Lost Ballparks

Best of Lost Ballparks: Jim Palmer (HOF 1990)

• Mike Koser • Season 1 • Episode 7

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(This episode was recorded in 2022). 

We’re curating the most downloaded episodes for new listeners discovering Lost Ballparks. If you’re a longtime listener, thank you for being part of this incredible community!

Jim Palmer won 268 games in his big league career. He appeared in 6 World Series and won 3. He was a 3x Cy Young Award winner, 4x Gold Glove winner, won at least 20 games in 8 different seasons and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. And oh by the way, he is the only pitcher in baseball history to win a World Series game in 3 different decades! 

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Mike Koser:

I'm Mike Koser, and this is Lost Ball parks, a podcast that takes you on a journey to the golden age of baseball's lost ballparks, as told by the players, broadcasters, and fans who were there, and who are here now to give detailed first-hand accounts of what it was like to sit in the seats on a summer afternoon at Ebbett's Field, what it was like to pitch at the polo grounds, stand in the batter's box at Forbes Field, walk through the gates at Comiskey Park with transistor radio in hand. Welcome to Lost Ballparks.

Announcer:

Podcast open.

Mike Koser:

Our guest today on Lost Ballparks, Hall of Fame pitcher, Baltimore Oriole, Jim Palmer. Palmer won 268 games in his big league career. He appeared in six World Series, won three. The only Oriole that was a part of all three World Championships was a three-time Cy Young Award winner, four-time Gold Glove winner. He won at least 20 games in eight different seasons, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame with Joe Morgan in 1990. Jim Palmer, thank you for doing this.

Jim Palmer:

Oh, you're welcome.

Mike Koser:

So one of your first Major League Baseball games that you ever attended, I think I've got this right, was in 1954 at Old Yankee Stadium. Prior to that, you'd only watched games on a black and white television at home. So describe that experience walking into Yankee Stadium for the first time.

Jim Palmer:

You have to understand in 1954, uh New York had three major league ball clubs. And you know you had the Yankees in the Bronx, and then the Giants up at the polo grounds with Willie Mays, you had Mantle, and had DiMaggio. I mean, some of the greatest players ever that played for the Yankees. And then if you went across the bridges and you went over to Brooklyn, you had the Boys of Summer with Duke Snider, their center field er so.

Mike Koser:

What a time to be alive. Like to to be a kid growing up in New York in the fifties. So the first game was it a a day game, night game?

Jim Palmer:

It was a Tuesday night. My dad I don't know how he did it. You know he's in the dress business, so somebody must have said, Hey, do you want to take uh Jimmy to the to the Yankee games? And that was my favorite team. I mean, I had three choices, but I love the Yankees. When you've never been to a ballpark and you go to a night game and you walk up that tunnel, you don't realize for the first time how green the grass is. And it was glistening. We're playing the Indians in 1954, they broke my heart because uh I think they won the most games ever in the the catch of the World Series where Mays makes the great catch off the bat of Vic Wertz about 460 feet out in right center field of the polo grounds. So it was a great series if you were a Giant fan. But if you were a Yankee fan and your team had gotten beat for a very traumatic summer, and then all of a sudden they get swept by the Giants, you're a little bit disappointed. But I think it was Vic Raschi he was pitching against early wynn, who ended up in the Hall of Fame for the Indians. But the Yankees won. That was the first time I ever went there, and I actually got an autographed ball with the uh the Yankees uh ball club on it.

Mike Koser:

Do you still have that ball?

Jim Palmer:

No, you know, hey, when you run out of baseballs on a Saturday morning, you'll go to any length to do that.

Mike Koser:

Well, it wasn't that long after, and you could have all the baseballs you wanted, because you're the one playing at Yankee Stadium with some of these all-time greats that you grew up watching.

Jim Palmer:

You know, I mean I saw Mantle hit his 500th home run off of Stu Miller.

Mike Koser:

You were at that game, wow.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, I was at that game. You know, he hit a change-up. Stu was a great change-up pitcher, uh, you know, one of the best relievers I ever saw.

Mike Koser:

May 14th, 1967, and Jim, your Orioles are at old Yankee Stadium, your teammate Stu Miller on the mound, Mickey Mantle at the plate, and the late Jerry Coleman on the call.

Jerry Coleman:

Bellanger, Johnson and Powell. All to the right of second base....hard to get a ground ball between them. All by himself at 3rd base. Brooks Robinson....Here's the payoff pitch... This is it! There it goes! It's outta here!"

Mike Koser:

Several years ago, I asked you on Twitter what was your favorite ballpark to pitch in, and you replied, Old Yankee Stadium, you said that you remembered a game in 1965 when you were 19, that the bases were loaded and you struck out Mickey Mantle. Eleven years earlier, you're in the stands, a fan, watching your hero Mickey Mantle, play, and now you're striking him out with the bases loaded at the exact same ballpark.

Jim Palmer:

Well, I mean, that's kind of a life lesson for anybody that loves baseball. You know, I mean I go there at nine years old because I like the Yankees. You know, first time you've ever seen how green the grass is. You know, you dream about playing there. I mean, I always thought I was going to be a Yankee because I signed a year before the uh the draft, so I could have signed with anybody.

Mike Koser:

Right.

Jim Palmer:

And you know, I mean, as it turns out, of course, you know, the Orioles sixties, seventies, and eighties. I think the best winning percentage in baseball. But I always just thought I'd go to Yankee Stadium. But so when I got to pitch there, and again, you know, Mantle was in the end of his career. Elston Howard was one of the guys that I struck out with the bases loaded. Um he had been the most valuable player in 64. But but I threw high fastballs, and you know, if you look at analytics, you know, in in the in the year 2021 or now 2022, everybody's telling you, well, you gotta have that good spin rate on that four seam fastball. Well, I had that. Uh they didn't tell us that, but the hitters told me that they have trouble hitting the high fastball. Now you bring it down a little bit, you get into a hitter's count, you know, things changed a little bit. There were a lot of guys that gave you trouble that because they hit the high fastball. But most of the guys they would see that pitch and the Yankees were in this grouping and they tried to hit it and they just couldn't catch up.

Mike Koser:

By the way, even though you were a Yankees fan growing up, you still made it to the polo grounds to watch the Giants play, right?

Jim Palmer:

I wasn't a Giant fan. I mean, and I I it's hard not to grow up loving baseball and not know who Willie Mays was. Went on the daytime, it was it it wasn't sunny. I don't even know where the polo grounds was. But every you know, if you were a Yankee fan, you knew where Yankee Stadium was.

Mike Koser:

Right.

Jim Palmer:

And uh I used to come home when I was in the like the third or fourth grade and the games were all televised. They were televised black and white, as as you mentioned. But they uh I mean I watched Billy Martin. He made the great catch with the bases loaded uh even when he's playing second base right between right behind the pitching band to save a World Series. I think maybe that was might have been 52 or 53.

Announcer:

Game audio.

Jim Palmer:

And then when I moved to California after my dad passed away when I was nine and a half, I used to fifty-five, fifty-six, I used to listen to the Yankee and the World Series on a transistor radio between history and geography. So, um I mean that's the way you grew up.

Announcer:

Game audio.

Jim Palmer:

If you're a baseball fan as a kid, where you either came home if you got out of school early, or the game went a little bit longer. Back then the games only took about two hours and ten minutes.

Mike Koser:

Right.

Jim Palmer:

They weren't the four-hour duration type of games we have now.

Mike Koser:

In 1963, at age 17, you signed with the Baltimore Orioles. And two years later, in 1965, at age 19, you make your major league debut at Fenway Park.

Jim Palmer:

I came in and yeah, I mean, there's snow flurries. It's pretty cold. I I had fished in Aberdeen, South Dakota the year before, so I had a little bit used to cold weather, but never had that kind of weather in Arizona.

