Orioles Spring Training: Paying Homage to History, Looking to the Future

Last Sunday, the Baltimore Orioles pitchers began the annual two-month spring training ritual at the Complex in Sarasota, Florida.

When this writer arrived last Saturday in Sarasota, the temperatures were unseasonally warm, but certainly not as hot as Buck Showalter, the 55-year-old DeFuniak Springs, Florida native and returning Orioles manager, must be feeling.

Early in the morning last Sunday the Baltimore Orioles pitchers and catchers opened spring training at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota Florida under dark skies and a weather forecast of foreboding thunderstorms.

The sports forecast for the team this summer is also cloudy, dark and foreboding.

“The rest of the position players reported to Sarasota on Thursday and will take the practice fields on Friday,” according to Sarasota Patch writer, .

Showalter, the two-time American League Manager of the Year, who took the helm of the ailing Birds on July 29, 2010, has his work cut out for him if the team is to overcome its dismal 2011 season record of 69-93 – the team’s 14th losing season in a row.

This year much of the buzz over the O’s is not taking place on the field as much as in the personnel decisions – and physical changes - in the operations center, where new Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations Dan Duquette has come on board.

The Orioles’ website says it best, "The Orioles have added roughly a dozen players under … Duquette, and there won't be any shortage of storylines this spring."

Baltimore has 10 players who are out of options and must be placed on waivers if they don't make the team this spring, giving Duquette and manager Buck Showalter a tall task in roster juggling to try to give them the best possible outlook for the season.

And this spring, rebuilding the Orioles team roster is not the only reconstruction the Birds are undertaking in Sarasota.

The Birds took over the training facility, at the 22-year-old, 9,000-seat Ed Smith Stadium, in 2010, from the Cincinnati Reds who had moved-on to a facility in the U.S. southwest. Before 2010, the Orioles had not trained in Sarasota since 1995.

Since 2010, renovations to the facility, including a , have continued in earnest. “The 43,000-square-foot building is about one and a half times the size of the old building and features just about everything a pro ball player will need,” according to Sarasota Patch writer Charles Schelle.

“Throughout the operations center, there are touches of Orioles' history. They include retired numbers, such as one signed by Earl Weaver, logos, and images of Spring Training past in Miami and Daytona Beach and even the Arizona years,” Schelle said.

The history of Baltimore baseball goes back 130 years.

According to VisitBaltimore.org, the first mention of baseball in Baltimore came in 1882, “when Harry Vonderhorst sponsored a Baltimore team in what was then known as the American Association of baseball clubs, (1882-1891)."

In 1894, the (at that time, National League) Baltimore Orioles won their first professional baseball championship. In 1903 the team moved to New York and eventually became today's NY Yankees.

The current Baltimore Orioles franchise began playing baseball in 1954 in Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street (1950-1991) after it was announced on September 28, 1953 that the St. Louis Browns were moving to Baltimore.

The humble beginnings of the St. Louis Browns may be traced back to the Milwaukee Brewers, which formed in 1894; years before 1900 when the minor league Western League reorganized as the American League.

Hopefully the humble beginnings of a new operations center and a new executive vice president of baseball operations will alter the path the Orioles have been on.

Writing from Sarasota, Westminster resident Kevin Dayhoff has been a Florida snowbird for over fifteen years. He may be reached at kevindayhoff@gmail.com.