Someone told me once that the two most evocative things, the two things that could hurtle him back to a place and time, were scents and songs.
It's true. Every once in a while, I'll catch a whiff of Aliage, a 1970s-era Estee Lauder perfume that seemed to hover in the air of every sorority house during rush week my freshman year of college. And I can't hear that Lion King song, "Hakuna Matata," without thinking about 1995 and the two weeks I spent with a summer camp for kids from a tough inner-city neighborhood who nonetheless seemed so sweet and innocent when they sang along with a tape, "It means no worries for the rest of your days."
But I'd add a third memory-trigger as well - the baseball team. Not a team generically, as in love-dem-O's, but a team of a specific season, a serendipitous sum of its parts, a group that for whatever reason has one singular summer. For me, it's the '69 Cubs - ouch! - my first baseball love and, not coincidentally, my first baseball heartbreak, and the '89 Orioles, the scrappy why-not team that got me back into the ranks of fandom after a long absence.
For many Baltimoreans, though, the team of memory is the '83 Orioles, most of whom came back this week for a 25th anniversary celebration of the O's' last World Series championship. A couple remain familiar, what with Flanagan at the Warehouse and Dempsey and Palmer broadcasting locally, and Cal with his team up the road in Aberdeen - when he's not, that is, being a worldwide ambassador for the sport.
Watching the old players handing out pennants at the gates, taking the field for a pre-game ceremony and tossing balls into the stands to a warm and nostalgic crowd, I kept trying to imagine the current Orioles, 25 years from now. Obviously, Millar would be a broadcaster, but maybe also B-Rob? Or would he be managing? Would Markakis be in the Hall of Fame? What about the inscrutable Mora - would any of his quints be playing the game?
Imagining them graying or balding, or stooped and limping, and gathering at Camden Yards for a reunion, was almost impossible. For one thing, without the most remarkable, bizarro-world reversal of baseball fortunes ever, it's safe to say this team isn't going to the World Series. And, for another, if the O's are serious about rebuilding the team for the future, this particular group of players no doubt won't be the same ones who are still around at the end of the season.