Mike Koser:

Snow flurries.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, snow flurries. This is before global warming.

Mike Koser:

Right, yeah.

Jim Palmer:

So I here.

Mike Koser:

And the first guy you ever face in Major League Baseball is Carl Yastrzemski.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, well, I walked in, but I got to the mound and I came in and I brought the warm-up ball in. I was so nervous. And Hank Bauer said, uh, hey, uh, how do you feel? I said, Well, I've never done this before. I'm a little apprehensive. I said, Well, what do I do with this other ball? He said, Well, I'll take care of that. You take care of Yastrzemski So I ended up walking Yaz, and the next hitter was uh uh Tony Conigliaro, who, for anybody that has a good memory or historian of baseball, he was on his way to 500 runs. That's how good he was.

Mike Koser:

Oh, yeah.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah. So I was nervous. Well, you're just going on instincts, which is okay, what do you do fastball? You throw a fastball. So I threw him a high fastball, he swung. I threw him another high fastball, he swung, and then I threw him by accident, threw him a knee-high lone-away fastball. And he actually took strike three, and John Flaherty, the home played umpire, called him out. And then uh gave up a broken bat single. So my inherited runners numbers weren't particularly good uh in my first game at Fenway Park.

Mike Koser:

In 1966, Frank Robinson joins the Orioles and proceeds to have a career year which included a home run off Cleveland's Louis Tiant that went completely out of memorial stadium.

Jim Palmer:

You know, you had um you had a mezzanine, then you had an upper deck, and then along the edge of the uh upper deck when it hung out over the the lower bleachers, and we're talking maybe 75, 80 feet, 90 feet. I mean, it was a long you didn't want to be dropping unless you had a parachute dropping out of that upper deck. It was a long way down to where the the junior Orioles used to sit actually about maybe 17, 18 feet higher than the playing surface. So there was a chain link fence that ran all the way to the top of the bleachers, so people wouldn't fall out. And he hit it kind of just to the right of that. So he hits the ball out of the stadium.

Mike Koser:

That power from Frank Robinson helped catapult the Orioles to the World Series in '66. And and the crazy thing is, in 1966, at age 20, you finish the season 15-10, and you find yourself pitching in game two of the World Series.

Announcer:

Sandy Koufax and Jim Palmer are today's starting pitcher. The incomparable Koufax won 27 this year, a National League record for leftys.... The youthful Palmer had 15 victories.

Mike Koser:

What did you think when you found out you would be pitching against Sandy Koufax?

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, he had a string of about five to seven years. It was as good as we're talking 280 to 307 innings, 44 starts. Uh, I think he pitched maybe wrong, five no-hitters. You know, he was 30, I was 20.

Announcer:

The 20-year-old Palmer seems calm enough as he warms up for his first World Series appearance.

Jim Palmer:

We had gotten to Los Angeles, and I didn't know they called the American League the Junior League. So when we were there, they uh it wasn't the LA Times, but they had another LA Herald or whatever it was, uh Junior League uh loop leaders in town to play Dodgers. Back then, you know, you had the TV show, um uh what was it, Laugh In?

Mike Koser:

Oh, right, yeah.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, Would You Believe? So on the way out to down Sunset Boulevard, because we stayed at the uh uh Continental Hotel that was owned by Gene Autry, and he was actually at the door the night before when we came in. So we went for a workout on Monday, and we're going to the game on the first game, I think, on Tuesday. And instead of a real estate sign saying three bedroom house, two baths, a pool, it said, Would you believe Dodgers...4 straight? So the game starts Frank and Brooks hit home runs in the first inning, and again, I'm pitching the next day, and I'm hoping that I pitch well because that's the only way you're gonna beat Koufax. And then the next day, you know, afternoon game, hazy. It's sunny, but it's hazy. And I think we go into the fifth inning, nothing nothing. And Willie Davis routine fly ball drops it. He didn't have to run, they just came in, a couple of steps dropped it. The next ball, almost the identical fly ball. He drops that one, picks it up, throws it in the dugout. We get like four under runs. I think the Dodgers make six errors in that game.

