spent the vast majority of this time period between 2 and 5 games out.

9 Full terms of the trade, announced February 3, 1979: Carew to California; Hartzell, Dave Engle, Ken Landreaux, and Brad Havens to Minnesota.

10 Thomas Van Hyning, “Paul Hartzell,” SABR Biography Project, accessed July 2023. After the 1979 season, Hartzell appeared in just 10 more games—6 with Baltimore in 1980, and 4 with Milwaukee in 1984.

11 “Paraplegic Is Arrested in Stadium Seating Dispute.”

12 Rich Dauer was Baltimore’s regular second baseman in 1979. News accounts do not specify why he didn’t play; he appeared in games immediately preceding and following September 1, so he does not seem to have been injured.

13 M. Howard Gelfand, “Twins Stop Orioles 3-2,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 2, 1979: 1C.

14 According to Retrosheet records as of July 2023, this was the third and final ejection of Singleton’s 15-season major-league career, in which he played 2,082 games.

15 “Twins Nip Birds 3-2,” Baltimore Sun, September 2, 1979: C1. After the game, Weaver criticized Smith for failing to knock down the ball and keep it in the infield.

16 “Twins Nip Birds 3-2.”

17 In 1979 Crowley was second in the AL with 40 pinch-hit at-bats, trailing only Minnesota’s Jose Morales, who had 42. Crowley and teammate Pat Kelly tied for second in the AL with 11 pinch-hits, behind Seattle’s Larry Milbourne, who had 12. “1979 American League Situational Batting,” Baseball-Reference, accessed July 2023. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/1979-situational-batting.shtml.

18 Gelfand, “Twins Stop Orioles 3-2.”

19 “Twins Nip Birds 3-2.”

20 As of 2023, Hartzell’s 27 major-league wins ranked as the most among any former Lehigh University pitcher, far ahead of Craig Anderson’s 7. “Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA) Baseball Players,” Baseball-Reference, accessed July 2023. https://www.baseball-reference.com/schools/index.cgi?key_school=2859544c

21 In 1980 Marshall posted a 1-3 record and a 6.12 ERA in 18 games with Minnesota, saving only one game. He returned for a final season with the New York Mets in 1981. In 20 games he went 3-2 with a 2.61 ERA and no saves.

22 “Paraplegic Guilty in Stadium Row,” Baltimore Sun, October 3, 1979: D3; “Stadium Paraplegic Case Dropped,” Baltimore Sun, February 20, 1980: C2.

23 Bill Rhoden, “Wheeling in the Stadium; Few Spots to Park,” Baltimore Sun, October 6, 1979: A7.

24 “Handicap Seating Reviewed,” Baltimore Sun, September 9, 1979: B2.

25 Katherine White, “Stadium Agreement Expands Facilities for the Handicapped,” Baltimore Sun, April 14, 1980: C1.

26 Wanda Dobson, “Handicapped Get 80 Stadium Spaces,” Baltimore Evening Sun, April 14, 1980: C3.

27 Frederick N. Rasmussen, “Thomas J. Turner” (obituary), Baltimore Sun, October 30, 2014: 14.

28 “E.B. Williams” (letter to the editor), Baltimore Sun, August 30, 1988: 8A.

29 Rasmussen, “Thomas J. Turner.”