Now I have the difficult task of trying to put into words why I chose a name honoring Brooks Robinson with so many favorite Orioles to choose from…

If you are breathing and not connected to artificial life support, if you have any electrical activity whatsoever in your brain, you know that I have loved Cal Ripken, Jr. since the days before most people knew who he was. The life-size Milk poster of him adorned one of my bedroom walls during the formative years of my adolescence. I started every day, from the moment the poster was put into my hands as part of a stadium giveaway until the day I graduated from college and moved to my first apartment, staring at his gorgeous blue eyes. When I moved, the poster was rolled into it’s original tube where it tragically remains now. Though I can’t defend the decision now, I thought it would be juvenile to decorate my first place with Cal Ripken or Oriole memorabilia. None of us knew then how important Cal Ripken would become, or how, as I like to phrase it, “he saved baseball” when the strike generated so much disgust among fans (myself included).

Of course, if I’m choosing a blog name from the list of Oriole Hall of Famers, there are other choices. I respect Murray, Weaver, Palmer, and Frank Robinson (the only Oriole Hall of Famer who I never saw play). There was another of my favorites, who sadly, I think most people have forgotten about these days: number 7, the Blade, Mark Belanger. Tall and lanky, he was no great hitter and if memory serves, as far as strike-outs go, he was a sure thing. But boy oh boy, was he a great shortstop! Between Belanger and Robinson, the Orioles infield was an impenetrable fortress that defeated the hopes of any ball wanting to tumble around in the outfield grass.

So, with so many greats, why name my blog for Brooks?

Brooks was the first player who awed me. At the tender age when I became an Orioles fan, I was lucky enough to learn baseball watching “the Hoover.” He was amazing! Even as a young child without any other frame of reference, with so little other basis for comparison, as he issued what was for him, routine, outstanding plays, triple plays, snatching the ball out of the sky from impossible angles, you couldn’t not know that Brooks was special to special. He won sixteen consecutive gold gloves (Belanger won six consecutive, eight all together), a fact that being stated, still doesn’t portray any picture of what it was like to watch his almost superhuman-like fielding.

The day he retired was too soon. I was too young and hadn’t had enough years watching him play. As you’d expect, there was a big ceremony retiring his number at the end of 1977. I’ll never forget that day, the weather, or the view of the crowd and the field from the upper deck where my family and I were seated. The stadium was, if not completely sold out, close to it, with few empty seats. The giveaway that day was a folded glossy paper glove with a ball that fit into a slat on the inside (I think I still have it somewhere albeit in mangled shape). How sad that no more would we see Brooks’ magnetic glove at third.

My dad was so traumatized that during a hot Sunday game the following season, he took it out on DeCinces. DeCinces normally wasn’t bad at all, but this particular game he committed one error after another, or at least failed to play to my father’s satisfaction. Can you imagine trying to replace Brooks Robinson? Sitting in the hot sun, having consumed one too many beers early in the game, my father started a lone chant of “We want Brooks! We want Brooks!” Every inning elicited at least one chorus from my dad while my mother and I slunk down in our seats wishing we could become invisible (even though we happened to be in Section 34 with “the Rowdies” but before the Rowdies were all that rowdy yet, again if I remember correctly). As the game wore on things got worse for DeCinces, and as they did, more people joined my dad’s chants. Somewhere around the seventh or eighth inning (my memory is faulty), my dad had successfully managed to get the entire stadium chanting “We want Brooks!” I would love to ask Brooks personally how this happened, because mind you, he was already retired, but somehow, Brooks Robinson emerged from the dugout and took a bow to wild and enthusiastic cheers. What a moment!

I know people who have named their children after Brooks. An American icon, Norman Rockwell painted him. By all descriptions, like Cal, he was, and is, a supremely nice human being, as well as a remarkable player. Only Greg Maddux has more gold gloves and Brooks earned them in an age when there was no such thing as steroids or video replays to study. A natural talent who managed to remain humble.

He is a man to admire for his skills and his character and is as fitting an Oriole after whom to name my blog as there is, though the lack of talent that emanates from this URL should in no way negatively reflect on him.

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