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Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD, USA, MLB, baseball, Baltimore Orioles, fotoeins.com

Baltimore: Oriole Park at Camden Yards

I’m a longtime baseball fan, going way back to the days of watching on CBC Television many Montréal Expos’ home games at Jarry Park Stadium, and back to the inaugural seasons for both the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays. I’ve been looking forward to visiting Camden Yards in Baltimore since its completion in 1992. I’m visiting friends in Baltimore as one of many North American stops in my 2012 around-the-world (RTW) trip. With the added bonus of the stadium’s 20th anniversary, we’re on a weekday-afternoon tour of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Although baseball season is already a few weeks in, there are only six of us on the tour. It feels like we have all of Camden Yards to ourselves.

I’m also a fan of sports history. A few weeks earlier, I returned to Toronto for the first time in ten years, and I found some ‘religion’ in the presence of “The Holy Grail” inside the Hockey Hall of Fame. Here at Camden Yards, it’s special to examine an important part of Oriole and baseball lore, reading about Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson, and seeing the various displays for Cal Ripken Jr.

At home plate, I imagine I’m at bat, and smacking a 3-2 outside fastball towards the warehouse wall in right field, and I’m rounding the bases …

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Fotoeins Friday: Baseball, America’s pastime

: AT+T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants

I’ve always had a great fondness for baseball, even for a lad from Vancouver. I loved the gentle ebb-and-flow and the give-and-take of the game. I’ve fond memories of watching the Montreal Expos on Canada’s CBC, with play-by-play from Dave van Horne and Duke Snider, and the call of players like Steve Rogers, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, and Gary Carter. The addition of teams to distant Toronto and nearby Seattle provided more baseball to watch and follow.

I remember exactly where I was when the Toronto Blue Jays won the 1992 World Series and the 1993 World Series. And yes, I’m still upset the Expos never got a chance to play in the 1994 playoffs as one of the favourites, who were 34 games over 500.

Coming to this beautiful San Francisco venue to watch baseball feels like a great privilege with names like Willie McCovey, for whom the adjacent cove is named, and Wille Mays, for whom the front plaza of the stadium is named. I made the above photo from the upper deck at a Giants game in AT&T Park.

In the photo above, the Cincinnati Reds’ infield players are shifted towards right field to defend against San Francisco’s left-handed ‘pull’ hitter Barry Bonds. Cincinnati went to to win the game 6-3 (game boxscore).

Have you visited San Francisco? What are your highlights from “The City by the Bay”? Please leave your comments below!

I made the photo above on 24 August 2006. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com, and also appears on Travel Photo Thursday for Nancie McKinnon’s Budget Travelers Sandbox.