Oriole Park at Camden Yards

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, often referred to simply as Camden Yards or Oriole Park, is a Major League Baseball (MLB) ballpark located in Baltimore, Maryland. Home to the Baltimore Orioles, it is the first of the "retro" major league ballparks constructed during the 1990s and early 2000s, and remains one of the most highly praised. It was completed in 1992 to replace Memorial Stadium.

The park is situated in downtown Baltimore, a few blocks west of the Inner Harbor in the Camden Yards Sports Complex. The Orioles celebrated the ballpark's 20th anniversary during the 2012 season and launched the website CamdenYards20.com as part of the celebration. Historically, Oriole Park at Camden Yards is one of several venues that have carried the "Oriole Park" name for various Baltimore franchises over the years.

History

Construction

Prior to Camden Yards, the predominant design trend of big league ballparks was the symmetrical "multi-purpose stadium". Memorial Stadium, the Orioles' home since they moved from St. Louis in 1954, was an early example of such a design.

Oriole Park

Oriole Park is the name of several former major league and minor league baseball parks in Baltimore, Maryland.

It is also half the name of the current downtown home of the Baltimore Orioles, its full name being Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Early Oriole Parks

All of the early incarnations of "Oriole Park" were built within a few blocks of each other.

The first field called Oriole Park was built on the southwest corner of Sixth Street / Huntington Avenue (later renamed 25th Street) (north); and York Road (later Greenmount Avenue) (east). The park was also variously known as Huntington Avenue Park and American Association Park. It was the first home of the major league American Association professional baseball franchise called the Baltimore Orioles, during 1882–1889.

In 1890, the Orioles club moved four blocks north and opened a new Oriole Park, (retroactively tagged as Oriole Park II). It was on a roughly rectangular block bounded by 10th Street (later renamed 29th Street) (north); York Road (later Greenmount Avenue) (east); 9th Street (later renamed 28th Street) (south); and Barclay Street (west). This field in the then suburban village of Waverly, a community then just outside the northeast city limits of Baltimore at North Avenue (then Boundary Avenue), from 1816, served as the home of the A.A. Orioles entry only briefly, during 1890 and for the first month of the spring season in 1891. The club's reason for abandoning the park after barely more than one full season is unknown.

Camden

Camden may refer to:

People

Places

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Canada

England

Ireland

United States

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league. A total of 30 teams now play in two divisions, the American League (AL) and National League (NL), with 15 teams in each. The AL and NL operated as separate legal entities from 1901 and 1876 respectively, until 2000, when they were merged into a single organization known as Major League Baseball. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities since 1903, in 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. The organization also oversees minor league baseball leagues, which comprise about 240 teams affiliated with the major-league clubs. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament.

Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era; players rarely hit home runs during this time. Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal. The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson.