Baltimore Orioles

Date of birth: February 24, 1956 Los Angeles, CA

High School: Locke High School Los Angeles, CA

College: Cal State LA.

Location: Chillin pregame, scoping the crowd, airing out his muttons.

Nickname: Steady Eddie. He was steady, from 1978 to 1988 his lowest average was .277 and he only had one year which he didn’t hit 20 homers.  He was a consistent run producers and in the lineup, discounting the shortened 1981 season he played 150+ games every year but one between 78-93.  According to baseball reference he had another nickname, Tired, but I could find no reference to it online in a quick search.

First Impression; C’mon this was early 80’s baseball.  The bird logo on the hat, the softball style unis and the wrist bands!  Plus he’s toting his big ole first baseman’s mitt.

Career stats: Wow, Topps never gave him a future star card or any rookie affiliated card.  No they jumped right in with the incredible 1978 All Star Rookie Cup card.  Its like they knew this guy was going to be big, he needs his own card. 

He played in 3026 games.  Same amount as Stan Musial and tied for 7^th and the next guys on his heels currently active are 800 short and in their late 30s.  He was so valuable because he had power from both sides of the plate and could hit for average.

He is a member of the 500 homer club (504), 3000 hit club (3255) and is 11^th all time in RBI with 1917.  Of players of his era only Yaz (1844) and Dave Winfield had RBI (1833) totals near his.

He was an 8 time All-Star, World Series Champion (1983), Rookie of the Year (1977) and three time silver slugger and gold glove award winner.

All time stat: All time leader in career Sacrifice Flies.  It must have been what they stressed in Baltimore as the top two all time are Murray with 128 and Ripken with 127.  Pujols came close to breaking it, ending at 123.

Fun fact: Murray hit a home run from both sides of the plate in 11 games; he retired tied with Chili Davis for first place in this category.

Personal anecdote:  He retired in 1997 after playing 21 major-league seasons. He went back to Baltimore as bench coach in 1998 and 1999 and as first-base coach in 2000 and 2001.  In Spring 1998 I attended the Orioles Spring Training camp in Fort Lauderdale.  I was working for a radio station at the time and was able to get credentialed. 

After the game was over I went into the clubhouse.  There were guys in there that I had watched their whole career, Cal Ripken, Harold Baines (a rookie in this set), Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro, Eric Davis and Ozzie Guillen, and then the big man Eddie Murray.

1981 me could never have dreamed that I would be eye to eye with these guys on their turf.  I knew even then being in the majors was not a possibility, the first glove my mother bought me was for a left handed player.  She gave it to me and I put it on and my brain took a few beats to realize, wait I don’t have it on wrong, this is for the wrong hand.  That lefty glove gathered dust in garages and basements for years as a sad trophy or physical embodiment of my baseball dreams.

I was to say the least shaky.  But I told myself that this was a once in a lifetime chance and I had to at least try.  So I went in and everybody was crowded around Cal and that was fine with me because I would have had no nerve going up to Cal to talk about anything.  The big topic that year was whether or not he would end the streak or not.  He later would.

So I basically meandered and shuffled around and tried not to make eye contact.  Unfortunately, that led me to have my head down and saw Ozzie Guillen walking out of the shower with no clothes on.  So yeah again, big boy territory here.  I did laugh to myself that it would be a fun story someday and little did I know he would lead my White Sox to a trophy in 2005.

I thought my best approach would be to go try and find the manager.  I figured if anyone is going to have mercy on me and give me better answers it would be him.  The manager was Ray Miller.  I knew Miller’s bio, that he was a coach with the O’s.  They beat my White Sox in 1983 and I knew everything about them, he was their pitching coach.  Then I knew him because he was on the Pirate staff’s with Jim Leyland.

I attempted to locate him and there was a room of older dudes just kind of sitting around. I walked in, thinking Miller would be among them but he was not.  I turned around to leave and there he was.  We were face to face, or more to what I recall face to the orioles script on the front of his large jersey.

And I thought oh, this is a familiar face.  He immediately said, “what are you doing in here?” and I said I was just looking for Mr. Miller.  He cut me off before I could say mister, “this room is for coaches only.”  Not having seen any signage indicating that, and not having looked I immediately felt myself start to sweat.  It wasn’t apparent as I was already sweating due to the Spring heat in Florida.

I said, “oh my gosh I am so sorry, I am completely new at this and I didn’t mean to break any rules.” And then I started to walk away.  And he gruffly grunted, “where are you going?” and I sheepishly turned around almost mumbling like a kid, well you ssssaid to leave.  And he said “you’re already in here so lets go”.  And at that point I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t want to talk to him.  And I had a real fear that he might tear into me more if I ran away, and oh I wanted to.  But I had a stupid little steno pad, a pen and a tape recorder.  I gathered myself and clicked the recording button and talked to Mr. Murray all of about 47 seconds.  My questions were stupid, his answers were short.  I don’t know what happened to that tape, it has been lost to time.

After that I thought, well, that went really bad, but it certainly could not be worse than that or seeing Guillen again, so I psyched myself up and said that I had to get at least one more interview.  Mind you none of this was going anywhere or being published or consumed by anyone.  This was my own personal use of my position at the radio station to gain access.  But it was not under any false pretenses, I was there to gain experience to potentially do things of that nature in the future. 

Beyond raising Eddie’s BP for three minutes, I did no harm.  And I chose a person to talk with.  That person was Brady Anderson.  And I asked him for a few minutes of his time to discuss his expectations for the upcoming season.  I think he was going into it probably thinking that I was going to ask why he went from 50 HR in 1996 to 18 in 1997.  I didn’t.  I just kept it general.  And he gave me mostly trite baseball answers but he was not dismissive at all.  And just like in the movies when I was doing it I was thinking, “Holy crap this is Brady Anderson”.

I think I might have probably had the same reaction had I gotten through a Jeff Reboulet interview.  After that I knew that there wasn’t anything that I was going to get, that I was just playing around and that I didn’t know if I had it in me to do it again.  I was right, and I was wrong.  I didn’t really have it in me, at the time.  But I think had I been more forced into such a role as part of my internship, its possible that I would have gotten the hang of it.

Ever a Future Star?  No sir, just a future Hall of Famer.

Rookie or final card? No.

Hall of Fame? Number retired? Number retired? He is a baseball Hall of Famer (2003), his #33 was retired by Baltimore and he’s obviously in the Orioles Hall of Fame.

Links to stories including Eddie Murray.