Frank Robinson

Before I get into this, remember, it's an opinion from a guy who never saw Frank Robinson play. If I did, I don't recall specifically. But I would have been about 5 or 6 and he would have been a player-manager in Cleveland. So I don't have any of those memories that many Orioles fans do. That's not to say I don't know much about Frank Robinson. I grew up as a kid in Baltimore in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the youngest in a baseball family. My brothers - and heck, my father - would explain to me that as good as those Eddie/Cal Orioles clubs were, they weren't close to those Frank/Brooks/Palmer teams.

Through the raindrops, the Orioles honored Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, unveiling a statue of the Orioles great beyond the left-center-field fence at Camden Yards, kicking off a season-long celebration honoring the club's six Hall of Famers. Those in attendance for the ceremony included Robinson and fellow Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Jim Palmer and Earl Weaver. Rick Dempsey, Brady Anderson, Boog Powell and Don Buford - all members of the Orioles Hall of Fame - were there, too, as were current Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, right fielder Nick Markakis, manager Buck Showalter, first base coach Wayne Kirby and Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin, a former Oriole - all in uniform.

The intense stare is captured, the look of a slugger tracking a ball hit well into the night. The bat is dangling from the bronzed Frank Robinson's left hand. “I'm looking at the ball going out in the outfield, but I am ready to drop that bat and get my damn butt down the bases,” the flesh-and-bones Robinson quipped Saturday evening. “I don't want to stay up there [at the plate] too long.” Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder who led the Orioles to their first world championship in 1966 and a string of three more World Series appearances in the next five years, on Saturday became the first player to have his likeness replicated in a life-size bronze statue in the Garden of the Greats picnic area behind center field at Camden Yards.

As a player and manager, Frank Robinson represented seven major league organizations in eight cities. These days, he lives about 2,700 miles away in the Los Angeles area and makes it back to Baltimore only about two or three times a year. But when Robinson gets stopped in the street, wherever he is, there's one team people almost always ask him about. "People will say, 'I remember you, you played with the Orioles,'" Robinson said. "I'll say, 'Well, I played 10 years with Cincinnati first.' "'Oh, you did?

"Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. " Frank Robinson is quoted as coining that phrase during an interview with Time Magazine in July 1973, which is to say you wouldn't expect him to put too much stock in the Orioles' 12-7 start to this season. But Robinson - who will be immortalized with a statue at Camden Yards on Saturday - said he feels the organization is on the upswing. “I think this team is headed in the right direction,” Robinson said in an interview Saturday when he attended the President's Cup championship at Camden Yards . “They're building.

Players for both Gilman and Mount St. Joseph will be trying to control their emotions Saturday when they meet in a rematch of the inaugural President's Cup final Saturday at Camden Yards. The two long-time Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference rivals will be trying to take in the scene and dwell on the moment at the second-annual event. But the teams will be approaching the game differently. A year ago, Gilman won the President's Cup title but turned around a week later and lost to the Gaels in an MIAA A Conference game.

Former Orioles pitcher Rick Sutcliffe had every intention of heading home for the 1992 season, and why not? His roots - and his family - were in the Kansas City area, where he grew up within a short drive of Royals Stadium. He had already accomplished quite a lot during the first 13 years of his major league career, and he figured the time was right to spend the rest of that career sleeping in his own bed after home games. Maybe it's true that life is what happens while you're making other plans, because Sutcliffe's lifeplan changed with one phone call from an old friend and a brief visit to an unfinished stadium in a place he had never heard of called Camden Yards.

As part of their 20th anniversary at Camden Yards, the Orioles in 2012 will unveil six statues of the modern franchise's Hall of Famers in a revamped area beyond the bullpens in left-center field. Each of the six men who have gone into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as an Oriole — Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson , Earl Weaver , Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken Jr. — will be honored with his own free-standing bronze statue. All six have been involved in the process, which has been ongoing for more than a year.

September 9, 1967: Frank Robinson hit career home run No. 400 in a loss to the Twins.