Catcher Andy Etchebarren and first baseman Boog Powell were standing behind the batting cage at the Orioles’ spring training facility in Miami in 1966, the year after they had won 94 games and finished third in the American League.
At the plate taking batting practice was the Orioles’ new acquisition, former National League MVP Frank Robinson, a 30-year-old whom the Orioles had received in a trade with the Cincinnati Reds for starting pitcher Milt Pappas, among others.
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Robinson smashed pitch after pitch into the palm trees in left-center field.
Etchebarren looked at Powell. Powell looked at Etchebarren.
“I think Etch was the one that actually said it: ‘I think we just won the pennant,’” Powell recalled. “And I said, ‘Welp, looks pretty good, don’t it?’”
The two young Orioles were prophetic. Robinson led the Orioles to their first championship that October. And to three more World Series – and another title in 1970 – in a six-year span.
“We were good. We might have won without him,” Powell said, “but I wouldn’t have wanted to try.”
Robinson, who died of cancer Thursday in Southern California at age 83, cemented his legacy during his time in Baltimore (1966-71) as one of the greatest players of all time. He won the Triple Crown and AL MVP in 1966, making him the only player to win MVP in both leagues.
The right-handed hitting outfielder ended his 21-season career with 586 homers. He became the first African-American manager in both the AL (Cleveland, 1975) and NL (San Francisco, 1981). He managed for 16 years, including four seasons (1988-91) with the Orioles, for whom he won the Manager of the Year Award in 1989.
Here’s a look at Robinson, with the help of some of those who worked closely with him.
The franchise-changer
“He really taught us how to win. He took a lot of us under his wing,” Etchebarren said. “You win by practicing hard, playing hard, giving 100 percent and whatever happens falls at the end of the game and you start again tomorrow. He was just a winning player; there’s no doubt about that.”
“We really didn’t know what to expect from Frank. The Orioles had apparently gone out and got an old, washed up 30-year-old guy from Cincinnati,” Powell said. “What are we gonna do with him? We gave up Milt Pappas, and he was a great pitcher. We weren’t sure. We were good in our own right. At least we thought we were good. But the end result, when you look back on it, Frank came over and taught us how to play the game.”
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“He came over and made us all better. Made us all believe,” said Hall-of-Famer Jim Palmer. “Belief is so important. The season is so long. You go to the ballpark and you never assume you are going to win, but you expect to win when you have good players. But he made everybody better, and he made us all believe that we could play the game at the level he did as far as effort.”
The no-fraternization policy
Robinson didn’t believe in being friendly with the opposition – and he passed that on to his new teammates in Baltimore.
“There’d be instances where somebody was talking out on the field with one of the opposing players, and he’d say, ‘Why do you go out and talk to those guys when in five minutes you’re gonna want to be kicking their ass?’” Powell remembered. “‘Take them out afterward for dinner. They’re not your friends on the field.’ And he was right. Pretty much everybody on the team adhered to that.”
“We couldn’t talk to the opposition,” Etchebarren said. “Not like they do today. They hug each other and all that. If we did that, in Kangaroo Court, he’d kill us.”
Kangaroo Court
The Orioles began a Kangaroo Court after games – only wins – in which they would bring up individual offenses during the previous contest. Robinson was the presiding judge and would wear a mop-head as a wig. Fines were doled out if players were guilty.
“When we had the Kangaroo Court, who was the judge? Frank,” Palmer said. “We appointed him because he was the guy.”
“It took five minutes to get the court over with. And if you left a runner on third with less than two outs and you didn’t get him in, it cost you a dollar,” Powell said. “It wasn’t the dollar; it was the fact that someone was paying attention (to your mistake) and somebody knew it. So, the next time you might bust your ass a little bit more. I don’t want to get fined a dollar. That was the kind of aggression that Frank brought to the Orioles. We probably weren’t as aggressive as we could have been before Frank.”
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The player
“He was a monster offensive player. He could hit any pitch you’d throw out of the ballpark to any part of the field. … (Al Downing once) threw Frank a low and away changeup, and he hit it over the scoreboard in right field (in Miami during spring training), over the clock, into the wind,” Palmer said. “It was a pitcher’s pitch. It didn’t matter. You could throw it at him. You could knock him on his ass, and he’d get up and say, ‘Let’s go.’ He got hit over 190 times. Stood right over the top of the plate. … He was one of the best offensive players in my 50-some years of baseball that I ever saw.”
