The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers before moving to St. Louis to become the St. Louis Browns. After 52 often beleaguered years in St. Louis, the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954 and adopted the Orioles name in honor of the official state bird of Maryland. The Orioles name had been used by previous major league baseball clubs in Baltimore, including the American League Baltimore Orioles franchise from 1901–1902 that became the New York Yankees and the National League Baltimore Orioles. Nicknames for the team include the O's and the Birds. This statement came from the Internet.

In 1954, I was a twenty year old young lady and worked in a printing plant office and I had been there for two years as an executive to the CEO of the company called The Diamond Press and the CEO was Meyer S. Rehert. I worked hard and very rarely took my lunch half hour and usually ate my sandwich in the office while working. One day, I decided it was time for me to go out for the thirty minutes and eat at a local small restaurant around the corner on Gay Street, a large street of many commercial stores and businesses. I was walking to the restaurant, when I saw a parade coming down the street. It was the new Baltimore Orioles who come back to roost and become our baseball team. I was delighted to watch the parade and before you knew it; my lunch half hour was over. I walked fast to the eatery, ordered my cottage cheese platter and a few crackers and brought it back to the office where I ate it as usual at my desk while working. Meyer asked me why I was late and I told him that “I thought I had seen a historical happening on Gay Street.” I said, “We now have a team and I am sure we will have fun watching baseball on our TV sets.” We had only had a TV set in my home for five years since 1949 when we and most other people I knew had finally bought them because we could afford them at that time.

Often in those years, I worked on Monday nights sometimes later and I finally told him I would have to leave every Monday night at five because I had to be home and finished dinner by eight to watch I Love Lucy. Everyone watched that show and the next day discussed it at work. You had to watch it, else you were not thought of as being ‘with it’ as we said in those olden days.

Our leisure time in the evenings after work was usually spent watching a few shows such as baseball, Lucy, Life With Luigi, Twenty Questions, local news stations, Groucho Marx, This Is Your Life and on Sundays, Ed Sullivan show. On Ed’s show, he featured a group called The Beatles for their first American debut on TV here. Dad who was usually a very smart man looked at them and said “they will never get anywhere unless they get haircuts.” Dad was sure wrong.

 He also said their name conjured up the name of bugs and he did not like it. Dad was wrong again.

There is a slogan that says “Dearness gives everything value.” The Beatles and Oriole baseball defined our way of living then.

The music, the sport, the times all blended together a different period of time than we have now. Now we have many local stations and a multitude of cable stations. We got cable here in my home in 1980. At first, I said why we should pay for the privilege of watching cable and pay for it when we can watch the other stations for free. However, everyone got cable and my son’s friend who lived about five blocks from us got it about a month sooner than us. I kept wondering how long it will take for our block to get it. I called the cable company and they said shortly. Finally a few weeks later, we were told to call and find when our block would receive it.I was so excited and when the cable man came in the morning, I could hardly wait for the kids to come home from school and see this phenomenon that had happened to our block and our home.

We surely felt quite rich now to have so many selections. However, I believe we got a new remote control and therefore did not have to get up and down from our seats to change the stations. We had a TV in every bedroom, the kitchen and the family room. We now were really, really rich, we thought. To me in 1954, having one blessed and beloved TV set in the living room made us feel rich. We all sat and watched together and had to vote on which program to watch when one of the four of us wanted something else to see. We said that on this Monday, I and we would watch something I wanted, on the next Monday night; the other members each got a turn to choose etc.  Sometimes, my brother and I would bargain with each other and I would give up my program for his and next time he would give up his for mine. We never dreamed of having more than one set. No one we knew did either.

Times have changed since the young twenty year old girl was mesmerized by seeing the parade of the  Orioles riding down the street and seeing them in person in 1954 until now when we have multiple TV’s not in black and white but in color and having such a choice to view so many disparate shows. We now can postpone watching them at their viewed time by recording them on DVD’s or using TiVo. We could never imagine we would have a choice of the time when we could watch it later on than it was shown. Oh how I think back and think now “we lived in the Middle Ages then” and how times and life has changed for our grandchildren and their children.

They say you should be passionate about some things. We sure all are passionate about our Orioles and I can ‘brag’ I saw them in a parade going down Gay Street which was around the corner from where I worked at 221 North High Street, corner of Low Street. We now are quite high this year and not low and feeling quite joyful. Go Orioles and Go Ravens.

My friend Steven Behr in Washington State says:

“You know that we have a friendly competition going between your Baltimore Orioles and my NY Yankees and your football Ravens and my NY Giants. Yeah!!”

By the way, when we finally meet, I am going to ask you for your autograph!

Let's keep dancing!!

Steven Behr

Wellness Educator

Steilacoom, Washington 98388

Ok Friend, we shall meet, I will give you a hug and an autograph and I know you will be happy for me that our Orioles beat your Yankees and our Ravens beat your Giants. We will still be good friends!!!