Mike Koser:

Wow.

Jim Palmer:

Um Sandy, I mean he's 30, he still threw exceptionally hard. I hit off him uh for probably in the second or third inning, and Andy Etchebarren had a little bit of uh kind of wrapped the bat out a little bit. Well, that's not a good thing to do against Koufax. So he throws him a high fastball and he thinks about swinging, but he can't get the bat going, throws him another one, throws him another one. So three high fastballs and I'm walking up the home plate and I said, radio balls. He said, What? I said, You you can hear him, but you couldn't quite see him. So Koufax throws me the first fastball. You know, I won my first game in the big leagues with a home run off Jim Bowden. I could hit a little bit. I was a good hitter in high school, but he throws me this high fastball, and I'm thinking about swinging at it. And I used to use Frank Robinson's 35 ounce bat, and I'm going, and the ball's in Roseboro's glove. So now he throws me the next pitch, and it looks exactly like the high fastball. So I go to swing at it, and it's a curveball, it ends up on the ground. I mean it goes straight down. So now I go, things aren't looking real good. In two pitches, I saw what uh anybody that tried to hit off of Sandy Koufax had to deal with. You had a fastball that started in the lobby and ended up on the third floor. You had a curveball that looked like it was starting in the lobby and ended up in the lower basement. And that's why Sandy Koufax was Sandy Koufax. Easy wind up, ball had uh tremendous finish, pretty surreal.

Mike Koser:

And to be so young and get a complete game four-hit shutout for the win.

Announcer:

Palmer's triumph made history because at nine days short of his 21st birthday, he's the youngest pitcher ever to achieve a shutout in a World Series.

Mike Koser:

First World Championship, too. Um, and you mentioned Memorial Stadium, that's your home ballpark on East 33rd, where the Orioles played from 54 to 91 in a very similar way to Ebbet's Field. Memorial Stadium was right smack dab in a neighborhood. Do you remember the route, first of all, that you would take to the ballpark? How would you get there?

Jim Palmer:

Well, it was on 33rd Street, so I'd just come down Charles Street. I used to ride in with Dick Hall, who went to Swarthmore, one of the great control pitchers of all time, and he would, you know, he also studied geology. He'd tell me about the rock formations. So I learned a lot. You know, Dick was much smarter than I was. I tried to stand next to him in the outfield.

Mike Koser:

What were some of the unique characteristics of Memorial Stadium that stood out to you?

Jim Palmer:

You had to park next to people. So if the car behind you didn't leave right away, you weren't leaving. It wasn't like normal parking lots.

Mike Koser:

You were sardined in there.

Jim Palmer:

I mean 54, I think 54,000 people. Um, I mean, I remember going to see the Colts and the Packers play maybe at 66, $5.75 for the championship ticket.

Announcer:

Wow.

Jim Palmer:

Sitting on the 50 yard line. You know, they didn't have a lot of box seats. I think they had like 8,000 box seats, but you had the bleachers, you had the upper deck. 309 down the line. So if you're when it opened, and I wasn't there when they opened it, they had a scoreboard way out there. I think that's where the fences actually were. So a lot of triples were hit, and then they brought the fences in. So you had 309 with about a 15, 16, 17 foot wall down the line. So it kind of went out, and there was a 360 sign, and then you kind of got to where the old outfield used to be, and that's where the bullpens were. They were 387. They brought them into 378 along the line or weight, I think the center field bullpen we're visiting was out right center or left center with the Oriole bullpen. And the great thing is they had the scoreboard, and to the right of that, you had row houses. So it was a pretty good place to pitch in April because the row houses were partly brick and white. And I remember when Rick Dempsey came and first got traded. Of course, you know, we had four 20-game winners in 71, three in 70. And when Rick came over from the Yankees in 76, he said, You can't see. We need to we need to get a hitting background out there. And and somebody said, "Dipper", don't you know the Orioles win with pitching? So until the trees grew in probably in the middle of May, it was a pretty good place to pitch.

