The city of Baltimore, Maryland has been a part of the Major League Baseball landscape since the very beginning. However, by the 1920's, the memory of the great Orioles teams of the 1890's had faded away from public memory and the Charm City was no longer considered "major league" in any sport. It needed a venue that could hold crowds large enough to witness the biggest events in sports. Thus, from the rubble of Baltimore Stadium rose Memorial Stadium. This is its story.
Baltimore Stadium
It was the Roaring '20's and American sports were booming. While baseball was highlighted by the antics of Baltimore's favorite son, Babe Ruth, college football was taking the world by storm. Baltimore's leaders had the foresight to realize that sports would only be taking a larger landscape in America's culture and decided to build a football-specific stadium. The old Orioles manager, Ned Harlon, led the search committee in finding a suitable site and found it on Thirty-Third Street.
Ground broke in Baltimore's Venable Park the same week that construction began on Yankee Stadium in May 1922. Crews worked round the clock and for a cool $325,000, Venable Stadium opened in early December of that same year, just in time for the inaugural football game between the US Army Third Corps and the US Marine Corps. A parade that ran down Cathedral St, Maryland Avenue, Charles Street and Thirty-Third Street with 12,000 soldiers gathered at Mount Vernon Place kicked off the festivities. Inside the stadium, 10,000 troops stood at attention while another 30,000 civilians looked on while a massive band played the national anthem as the American flag was raised. The Marines capped off the spectacle by beating Army 13-12.
A formal front entrance was eventually added for $150,000 with letters spelling out the venue's name: Baltimore Stadium. For the nest two decades, Baltimore Stadium hosted numerous football games. By 1926, its capacity had risen from 53,000 to 83,000 and was already starting to show its age. As the years went on by, its many wooden benches would be a thorn in the side of the city. In 1936, teh city installed new wooden seats lathered in a substance that was supposed to last 20 years. Just four years later, 20,000 seats were condemned.
Still, none of this deterred the NFL. On September 6, 1943, the Green Bay Packers traveled to Baltimore for an exhibition game where they beat the Washington Redskins 23-21 in the first NFL game ever played in Baltimore. In July 1944, Oriole Park (V) burned down, forcing the International League Orioles to move into the football stadium in old Venable Park.
Baltimore Stadium was quickly converted into a baseball diamond and the Orioles swept the Jersey City Giants in a double header for their first two games. The players loved the newly configured ballpark, with batters finding the wide gapes in center and right field enjoyable as they could show off their speed as they blooped balls into the vast expanse.
In seven weeks of play, the Orioles won 21, lost six and drew 167,000 fans to a ballpark that had recently been describe by critics as "Lonely Acres". Later that year, Baltimore Stadium hosted the Orioles as they lost the the Louisville Colonels 5-4 in Game 1 of the Little World Series. The Orioles used the loss as fuel to rebound and eventually win the series. Meanwhile, just hours after hosting game 1 of the Little World Series, Baltimore Stadium hosted the regular World Series as the St. Louis Browns lost Game 1 to the Cardinals.
It was clear to all that baseball was in Baltimore Stadium's immediate future, but despite its natural appeal to batters, it wasn't ready to host many more games. In 1947, the city voted to spend $2.5 million building an entirely new stadium on the old site of Baltimore Stadium.
Memorial Stadium
Crews tore down old Baltimore Stadium in 1949 and began building the city's newest stadium immediately. Led by the architecture firm of Hall, Border and Donaldson, the new stadium opened to the public on April 20, 1950. In the spirit of the times, Memorial Stadium was named for all of the fallen soldiers in both world wars.
Though Memorial Stadium originally opened with a capacity of 31,000, it was expanded to 47,700 just a couple of year later when an upper deck was added to the grandstand to attract a major league team. As luck would have it, the St. Louis Browns were looking for a new home and moved in just in time for the 1954 season to begin. Pitcher Bob Turley led the newly minted Baltimore Orioles to a 3-1 victory over the White Sox in the Orioles first game in Memorial Stadium before an adoring throng of 46,354 and the recently installed Gunther Brewing sponsored scoreboard in right-center field. At the time, it was the largest electrical scoreboard in the world.
Just a week later, on April 21, the Orioles played in their first night game, losing to Bob Lemon and the eventual A.L. champion Cleveland Indians 2-1. Four years later, Memorial Stadium bore witness as Casey Stengel's American League beat the National League 4-3 in the All-Star Game. Just a year later, Johnny Unitas accounted for three touchdowns in the Colts' 31-16 thrashing of the mighty New York Giants in a rematch of the famed "Greatest Game Ever Played". It was the only NFL championship game that Memorial Stadium ever held.
