In my bedroom in Carroll Manor, I listened to the Orioles play the Indians in 1977 on my Panasonic clock radio. The minutes fluttered as they changed and I worked my algebra problems. It was early in the season and the game was close. It went into extra innings and the Indians took a two-run lead. With two on and two out in the tenth inning, Earl Weaver sent in a pinch hitter.

Brooks Robinson emerged from the dugout. He was batting for the last time.

I remembered that game as I walked up to the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on Monday evening to celebrate the greatest third baseman of all time. The event also raised funds to benefit the Babe Ruth Birthplace/Sports Legend Museum and the American Cancer Society. My dad met me there.

“They threw away the mold with him,” said Earl Weaver, reclining on a lounge chair before the festivities began. “He’s probably met everybody in here and given them an autograph. If it wasn’t for him, I’d never have made it here.”

Earl’s comment struck home with me.  Brooks had given me something to aspire to at an early age. He played baseball with a reckless joviality. He leaned forward on the hot corner on the balls of his feet, ready to lunge in any direction. When he hit a home run, he ran the bases like a little boy who’d just stolen the cookie jar.

I shared an Oriole obsession with my dad, starting in 1970, on an October day. We attended Game Three of the World Series. He picked me up from Pleasant Plains Elementary School in his blue Chevrolet and we drove to Memorial Stadium. Dave McNally hit the only grand slam in World Series history to seal the victory that day, but Brooks left an indelible mark as he dove to spear line drives out of the air and slugged two doubles.

My parents were separated that year and eventually divorced. My dad moved away to coach college basketball for four years.

In a way, the Orioles pinch-hit for my parents. I bounced tennis balls off of steps, curbs and walls–learning how to play infield by watching the Birds. I didn’t need a babysitter, and would sit transfixed for entire games listening to Chuck Thompson announce.

The Orioles raised me.

In Little League, I played the hot corner and wore number 5. I made the team with hustling and defense–cutting across the infield to snare slow rollers hit to the shortstop during practice. I learned to play my position watching Brooks Robinson–holding my glove open on the ground and waving the bat in an upward motion toward the pitcher like he did.

On game days, I’d put on the Cockeysville-Springlake uniform five or six hours before leaving for the field, cleats on, pounding my glove in grandmother’s Parkville basement. I read “Great Hitters of the Major Leagues,” and other books about my baseball heroes.

We defeated Loch Raven to win the region in a best of three series at Dumbarton High School and went on to beat Woodlawn for the County championship. I was ten years old. My favorite home movie features me catching a foul ball down the third base line for the last out and the whole team jumped on top of each other like the Orioles did in 1966.

When Brooks stepped to the plate in 1977, I stopped doing my homework and listened, wondering if he could do it just one more time. You could see the stadium in your mind—the towering light stanchions and the moths clustered around them. You could feel the wooden edges of the bleachers on your fingers. The nervous din of the crowd wafted through the radio. Then I heard it–the dull thwacking sound the ball makes off the bat when solid contact is made–and Brooks got it all, sending the ball high into the night and over the left field wall one more time—electrifying the 3,000 people on 33rd street and countless others listening like me.

At the Meyerhoff event, the men who made those moments were re-visiting them, too.

“I stayed up nights thinking about benching him,” Weaver said that night.

After 23 years with the Baltimore Orioles, Brooks Robinson stopped playing baseball but he never quit being Brooks —humble and smiling.

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he said on Monday night signing autographs after the charity event had finished, just off the stage, telling the staff to wait until he was finished with the last fan.

I met Brooks after forty years of memories—along with Jim Palmer, Paul Blair, and Weaver—and thanked them for carrying me on their shoulders and giving me the greatest childhood I could have imagined. That theme song played in my head.

Oriole baseball/father and son/having fun/together…

It was like 1970 all over again.
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Editor’s Note: Comments on this story, published in an early version of The Brew, disappeared on the post, but we were able to retrieve them in the system. Some kind words and great memories here. They’re pasted in below:

Daniel Nathan – Well done, Dean. Lovely.