Mike Koser:

Well, yeah, I often think about like how great it would be to be a kid and live in one of those houses and kind of look out your window and you know, do your homework but watch a game.

Jim Palmer:

You could uh hear. We did an ad uh once where we were actually in a trailer and we would walk at ... knock on people's doors and say, Hey, where have you been? We miss you at the ballpark. And um Paul Blair was really shy. So we're in the trailer listening, and he walks up a driveway, and the guy's actually I think he must have had some kind of uh disease in one of his trees, and you can hear him with a hammer. He's kind of chiseling out the the disease and it's gonna pass it or do something like that. And Paul says, Hey, where have you been? We miss you at the ballpark. And the guy goes, Used to live on 39th Street, but couldn't find a parking spot. Now I live on 34th Street, can't find a parking spot. I'm never going to the ballpark. So part of the intimacy of actually living in a neighborhood ...I used to have a little Volkswagen that I bought up in Mannheim for $1,375 after we won the World Series, so I could go do Little League banquets and stuff for the Orioles and make $25 a night. I used to try to get that Volkswagen and people would park their car just where you didn't have enough room to park in between.

Mike Koser:

On game day, I mean everything about game day is great except street parking on game day, uh never, never easy, especially near the stadium. Okay, so look, after making it to the World Series in 1969, but losing to a very good Mets team, the Orioles are right back in 1970, this time squaring off against the Cincinnati Reds. Game one of the 1970 World Series.

Jim Palmer:

Bench, I think, hit 45 home runs. Perez hit 40. They had a nice ball club. They just weren't quite as good as us, and they didn't quite have the same type of pitching. The whole 70 season started in spring training when Earl Weaver said we're not going to uh, you know, because we had a good club. We had 109 games in 1969, 108 and 70. So we had a good ball club, and and Earl was like a jockey coming down the stretch at the Pimlico in the middle of the Preakness. He had the whip out early.

Earl Weaver:

People say this is fun. The further I can get away from somebody like that, the happier I'm gonna be.

Jim Palmer:

He wanted to get to the World Series, he wanted to win the World Series. To be honest, they did not have they didn't have the pitching that the Mets had, they didn't have the good fortune that the Mets had, they didn't have the umpires on their side like the Mets had. I don't know. It just seemed like every call in 69 went against us. And when you're playing a good ball club in a turned out a five-game series, that's all you need.

Mike Koser:

You win game one at Riverfront Stadium, and I look back and think, man, you just missed pitching at Crosley Field, the Reds' former home. By just a few months, they had moved into Riverfront a couple months earlier. Uh that would have been fun, you know, to be at Crosley Field.

Jim Palmer:

Well, it would have been, but you know, I played in the All-Star game. My first All-Star game is uh, you know, actually started against Seaver.

Curt Gowdy:

This is Red's country, Riverfront Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Reds and the 1970 All-Star. American League pitchers Jim Palmer, Sam McDowell, and Jim Perry are devastating.

Jim Palmer:

I got to pitch three shutout innings. That's the game where Fosse gets run over by Pete Rose.

Mike Koser:

Oh, right. Yeah.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah.

Mike Koser:

So fast forward game one of the 1970 World Series, and you're called on to pitch.

Jim Palmer:

Again, I pitched game one for some reason. I mean, Cuellar and McNally won 23 and 24 games, but I think Earl thought right-handers matched up better against the Reds in 70 than than lefties. I I kind of in retrospect, Mike won 139 games in seven years, and Mack won 20 games four straight years. So in that stretch. So but I started the first game, and I mean I gave up three runs early. But then we came back. Five games, a lot of things can happen.

