KERRY'S BIO/STATEMENT

During the summer of 1968, when I was four years old, my parents and grandparents took me to Bat Day at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium.  The deal was that any kid under the age of 14 (or whatever--I just knew I qualified) accompanied by an adult got a free bat.  Well, the turnout was so much higher than the Orioles expected--they didn't draw real well back then, for those of you who don't remember the days when the Orioles didn't pack the place most of the time--that they ran out of bats before we got there.  For those of us who were shut out, coupons were provided; if you came back later in the season--the details are a bit hazy at this point--they'd give you a bat upon presentation of said coupon.  Well, my family moved to the Boston area about six weeks later and, needless to say, I never got that bat.  In fact, I never set foot in Memorial Stadium again.  Until 1993, I was in Baltimore exactly once after 1968.  But I have rooted loyally for the Orioles ever since I saw that first game, even if it meant doing so long distance.

Before cable TV and the Internet, following a non-local team long-distance was tough.  My family moved from the Boston area to the Chicago area in 1972, when I was eight, and I've lived in suburban Chicago ever since.  When the Orioles weren't playing the White Sox--most of the time, obviously--I typically had to settle for following the club through the daily newspaper (a wire service story and a box score, if I was lucky) and The Sporting News.  At some point I realized that I could pick up radio stations from Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit and, sometimes, Minneapolis, so every so often I could catch static-filled snatches of games from other locales as well (only during the evening, except Milwaukee).

Of course when the Orioles made the postseason, as they did routinely in the early 1970's and in 1979, there was additional opportunity to actually see the team that mostly existed in my mind's eye.  When the Orioles won it all in 1983, I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan and one of my best Orioles memories is watching the World Series that year in Ann Arbor, wherever I could scope out a television set.  One of my least favorite memories was following the misery of April and early May, 1988, while in graduate school at the University of Chicago, as the Orioles set a record for early season futility.

By 1990 I was regularly on-line, first on the USA Today Sports proprietary site, later on Prodigy. I was getting closer and closer to being able to follow the team as though I lived somewhere near the area.  In 1993, having been on Prodigy and having joined a group that later adopted the moniker "Orioles REGS," for the better part of two years, I returned to Baltimore for the first time since 1976 and only the second time since my family moved in 1968.  It was there that I first met, face-to-face, a number of the other "REGS," including Bob Bryant, the person who is really the driving force behind this Web site, and we've been in regular contact ever since.  I have, in fact, returned to Baltimore each year since '93 to catch some games, usually a week's worth, at Camden Yards, with Bob and a number of other people, including my now-fiancée Meg Goldsmith (who I met because of our mutual interest in the Orioles).

Around 1980, while still in high school, I became interested in sabermetrics, and I retain this interest to this day, a fact that will manifest itself in a certain percentage of the articles I write.  I also bring a certain amount of on-field experience to the table, having played organized ball, up to the semi-pro level, for nearly 20 years before giving way to a torn knee ligament in 1989.  But while I believe I know how to play ball pretty well, I make no pretense of knowing what it's like to play big league ball; I was nothing more than a pretty good ballplayer and I never operated under the delusion of having pro talent.  I think that realization has pushed me to comment more on the numbers side of the game than the physical side...for better or worse.

We hope you'll find "Birds in the Belfry" writings to be of sufficient interest to make it a regular part of your Orioles Internet routine.  And make no mistake--the focus here is on the writing.  There are other sites that focus on news and information, and we make no attempt to replace them; it's not our forte.  We hope to supplement these other sites, through--hopefully thought-provoking--essays, perspectives, editorials and columns, not to mention the occasional (again, hopefully) humorous satirical piece.  Whatever your views, please let us know what you think by posting on the chat board (link on the frame to the left).

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