Did You Know?

50th Anniversary Street Dedication

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2024 Opening Day Block Party

We had an absolute blast at our 33rd Annual Opening Day Block Party presented by Purple Dot PR and RCM&D. From all of us at the museum, thank you for supporting our event. This year...
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An Evening with Michael Locksley

An Evening with Michael Locksley, head coach of the Maryland Terrapins Football Team, held on April 17, 2019 at the Rolling Road Golf Club.
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An Evening with the ’83 Orioles

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Babe Ruth, Baltimorean

This August 24 marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Babe Ruth’s father, George Herman Ruth Senior, who died attempting to break up a bar brawl in his saloon, located at 38 South...
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2016 Yard Sale Update

The 2016 Babe Ruth Museum Yard Sale has been rescheduled for Monday, December 19th from 4:00-6:00 and Tuesday, December 20th from 10:00-6:00.
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Opening Day 2016

[gallery link="none" ids="3507,3511,3513,3509,3515,3514,3516,3521,3523"] This year's Orioles Opening Day Block Party was a real home run! The annual event's return to the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum drew attendance of over 550 people who enjoyed food, drinks,...
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Collectibles 101 – Members Only Event

We had a blast with museum members at our first Collectibles 101 event. Curator Amanda Peacock showed off some favorite items from the museum collection, answered questions, and hosted a "Show and tell" of members'...
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Eddie Murray’s “The Roundtripper” Wine Unveiling

On September 10, 2015, the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum hosted Eddie Murray in an exclusive wine tasting event. Guests were the first to receive Eddie's signature wine, "The Roundtripper," complete with the Hall of Famer's...
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Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation Featured

Each fall, the final out is recorded, a new World Series winner is crowned, and baseball fans around the country come to grips with the fact that they won't watch a professional game again for...
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News and Notes

After all my thirty years at the museum, I am still slightly amazed how the Babe Ruth ‘brand’ continues to hold its top-rung spot in the sports heritage universe, as well as the world of...
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Baltimore Sports Writers Forum

Last night our Sports Legends Museum partnered with the Baltimore Sun to present a Sports Writers Forum at Johns Hopkins University’s Shriver Hall. Former and current Sun baseball writers Tim Kurkjian, Ken Rosenthal, Roch Kubatko...
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What’s the Value?

With the advent of television shows like Antiques Roadshow, American Pickers, All Star Dealers and Pawn Stars the world of the museum curator has changed. What was once a steady stream of object donations for...
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Ode to the Preakness

The Preakness is sponsored by the Maryland Jockey Club, the oldest professional sporting association in the country. It also serves as the face of Marylandhorse racing, the one day of the year when Pimlico’s turnstiles...
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Jon Miller appearance for Museum

May 22nd Fireside Chat to Celebrate Broadcaster’s 14 years in Baltimore There’s a reason why Jon Miller is enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The winner of baseball’s prestigious Ford Frick Award for...
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Behind the Scenes for the Opening of Oriole Park

In the hectic days and weeks counting down to the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992, with our museum engaged in myriad activities and events, my...
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An Ode to Opening Day

For Baltimore baseball fans, Opening Day conjures up a myriad of sentiments and sensations that tug close to the heart and delve deep into the mind. It also signals the restart of the day-to-day rituals...
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For this Bird fan, Hope Springs Eternal

Every year around this time, baseball fans begin evaluating their team’s chances for the fast-approaching regular season, and –in turn- predicting their place in the standings, a post-season appearance, or, even a championship! Here in...
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Why I’m a Little Optimistic

This year is the 20th anniversary of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. It is hard to believe it has been twenty years. Think back to all the hope and excitement we had back then. The...
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Heroes

As a kid growing up in northern New York and southern Quebec in the 1970s and 1980s I was a Montreal Expos fan. There weren’t a lot of us, but we still loved our team. ...
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The Year of the Bird

Now that the Ravens have been literally ‘kicked’ out of the playoffs, it is only natural that Baltimore’s sports attention shifts to baseball, with pitchers and catchers due to report to Sarasota in less than...
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Painting the Town

We’ve painted the town purple. We have Ravens caravans traveling the city. The Marching Ravens Pep Band is playing the fight song. Everyone is wearing purple. The parties are planned. We are ready for this...
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Baltimore and NFL Playoff Games

30,000 Colts Fans at Friendship Airport (now BWI), welcoming the team homeafter a championship victory in 1958 With our city totally juiced over this Sunday’s home playoff game, I thought it might be...
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Show Some Respect

I took a friend of mine to the Ravens’ Christmas Eve game against the Browns. It was the first time in thirty years that he had attended a professional football game. He was very impressed...
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All I want for Christmas is..

As the clock keeps ticking towards the holidays, and the rush of last minute shopping gets neatly wrapped and under the tree, many of us will probably take a few minutes to reflect back on...
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“Why are we still doing this?”

Photo by Mark Lane Last Tuesday night Artie Donovan asked these words to a crowd of more than 700 guests gathered to see the Hall of Fame Baltimore Colt and six others inducted into...
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Thank You, Baltimore Colts

This December 6 our museum hosts its annual gala at Martin’s West in Baltimore. And as we pause from the busy pulse of the workplace to spend Thanksgiving with our families and friends, I want...
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The Next Ice Age

As the Chief Curator of the SportsLegendsMuseum and the Babe Ruth Birthplace I am often asked what makes athletes like Babe Ruth, Michael Phelps, or Cal Ripken different from everyone else. What makes a good...
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So You Want to Build a Sports Statue

Brooks Robinson Statue Photo by Maroon PR My home town of Baltimore, Maryland once held the moniker of “MonumentalCity” because of the hundreds of statues and monuments that adorned our downtown plazas. And while we...
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Risks of the Game