Mike Koser:

It's your second world championship, and then in uh in 1971, you're elected again to the uh American League All-Star team. The game is at Tiger Stadium. The AL's trying to win for the first time, I think, since 1962. It's the third inning, and Reggie Jackson steps up to the plate to face Pirates pitcher Doc Ellis.

Announcer:

Game Audio

Mike Koser:

You, I believe, were warming up at the time, is that right?

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, you know, it's what's so interesting about that game. Well, a lot of things about that game. I think everybody, there were six home runs, all hit by Hall of Famers. Frank hit a home run line drive home run off, uh, Doc Ellis, Bench hit one, or Clemente hit one, Aaron hit one, maybe Killebrew hit one. I mean, some pretty great hitters. But when you're warming up and throwing a pitch and turn around trying to time my warm-ups to also watch Doc pitch to Reggie, and there's complete silence in the ballpark because everybody's watching how far the ball's going. And it does go up over the second roof, and if it doesn't hit the transformer it is going out of the ballpark. I mean, that's a pretty good curveball that Willie Horton wants, and he got out of his front foot and hit a line drive to the upper deck in left field, but right field the pavilion's even higher, the roof is uh higher and he just scorched that ball. But the one thing the difference the American Leauge wasn't winning a lot of All-Star games back then. And we did win that game, I think, six to four, but the game was two hours and eight minutes.

Mike Koser:

Wow, two hours and eight minutes. Uh that would never happen today.

Jim Palmer:

They ran a game uh a couple weekends ago, the the sixth game of the 71 World Series when we lost to the Pirates. And I gave up a run of the first, run of the third, and then shut him out, I guess, for the next five or six. We won in the tenth inning. And a friend of mine called me and he said, Yeah, that was a tutorial on not taking a lot of time between pitches. And I said, Well, I already faced them once, already knew what I wanted to do, already knew what they probably knew what they wanted to do. They didn't wear batting gloves. I mean, all you gotta do is watch games now. Guys come up to home plate, they got their batting gloves, they adjust them, grab the bat, you throw ball one, you don't even swing, they step out of the box.

Mike Koser:

Yeah, adjust again and then do that every pitch.

Jim Palmer:

And they get ready to hit again. Now they don't do that when they're taking batting practice. Right. They allow them to do it. It's kind of a ritual. Uh Mike Hargrove was a human rain delay at home plate.

Mike Koser:

Oh yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. You mentioned the 71 World Series. Uh, what do you remember about facing Clemente?

Jim Palmer:

I mean, he uh you know he tripled off being hit a home run in that game six, 358 feet, but it was just poked at the right field, but that's the way you hit 'em, much shorter down the lines at Memorial Stadium. But he's a five-tool player, maybe four and a half, wasn't known as a home run guy. But if you go back to that 71 All-Star game, I still remember Mickey Lolich was quite a pitcher. One year he pitched 376 innings, and uh he threw him a hanging curveball. He got out on his front foot and hit over the 415 side in the upper deck in right field.

Announcer:

Game audio.

Jim Palmer:

He could hit, and he could hit pretty much any pitch you threw. I think because he played in Pittsburgh, he didn't play in New York, he didn't play in Los Angeles. We know Jackie Robinson changed the fortunes if he were an African American player, but if you read the book Clemente, you realize that Latin players that came up through the system, I think Roberto actually started with the Dodgers. When you read his biography, it's a pretty interesting read, but he ended up being one of the great players of all time.

Mike Koser:

