Inside Voices: Camden Yards Hosts Quietest Game of the Season

Inside Voices: Camden Yards Hosts Quietest Game of the Season

BALTIMORE, April 29 (UPI) — Baseball is a lonely and quiet game — each man on an island. One man, the pitcher, literally stands on an island of dirt, a mound surrounded by a sea of grass.

But baseball got even lonelier — and quieter — on Wednesday afternoon in Baltimore. While tension seized much of the rest of the city, a crowd-less game played out anticlimactically at the Orioles’ ballpark, as the home team jumped out to a six run lead in the bottom of the first inning.

Visiting pitcher Jeff Samardzija was chased after five innings, giving up seven earned runs, and the Baltimore Orioles coasted to an 8-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. There were high fives, but no fanfare.

Despite the controversial circumstances that brought about Wednesday’s empty stadium, the atmosphere inside Camden Yards was more surreal than somber. The umpire’s “strike” calls could be heard echoing clearly down the sideline to the outfield bleachers.

“It’s so quiet here at the ballpark,” Joe Angel, the Orioles’ radio play-by-play announcer, remarked, “I’m worried that I may be talking too loud.”

He opted to use his “Masters voice,” a reference to the hushed tones of golf broadcasting.

Players had to mind their manners too, as chatter from dugouts could be easily picked up by the ump at home plate. Disagreement voiced too loudly — vulgar quips normally swallowed up by crowd noise — ran the risk of seeing the silence disrupted by ejection.

But in the end, the game served as a peaceful counterpoint to the unrest outside Camden’s brick walls. The radio announcers remarked that the game felt “purer,” like the days before the regimentation of Little League, or the commercialization of the majors, when games were organized by word of mouth and played in fields without seats or bleachers.

A handful of scouts sat behind home plate, photogs squatted with their cameras in the media dugouts and a small group of fans gathered behind the fences in center-left. But their presence was little felt. The game seemed more like a lighthearted practice than one that would count in the official record books.

Ubaldo Jimenez — the game’s winning pitcher — jokingly tossed a ball to an imaginary fan in an empty seat. After a three-run shot in the first, Chris Davis waved to the absent crowd. When the final out was recorded, the players walked off nonchalantly.

Throughout the nine innings, players on the diamond, who could easily be heard chatting with each other, seemed unaware that one of the stadium’s parking lots had been turned into a staging area for the National Guard, called in to quell violence sparked by a long history of police brutality.

It seemed as if for a few hours, nothing mattered but baseball. And also, that baseball didn’t matter at all.