Remembering Orioles icon Brooks Robinson, the man who ignited my love of baseball

Think of Brooks Robinson. How do you see him?

Sprawling in the dirt at Memorial Stadium? Flying through the air, the bright green wall as his backdrop? Hoover attached to his left hand like a first-generation Animorph? You probably didn't see him hunched over at the plate, ready to pounce (sorry, Brooks), but he comported himself pretty well there, too, with his lifetime .267 average, 268 homers, and a 105 OPS+. That was more than enough, given his other superhuman talents.

I saw Brooks, fittingly, on the webbing of my first baseball glove.

In 1996, when I first wriggled my hand through the Brooks Robinson model that had been handed down, the legendary Oriole had been retired for 19 years, and it felt like far longer. I could barely conceive of us existing on the same plane, but as a studious baseball obsessive who planned to take to the diamond soon, I had to first know every single thing about the man who wrote his cursive plainly. No loops beyond the B and R, no flourishes. Just beautiful because it was concise. The antithesis of his typical glove work.

Without the benefit of online streaming services, I relied mostly upon the Baseball Encyclopedia and the looping schedule of Classic Sports, a meandering channel that would soon become ESPN Classic. At that time, though, it showed mostly '70s game shows with panels of athlete guessers (Brooks would occasionally stop by, but his teammate and non-brother Frank Robinson was a more frequent guest) and the 1960 show Home Run Derby (Brooks never appeared, but fellow Oriole Gus Triandos did for some reason?). I didn't get a full-fledged dose of Brooks' greatness until my first-ever trip to Cooperstown, where his thatched road gray matted with bright, ageless Oriole orange was on prominent display. Next to nearly every screen, there was a button you could press to summon Robinson's highlights. His headlong dives. His self-propelled push. His one-motion whip-and-throw. As if I needed another reason to despise the Mets, I learned their 1969 team stole a World Series from my new hero.

Oh, did I mention I grew up in New York City? Yup. Brooks actually permeated my consciousness and got to me before the New York Yankees. It's true. I also used to comb my hair and make it look like Brady Anderson's sideburns because I thought that's what sideburns were, but that's beside the point.

Nearly 25 years after our cosmic introduction, I finally crossed paths with Brooks in person. I was in Cooperstown in 2019 to cover the Baseball Hall of Fame induction of Mariano Rivera, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez and Co. The Hall is extremely explicit that your press pass forbids you from seeking autographs, though I took that to mean "at press events" and not "at designated paid autograph signings". Whatever the potential career cost, I refused to give away the chance to tell Brooks what he meant to me (and, just six months later, the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic crystallized my decision to never take a chance like that for granted).

I did a little something called "lying" (sorry, Hall), handed the pass to my father, paid the requisite cost, and waited in line to meet Brooks. When I reached the front of the queue, I showed him the glove.

Orioles Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson dies at 86

Brooks responded with a bolt-of-light smile in a break from the drudgery of the session and asked me if it was alright if he wrote out "1970 World Series MVP" at the bottom of my keepsake. Of course it was.

He'll never fully know what he meant to me, but at least I can rest knowing he had some idea.

In addition to earning that honor, Robinson was an 18-time All-Star, a 23-year Oriole, the greatest defensive third baseman in the history of major league baseball, and a pretty solid inroad into the game of baseball if the terminology doesn't exactly jump off the page and you'd rather watch someone with supreme grace glide across the atmosphere.

And if you believe in magic -- even a little bit -- then you'll probably believe pretty hard in the October chances of a franchise literally defined by the slogan [OUR TEAM NAME] Magic.