Kevin – didn’t have the heartache of divorce, but my experience with Brooks was very similar. I idolized him for his hard work, his skill, and the reality that although apparently ordinary — none of the strutting pretentiousness so typical of today’s stars — he was capable of transcendent baseball. He will always be my hero.

Ernie Paicopolos – In 1965, when I was 13 years old, Brooks was kind enough to speak with and give autographs to two Red Sox fans outside Fenway after a game (myself and a friend). But more amazingly, Brooks WALKED to the Orioles hotel in Boston’s Park Square and invited us to walk along with him. I will never forget the great baseball talk on the way. He talked to us like peers, not kids. That was so refreshing—back then and certainly nowadays.
Thank you, Brooks for a lifetime baseball memory!

Terry O’Neill – Dean…plan to forward this to my nephew, a single Dad with a 9 year-old son who loves baseball. Hope your beautiful thoughts are read by some of today’s “star athletes” so that they can understand how the young are influenced by their feats on the field and off.
Your Dad must be so proud of you. – Terry

Carter – The goosebumps are still with me, I can only say the the remembrance is priceless. I hope these words and this article “live” in “print” as they do now on the web.

The story takes us all back … perhaps to the last years of true baseball “greatness,” before steroids, before mass marketing, before money made a prostitute of sports. Images of Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Mike Cuellar (his famous rituals at the mound), Mark Belanger, Frank Robinson, Paul Blair, Andy Eitchbarren, etc… they are alive again thanks to this story.

From the late sixties to the late seventies, the Orioles set the standard when it came to pitching rotation. They had perennial 20 game winners, 5 deep… from McNally, to Palmer, to Cuellar, to Flannigan, to others my memory fails me on at the moment. What a piece. Thank you, Mister Smith.

Greg – Another Brooks story: my neighbor was an elderly widow who used to live near several ballplayers in a row house near 33rd street. After her husband died, Brooks arranged for her to attend an Oriole’s game with him to console her. We were impressed when he swung by without fanfare in a creme colored Cadillac and had her spend the evening with him in a skybox.

Timothy A. Hodge – Dean: Great memories to carry with you thru life and to share with others who remember those outstanding years. Thanks. – Tim Hodge, High-Steppers. Turtle.

Eric – One of my favorite treasures is my Brooks autographed baseball. I met him at a bar in Locust Point where it was an honor just to say “Thanks, Mr. Robinson.”

Doug – I met Brooks Robinson while covering then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer for the Evening Sun in the 1980s. Schaefer was giving a speech that veered into an attack on the press in general and The Sun in particular, as was his wont. And hizzoner kept glaring at me. Brooks looked at me, smiled and winked. A classy guy.

smach – Dean…poignant, beautiful. American Boy through and through.

caryn – This eloquent tribute made me cry.

Patricia Smith Dean, As usual, you bring eloquence to the most “ordinary” of events. The poet’s eye to the game of baseball. Your Nana would be so proud. Love, Aunt Pat

David Robinette Dean, Thank you for such an eloquent description of Brooks Robinson’s career. I had the honor of meeting Brooks many years earlier, at a father/son church event in the early 1960s.

I have known him for a long time, and he has never changed. Brooks Robinson not only is the greatest of all time as a baseball player, Brooks is a man who has lived a life as an example to all people: always look on the bright side; don’t waste time hating other people; always do the best you can; good always triumphs over evil.

I doubt there are very many people who have walked the Earth who can equal Brooks’s innate goodness and kindness. I know there will never be another baseball player like him.

Once again, thank you for your comments.

David Robinette

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• Dean Smith, a poet and freelance journalist, is the author of two collections of poetry, American Boy and Baltimore Sons and Never Easy, Never Pretty, about the 2012 Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl season. He is also the Director of Duke University Press. deansmi@gmail.com