The homer
Robinson’s most famous homer came in the first inning of the second game of a doubleheader on May 8, 1966. Cleveland’s Luis Tiant hadn’t allowed a run in his first three games of the season. Tiant threw a pitch down and in, and Robinson crushed it – over 50 rows of left-field bleachers and completely out of Memorial Stadium. The only time that had ever been done. It was estimated at traveling at least 465 feet in the air and came to rest under a car in the parking lot, 540 feet from home plate. Robinson said he didn’t really understand he had hit it out of the stadium – he thought his teammates were joking, until he went to the outfield in the next inning and the fans in the bleachers there gave him a standing ovation. Powell was in the on-deck circle.
“I was kneeling on deck. Maybe I saw it at a different angle than he had. I don’t know But I saw it perfect. I was pretty impressed,” Powell said. “When he came in, I said, ‘Frank, did you get it all?’ And he said, ‘No, I hit it on the end of the bat. Just a little bit.’ We laughed about it.”
The swimming pool incident
The scariest incident of Robinson’s career occurred in August 1966, when the team was at a party during an off day at the home of a local funeral director who was friends with Orioles pitcher Steve Barber. The home had a pool, and the players were throwing each other into the water. Robinson didn’t know how to swim, so he got into the pool himself because he didn’t want to be tossed in. He didn’t know it had a steep drop-off from about four feet to 12 feet. Etchebarren and others, including Davey Johnson, ultimately pulled Robinson to safety before he drowned.
“I looked into the pool, and I see Frank at the bottom of the pool at the deep end. … I couldn’t imagine that he didn’t know how to swim,” Etchebarren said. “So, I just dove in. He grabbed me around the neck, and I knew we were both in trouble because I didn’t have a big breath. So, I finally got him off of me. I went up to get a breath, went back down and grabbed him and put him on the side of the pool. Thank god he recovered.”
The one time he didn’t run
Known for his constant hard play – including slides at middle infielders while trying to break up double plays – Robinson once, around 1970, thought he had a homer in Boston and didn’t run it out.
“We were up in Fenway, and he hits a ball off (the Green Monster in left) and he thinks it’s a home run and he doesn’t run,” Palmer said. “He Manny-(Machado)-ed it. And the ball goes off the top of the wall for a single. (Carl Yastrzemski) turns around, plays it, and Frank gets a single. We win the game 9-3, 9-4, whatever. It wasn’t a close game. That (hit) didn’t have anything to do with it. But there’s a little note on Earl Weaver’s desk afterward: ‘I embarrassed the Orioles. I embarrassed baseball. I certainly embarrassed myself. I’ll never let that happen again.’ And he left a couple hundred-dollar bills. You know, Earl realized that not only is this guy a leader, but he’s gonna walk the walk and not just talk about it. And he didn’t have to do that. It was who he was.”
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Being the first African-American manager
Before making MLB history, Robinson, while he was still a star player, managed in the late 1960s in winter ball in Puerto Rico, something that would be unheard of today. Palmer was one of his players in 1968.
“It’s one thing to have the distinction of being the first African-American manager, but it wasn’t like he didn’t do his homework in a sense. It’s not like he didn’t do his due diligence,” Palmer said. “This was Frank. He just didn’t decide when his career was winding down, ‘Well, I’m a good player. I’m gonna become a manager.’ He trained for it by going to winter ball in Puerto Rico. He realized if he was ever going to, as it turned out, be the first African-American manager, he wanted to have the credentials to do it. He wanted to show people this is not just because ‘I’m Frank Robinson and I’m going to the Hall of Fame and ended up with 586 home runs and two MVPs.’ This is because, ‘I’m willing to go down there and put the work in.’ That gives you an idea of what he was about.”
Managing the Orioles
Robinson took over the Orioles after they lost their first six games to begin the 1988 season, and that team had to endure 15 more losses before its first win. The next year, they won 87 games and played the Toronto Blue Jays in the final series of the year with a chance to win the division. They lost. But that team is still one of franchise’s most popular. Middle River native Dave Johnson made a big start on that final Saturday in Toronto and allowed one run in the first before delivering six shutout innings. The Orioles gave up three in the eighth to lose 4-3.
“Like normal, I showed my emotions (after the first). And I was looking down. And when I got to the top step (of the dugout), I didn’t realize it that Frank was right there waiting for me. And, with a few choice words, basically, he told me to get my head out of my ass and that we had a game to win,” Johnson said. “And I was like, ‘Whoa. OK.’ It just kind of stunned me. He had never really talked to me in that way before. But he was basically trying to shape me up and in essence say, ‘Forget about that. There are eight more innings to go. Let’s get it going.’ It was just really cool. Frank was good to me, and I will always remember that. He was one of my heroes, and I got the opportunity that not a lot of guys get to do, and that’s to play for one of my heroes.”
(Top photo of Frank Robinson by Focus on Sport / Getty Images)
