Fire
This Oriole Park was the club's home for the next 28½ seasons. The team enjoyed great success, especially in the early 1920s when the Orioles won seven consecutive International League pennants. Great care was always taken to protect the aging wooden structure, such as hosing it down after games. But on the night of July 3, 1944, the old park's luck ran out. A fire of uncertain origin (speculated to have been a discarded cigarette) totally consumed the old ballpark and everything the team owned.
The suddenly homeless club took refuge in Municipal Stadium, the city's football field. Literally rising from the ashes, in heroic fashion, the Orioles went on to win the International League championship that year, and also the Junior World Series over Louisville of the American Association. The large post-season crowds at Municipal Stadium, which would not have been possible at Oriole Park, caught the attention of the major leagues, and Baltimore suddenly became a viable option for teams looking to move. Had the fire not happened, Baltimore's baseball saga may well have turned out quite differently than it has.
Spurred by the Orioles' success, the city chose to rebuild Municipal Stadium as a multi-purpose facility of major league caliber, which they renamed Memorial Stadium. Baltimore, which had seemed to get "no respect" time after time in the past, finally became big league again in 1954, this time for many years to come.
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Famous quotes containing the word fire:
“Men hold themselves cheap and vile; and yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood: they are the extension of his personality.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;”
—Harry Graham (1874–1936)
“Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)