Klugh: Rebuilding the Orioles in Peabody Heights
From Justin Klugh at The Hardball Times on October 12, 2018:
Buck Showalter is not coming back.
Zach Britton isn’t coming in from the bullpen.
Manny Machado isn’t going to range into foul territory, make a backhanded stop and launch a perfect throw while standing closer to a beer vendor in the stands than the players on the field. Adam Jones hung on for as long as he could, but even a man once referred to as “the new Mr. Oriole” at a Fan Festival is probably leaving Camden Yards behind.
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Dick O’Keefe didn’t know he had a meeting this morning. Somewhere between the emails I’ve exchanged with his son and his commute to Peabody Heights, the brewery he owns in Baltimore’s Charles Village neighborhood, some lines got crossed. A woman on the phone assures me this is quite normal.
As he strides across the bar’s unlit space, the motion-activated lights above him blink on, illuminating the room’s back wall. Suddenly, Baltimore’s deep baseball legacy is visible, as collages of Orioles, Terrapins and Elite Giants, from the International, Federal and Negro Leagues are momentarily brightened in a series of display cases. George Herman Ruth, who once manned first base in the fourth Old Oriole Park that stood across the street, is in there, too. As a member of the Yankees, Ruth played against the minor league Orioles in exhibition games New York would play on their way home from spring training every year, though Ruth never roamed right field. He’d play first base “to save his legs,” O’Keefe tells me.
Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/rebuilding-the-orioles-peabody-heights/
Originally published: October 12, 2018. Last Updated: October 12, 2018.