On October 6th, 1991, the Baltimore Orioles played their final game at Memorial Stadium. More than a hundred Orioles from the past and present were there that day to say their final goodbyes. Music from the movie Field of Dreams started to play. And out of the dugout, one by one, the all-time great Orioles started to file out. Brooks Robinson in uniform, wearing number five, heads to third base. Frank Robinson, right behind him to right field. Boog Powell to first base. Jim Palmer, you, head to the pitcher's mound. Don Baylor, Rick Dempsey goes behind the plate. Davey Johnson and Bobby Grich to second. Louis Aparicio to short, Lee May, Pat Kelly, El Rod Hendrix, Dave McNally. I mean, one by one, these guys are coming out of the dugout in uniform. There is not a dry eye in Memorial Stadium. As fans who have celebrated these players and their accomplishments the last nearly 40 years, Mike Cuellar, Mike Flannagan, Dennis Martinez, Scott McGregor, Milt Pappas, Steve Barber, Cal Ripken Jr. And then finally, your Hall of Fame manager, Earl Weaver, walks out. Looking back at that footage, Jim, I still get goosebumps.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, it was a memorable moment. And I think anybody that lived in Baltimore, it wasn't just the Orioles, it was the Colts. Chuck Thompson, uh, the late Chuck Thompson is also memorialized in the broadcast wing of the Hall of Fame. He did the Colt games, did the Oriole games. When you talk about Memorial Stadium, you talk about the stadium that's built in memorial of people that died in World War II. You think of the Colts. And again, Sunday in Baltimore in Memorial Stadium, watching the Colts play. I mean, when we won that '66 World Series, we came back, get our setup the next day, and the Colts were working out. And I was watching Johnny Unitas, who eventually I would get to know and play golf with and all that, throwing 15 uh yard outs to Raymond Berry, who was one of the great receivers of all time. And it was like a 95 mile per hour fastball blown away. I mean, the ball was already in the air, and Raymond hadn't even made his cut. So you got to see if you lived in Baltimore back then, if you wanted to go to bowling, you'd go to Johnny Unitas uh bowling alley, or if you wanted Brooks had a restaurant, Brooks Robinson. A lot of the guys, Geno Marchetti started Gino's again, an all-pro uh Hall of Fame alignment. Right. So yeah, they just had a marvelous podcast. I still run in to Lenny Moore, who's got to be, I don't know, in his mid eighties now. So yeah, yeah, Baltimore and Memorial Stadium was more than just the Orioles. In fact, we were kind of I think we kind of learned, earned our spurs just trying to maybe be a little bit like a lot of the Colts who lived in that community, became part of that community and really made a difference in that community.

Mike Koser:

Yeah, and it was great to see some of the Colts included in that final celebration at Memorial Stadium in 1991. And I did notice watching the video today that when you walked out to the mound and that music is playing, you fought back tears. I mean, it was it was a special moment, not just for the fans, but uh for the players.

Jim Palmer:

Yeah, it was a special moment because I mean here I am at 76, but my mind is still pretty intact. But at the end of the day, those are the kind of moments and I think all you gotta do is go to Cooperstown for the induction, and you realize how people just love baseball or love their football, and in the case of the Colts, who would eventually move to Indianapolis, and now of course you have the Ravens, which they get in Baltimore. But Baltimore, you know, has always been a nice sports town, and Memorial Stadium had so much to do with that.

Mike Koser:

Yeah, it really was a special ballpark. And those that uh that were there to experience it between 54 and 91, uh we'll never forget it. Thank you so much, Jim Palmer, for taking a couple minutes today. What a career. 268 wins, three Cy Young awards, six World Series that you appeared, and three that you won, uh inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Great player, great friend, great broadcaster, and uh thank you so much for sharing your memories with us today.

Jim Palmer:

Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure.

Mike Koser:

All the best to you and your family, Jim, and look forward to hearing you back on the air in the next couple months.

Jim Palmer:

Okay, Let's hope.

Mike Koser:

Okay, yeah, no kidding. I I can remember as a kid being in the backyard of my house in Castleberry, Florida, setting up a little pitching mound on our stiff St. Augustine grass, and then trying my best to emulate Jim Palmer's delivery. Uh yeah. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Lost Ballparks Podcast. Really appreciate it. This podcast is a complete labor of love and so I'm thankful that uh you've taken the time to join me today. A reminder, if you haven't already, you can subscribe for free on the podcast platform of your choice. Apple, Spotify, Pandora, whatever, so you don't ever miss an episode.

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Mike Koser

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