Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 21, 1993 TAG: 9403230005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Oriole Park at Camden Yards is in only its second season of major league baseball play, and already it is a storied place. From the ancient brick warehouse that runs behind the right field wall to the upper deck that perches above left field, it brings to mind legendary stadiums from the past, including Wrigley and Ebbets fields.
Few modern construction projects have been praised as much or hyped as generously. Yet the appearance of the ballpark is just a fraction of the story that Peter Richmond tells in his book, ``Ballpark.'' It traces the idea for a stadium in downtown Baltimore back to the late '60s and describes the Orioles' insecure history after Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams bought the team in 1979. It also captures the intrigue and pitched battles between the baseball team and the State of Maryland as Camden Yards was planned and built.
Edward Bennett Williams' philosophy of life could be summed up in a single word: Win.
His suspected motivation in buying the Orioles - to move the team to Washington to replace its hapless Senators - was never far from Baltimoreans' minds. Even now, with him dead of cancer and the ballpark a monument to the deal he forged with Maryland governor, and former Baltimore mayor, William Donald Schaefer, you'd be hard-pressed to find many citizens of Baltimore who would give more than grudging approval to his stewardship.
But Williams and his protege, Larry Lucchino, took the steps that led to Camden Yards. Not a little of the credit for the new ballpark, though, goes to Eli Jacobs, the New York financier who succeeded Williams as majority owner, and whose bankruptcy is costing him the team. Jacob's fascination with architecture is evident throughout the structure's design.
Richmond analyzes the actions and psyches of all of the prominent participants in the project's execution. That the Orioles strong-armed the State of Maryland into giving them, at hardly any cost to the team, a $200-million showplace cannot be denied. Financially, the Birds are making out like bandits. Whether the lottery-financed deal will be as beneficial to the state is something for future generations to decide.
Richmond makes it clear that many a low-income person's disposable income went to finance a stadium that is smaller than its predecessor and all but off-limits to anyone without ample money, connections or the willingness to make summer baseball plans along about January. Gone is the day when a Baltimorean could decide after dinner to buzz down to Memorial Stadium and buy a seat in the upper deck on a hot summer night. Baseball in Baltimore has become an event, like going to the opera. This is a no small paradox in the epitome of blue-collar towns.
Richmond is a veteran sportswriter with a flair for description. One example: After Cal Ripken Sr., a longtime coach, was named manager, he ``looked as uncomfortable as a farmer asked to sit at his loan manager's desk down at the bank.''
By the time the author gets through with Janet Marie Smith, the Orioles' vice president in charge of stadium affairs, who supervised the project's design (but who did not design the ballpark), you feel grateful for her influence, appalled by her gall and repelled by her apparent inability to share the credit. Lucchino, the team's president and CEO, fares little better.
Richmond's sympathies lie with the people who really built the place, men like Charlie Smith, the on-site foreman for Baltimore Masonry, a staunch union bricklayer; Gary and Alan Wilber, who grew the grass for the field on their Oakwood Sod Farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore; and Kevin Carlin and Tim Legg, the union electricians who wired and aimed the ballpark's field lights.
His interviews with these men are filled with affection, and that is how it should be, for they are the heart and soul of Old Baltimore - even if they live in the suburbs now.
Richmond even gets the laconic Cal Ripken Jr. to abandon his mechanical responses and speak revealingly, by telephone, about his consecutive-games streak and the pressure it imposes on him.
``Cal's record,'' he writes, ``is the only real throwback record left. It is good that it is a Baltimore record, a throwback city with a throwback hero.''
Richmond could have gone along with the crowd and written a hype-filled account of the Camden Yards saga. Instead, he embraced the project in its complexity and produced a volume that neither stints on criticism nor skips deserved praise. A lot of people got screwed on this deal, and he gives them their due.
In the end, you're left with a sense of pride and a touch of sadness. Maybe the Baltimore ball club never was as benign an entity as it seemed to those of us who grew up in its early days. It's doubtful, though, that the number of corporate killers on the Orioles' payroll ever approached what it is today.
Bob Maisel, a former Sun sports editor, put it best as he stood on the field the day before Camden Yards opened. He had retired a year earlier; he had been promoting a downtown stadium since 1972.
``Near the end,'' he said, ``you were like the enemy. ... In the old days, you could rip 'em, and if they deserved it, they'd still be your friends. Now - every word, every pitch, is lost revenue.
``What I thought was a game is now a business.''
And still we love it.
by CNB