On Monday, following the memorial services for Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon, who died last Sunday in the Indycar finale in Las Vegas, drivers and Indycar officials met to discuss how to make the sport...
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Monumental City Welcomes Number Five

When I was growing up in Baltimore back in the 1950s, the city carried the moniker of ‘Monumental’ because it had more statues and monuments per capita than maybe any other US municipality. From the...
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Last Game at Memorial Stadium

Last Pitch at Memorial Stadium, October 6, 1991 Twenty years ago last week an era in Baltimore’s sports history ended. It was October 6, 1991. The debate about the need for a new ballpark was...
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Between the Lines: A Path to Peace

This month I’m on my way to Oakville, Ontario, to attend the annual conference of the International Sports Heritage Association (ISHA), a fraternity of 130 sports museums and halls of fame from all over the...
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Early ‘Poppa Bear’ Banks

Earl "Poppa Bear" Banks I love the fall…the cooler weather, the changing colors, and, of course, the football. Football’s roots run deep in Maryland. The City-Poly Game (or Poly-City Game if you are a Poly...
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An Evening With Earl

Legendary Orioles Manager Earl Weaver Last night our SportsLegendsMuseum hosted an evening with Earl Weaver and it proved to be more than any of us could have hoped for. Earl Weaver managed his last game...
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The Power of Sports

Russian Baseball Player, Petr Denisov holding Babe Ruth's 1927 home run bat It never ceases to amaze me the incredible power sports has to bring people together. No other aspect of human civilization crosses ethnic,...
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The New Preakness

Baltimore Grand Prix Harbor Rendering | McCormick Taylor, Inc. The Baltimore Grand Prix is finally upon us. Some people are really excited, others not so much. Will the race make money? Is it good for...
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Flanny

The ball rests in a small case, all by itself, surrounded by a large graphic depicting the last Orioles game ever at Memorial Stadium, October 6, 1991. The horsehide, red-stitched icon was used to record...
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Babe Ruth: 63 Years and Counting

How serendipitous that Jim Thome would become the eighth player in Major League history to hit 600 career home runs the day before the 63rd anniversary of Babe Ruth’s death. Most articles detailing the event...
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Brooks Robinson, Mister Oriole

This week a fair amount of attention has been focused on the Brooks Robinson statue, which is scheduled to be unveiled on October 22nd in the plaza between Russell Street and Washington Boulevard, just northwest...
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Wanting Something Good

We are in a drought. I’m not referring to the 100+ degrees outside…I’m referring to the shortage of news worthy of a smile. We have a looming debt crisis in Washington and total gridlock from...
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What Goes Around

About a year ago, when shortstop Derek Jeter passed Babe Ruth on the Yankees all-time hits list, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum forwarded a request through the Yanks’ public relations office asking that Jeter...
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The Long Goodbye

Nancy Reagan referred to it as “the long goodbye,” the slow deterioration of President Reagan’s mind to Alzheimer’s disease. Sylvia Mackey knows it, too. For ten years she has shared her husband’s battle with frontotemporal...
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John Mackey

The Baltimore Colts were the premiere team in the National Football League from 1957 through 1971, winning more games than any other franchise during that era. But they were great not just because they won...
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Interleague Play

Last Friday night I had tickets to the Orioles-Reds game at Camden Yards. As I walked to the park a few minutes before game time with my buddy, Ed, you couldn’t help but notice a...
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Making Sports Heritage Pay

It always surprises me to see how one city capitalizes on its sports heritage and another does not. Take the case of Montreal, Quebec and Lake Placid, New York. Located only 100 miles apart the...
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How to Keep Score

I’ve been playing and coaching baseball and softball for more than fifty years now, and one of the absolute joys of the game is keeping score and compiling statistics. The different eras of baseball, after...
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Taking Back Our Yard

October 15, 1997. I had just started working at the B&O Railroad Museum and was asked to stick around after work for a late meeting. I was a little annoyed because it was Game 6...
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Saluting Two Old Birds, Harry and Earl

One afternoon several years ago I received a telephone call from a woman who wanted to talk baseball with me. I could tell from her voice that she was elderly, in her late seventies or...
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“Killer” Harmon Killebrew, 1936-2011

Hall of Fame baseball great Harmon Killebrew passed away this week. His quiet, off-field demeanor was in direct contradiction to a menacing, aggressive plate presence that earned him the nickname “Killer.” Killebrew spent 22 seasons...
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Our Native Game

As the MIAA High School lacrosse playoffs are about to begin and Baltimore is once again hosting the NCAA Lacrosse Championships at M&T Bank Stadium I thought it appropriate to dig up an old piece...
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Babe Ruth Was More Than a Yankee!

One of the great challenges our institution faces is luring Baltimoreans to the Babe Ruth Birthplace. Ask them why they haven’t visited 216 Emory Street, “just a long fly ball from Camden Yards,” and they...
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My First Love

I remember my first grand prix. My family loaded up our 1974 Chevrolet Impala and drove the hour and a half to Montreal. It was June 1984, and I was about to experience the Canadian...
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William Donald Schaefer

In 1981 I was working on a documentary on the life and times of George Herman Ruth for the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation. When the production premiered in early 1982 at the Babe Ruth ‘House,’...
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How Many Ever Wanted to Work at a Museum?

I teach part-time at one of the local universities, adjunct professor is what they call me, and, as a way of introducing myself at the beginning of each semester, I ask the class: “How many...
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There is Something about Buck.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, the Orioles were 1-5. The hope and enthusiasm that came with Opening Day quickly faded into misery and despair. The Orioles were once again bringing up the rear...
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The Joy of Opening Day

In April 1954, four days removed from my seventh birthday, my father gave me maybe the best present I ever got, a ticket to the Baltimore Orioles’ very first home opener. That April 15...
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