Send up a cheer for sportscaster Tom Davis, who joins outfielders Adam Jones and Joe Orsulak as the newest inductees into the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame.
Jones played here for a full decade and helped turn the franchise from shameful loser into a five-year stretch where the O’s had the best won-loss record in baseball. He could hit and field, and brought a sense of pie-in-the-face joy to the game. He was, for many, the face of the franchise as it rose from the grave.
Orsulak was a solid hitter with a bazooka arm in an era consisting of the best of times and the worst of times, from 1988 to 1992. In ’88, the team opened the season with 21 straight losses; a year later, the inspiring “Why Not?” O’s fought for the pennant into the season’s final series.
Jones played here for 11 years; Orsulak, for five.
It only took Tom Davis half a century to make the Hall of Fame grade. He’s been covering the O’s (and football, too) on TV and radio ever since Vince Bagli helped break him in on weekends at WBAL’s Action News back in 1971.
He’s brought a reporter’s fairness, an analyst’s keen eye and a robust enthusiasm. But best of all, he’s brought a hometown kid’s sense of history to the job.
And he’s never forgotten those who helped him break into the sportscasting business — and stay there.
“At a moment like this,” he said last week when the Hall of Fame news broke, “you can’t help but think of all the people who helped along the way.”
He goes back to the dawn of modern Orioles baseball. He can tell you the starting lineup for the first O’s game at Memorial Stadium back in ’54. He can recite Bob Nieman’s batting average and Connie Johnson’s earned run average. He can tell you what a box seat or a bleacher ticket cost.
He can remember his father taking him to his first trip to Memorial Stadium to watch a doubleheader against Cleveland, and his dad teaching him how to keep score in a little scorebook The Sun used to publish.
All of it becomes part of the texture of a Davis spot behind the microphone for over half a century.
He came of age listening to Chuck Thompson and Ernie Harwell, voices who introduced big-league ball to Baltimore and later gave Davis broadcasting tips. And he learned first-hand lessons from Bagli and Bill O’Donnell as he was breaking in.
All those lessons added to the texture of his work and his understanding of the history of Baltimore sports.
“I never wanted to move,” he says. “I mean, watching guys like Brooks [Robinson], and then he’s handing over third base to [Doug] DeCinces. There’s a legacy. What was I gonna do, go to Philadelphia and talk about Puddin’ [Head] Jones? Watching the Orioles wasn’t about sports, it was your life.”
That’s a Hall of Fame record in anybody’s league.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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