Even in the midst of the whirlwind of activity, Memorial Stadium's operators were constantly finding new improvements that needed to be made to keep the glistening new ballpark modern. When the stadium first opened, hedges served as the centerfield's "fence", but within a short while, a real wire fence was installed to replace it. In 1961, 2,600 field box seats increased capacity to 49,000, new dugouts were dug and the bullpens were moved from the baselines to behind the outfield fence. In 1964, the upper deck was lengthened to increase capacity to 54,000 for baseball and 65,000 for football.
But despite their best efforts, the stadium was always much better for watching a baseball game than football. The grandstand split wide as it reached midfield, bringing the crowd further from the action. The constant fog didn't help either, but in retrospect, it served as a part of Memorial Stadium's charm. Besides, Johnny Unitas and his teammates didn't seem to mind.
From 1957 through 1971, the Baltimore Colts had one of the highest home winning percentages in the NFL. During that glorious stretch, immortals such as John Mackey, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan helped Unitas lead the Colts to two NFL championships and a Super Bowl win. While the Colts dominated on the field, the rest of the stadium was a spectacle in and of itself. The crowd fell head over heels for the Colts marching band and regardless of the poor seating, they were transfixed on the Colts and their blue-collar attitude as they sought victory after victory. In doing so, the Colts wove themselves into the intimate fabric of the city. Although Baltimore was much larger than Green Bay, it still had that small town glow that had an almost unhealthy obsession with the Colts.
Meanwhile, the Orioles became one of the preeminent teams of the era, making the World Series in 1966, 1969, 1970, 191, 1979 and 1983, winning three times. In 1966, they clinched their first world championship in Game 4 at Memorial Stadium as Dave McNally beat Dodgers' ace Don Drysdale 1-0. By the time they beat the Reds 9-3 in Game 5 of the 1970 World Series, the old Gunther Brewing scoreboard had been replaced with a digital one and the wooden benches that covered all of the second deck were replaced with chairs and metal benches. It was the last World Series title that the Orioles would clinch at home.
As Unitas and the other stars of his era headed off to retirement, the golden years of the Colts slowly faded away. Still, by the mid-1970's they had built a competitive team. After losing to the Steelers in the first round of the 1976 playoffs, a small plane crashed into the upper deck. Only mild injuries were incurred and the pilot was quickly arrested. The last NFL playoff game Memorial Stadium hosted was the famed "Ghost to the Post" game where the Raiders' Dave Casper caught a mighty heave from Ken Stabler for the game winner in overtime. No one knew it at the time, but the end was near for Memorial Stadium's golden era.
The Final Years
The city was still abuzz after the Orioles' triumph over the Phillies in the 1983 World Series when Colts owner Robert Irsay began to secretly make plans for an escape from the Charm City. Even with a 20-10 win over the lowly Oilers to close out the season, he had seen the attendance dwindle down to a paltry 20,400 and hungered for more.
One night in the 1984 offseason, he had a crew pack up a convoy of Mayflower moving trucks and drive to Indianapolis. In an instant, the city was left utterly heartbroken, shattered beyond belief that their beloved Colts could leave them in the dust without even an explanation. The resentment remains strong to this very day.
As a result of the move, the Orioles were Memorial Stadium's sole tenants when they announced plans to build a new ballpark in downtown Baltimore in 1988. The Orioles lost their last game at Memorial Stadium 7-1 to the Tigers on October 6, 1991. The old stadium remained vacant until the CFL's Stallions briefly moved in in the mid-1990's. While Baltimore liked having another professional football team around, it wasn't the same. Even when the Stallions won the Grey Cup in 1995, Baltimore knew that that wasn't the ultimate prize. the Colts had left them high and dry and all they wanted was an NFL team to call their own once again.
They got their wish when the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens in 1996. They only played two years in the relic, but did leave it on a good note, beating the Tennessee Oilers 21-19 on December 14, 1997 in the last official game ever played at Memorial Stadium.
After hosting one last touch football game with the Colts legends of yesteryear, Memorial Stadium was demolished between April 2001 and February 2002. Today, the Cal Ripken Senior Youth Development Field sits where Memorial Stadium once stood, surrounded by apartments looking down at the memories that still echo on that sacred plot of land.
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