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ALL STAR GAME: 1958
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT: I saw the Orioles play there in 1980 and 1986, and saw the Colts play football there in 1982.
Memorial Stadium was originally a single-deck bowl built on the site of an old football stadium -- Venable Stadium, which was built in 1922. The new structure was intended to accommodate football games as well as the minor league Orioles, with the ultimate hope of attracting a major league baseball team. After the St. Louis Browns franchise was sold and began the transfer to Baltimore (to be renamed the Orioles), a second deck was added in 1954. This was an anomolous west-to-east migration in an era when east coast teams were heading west.
In spite of its origins as a football stadium, Memorial Stadium was reasonably well suited for baseball. The closest approximations to its overall ovoid shape were Cleveland's Municipal Stadium and Montreal's Olympic Stadium. In an architectural innovation, the huge upper deck of Memorial Stadium was supported by reinforced concrete columns rather than bare steel beams. It was one of the last stadiums with such supporting columns, which put fans sitting the upper decks closer to the diamond than is the case with virtually all newer stadiums. Memorial Stadium was the first "baseball" stadium without any roof, which meant that fans in the upper decks really suffered on hot summer days. In contrast, since the upper deck covered most of the lower deck, most of the fans in the lower deck literally had it "made in the shade.") Though it marked another step in the march toward ugly baseball-football hybrid stadiums of the 1960s, somehow Memorial Stadium seemed well suited for both sports and was a beautiful place to play. Part of the reason was the "compressed oval" (like a football) shape of the overall structure, creating a sharp "bend" in the grandstand behind home plate. Maybe it was the sloped, tree covered slope behind center field, or maybe it was the surrounding neighborhood of blue-collar single-family homes. The trees and houses visible beyond the center field scoreboards added to the pleasant atmosphere at Memorial Stadium, but the lack of any roof resulted in many sunburned necks over the years. The downside of the urban location was the traffic nightmares one had to endure getting there and back.
The temptingly short distances to right and left field corners (309 feet) were partly offset by the relatively high (14-foot) walls, which sharply receded from the foul lines at a 135 degree angle. The original outfield distances were enormous, rivaling the Polo Grounds, and center field was marked by a hedgeline with only a flimsy fence in front of it. For the first two months, in April and May 1954, there was no center field fence at all! An inner fence was added in 1958, resulting in a much more "normal" baseball field shape, and the bullpens were moved to the power alleys. From then on, there were only minor changes in outfield dimensions. The seats in the outer reaches of the grandstand "horseshoe" were well over 100 feet from the playing field, demonstrating the awkwardness that results from compromising between baseball and football seating. The fence was moved slightly a few times after that. As in most stadiums built for football, there was a huge amount of foul territory, especially during the 1950s. For some occasions, such as the 1958 All Star Game, temporary "box seat" bleachers were added between the dugouts and the foul poles, thereby displacing the bullpens. They added about ten extra rows of permanent box seats into that space in 1961, reducing the distance behind home plate by 20 feet. At some point (either during the 1964 season or in early 1965), the upper deck was extended by about fifty feet on both ends near the foul poles.
Memorial Stadium was the scene of many memorable seasons of baseball glory. Slowly but surely, the lowly former Browns climbed in the standings in the late 1950s. In 1966 they finally reached the World Series, and beat the Dodgers 4-0, thanks in large part to third baseman Brooks Robinson and slugger Frank Robinson, who was traded away by the Reds. The pitching arm of another Hall of Famer, Jim Palmer, kept the Orioles at or near the top through the early 1980s, at which point Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken took up the mantle of team leadership. The final years at Memorial Stadium were rather frustrating for the O's, however.
During the 1970s and through the 1980s, Washington area residents came to consider the Orioles as a virtual "home team," but when franchise owner Peter Angelos repeatedly blocked attempts to relocate teams to Washington or create new franchises there during the 1990s, these good feelings turned sour. Let's hope that a friendly rivalry emerges between the Orioles and the Washington Nationals!
The Baltimore Colts played football in Memorial Stadium from 1953 to 1983; the capacity for football games was about 60,000. The exact position of the gridiron shifted from time to time; in some years the gridiron was positioned closer to the south end, so that a gap had to be carved out of the grandstands where the dugouts were. After the Orioles moved into their new ballpark at Camden Yards in 1992, Memorial Stadium lay in disuse for two years, and then got a brief second life when the Canadian Football League created an expansion CFL franchise in Baltimore, which eventually became known as the "Stallions." That franchise was displaced and relocated to Montreal (becoming the "Alouettes") in 1996 when the Cleveland Browns' owner Art Modell moved his team to Baltimore and changed their name to the "Ravens." Even though Memorial Stadium was only used by the Ravens for two years, about 5,000 additional seats were built on the north end of the field, replacing the tacky "high school" center field bleachers. For these last years, the gridiron was shifted toward the north end. In 1998 the Ravens moved into brand-new (state subsidized) "PSINet Stadium," but that high-tech firm went bankrupt and the team had to pay them to remove that name, which was changed to "M & T Bank Stadium." (Like the Astros and Enron!) Meanwhile, back at 34th Street in north-central Baltimore, the demolition crews put an end to Memorial Stadium during the spring of 2001. Historic preservationists protested, and rightly so, given the very name Memorial Stadium, which was meant to honor World War I and II veterans. As a compromise, a reduced-size portion of the huge engraved metal plaque on the stadium's south side was preserved for posterity, located on the southeast corner of Camden Yards.
SOURCES: Lowry (1992), Ritter (1992), Gershman (1993)
WEB LINKS: www.stadiumsofnfl.com, www.memorialstadium.org
FAN TIPS: Ken Levin
