A piercing thought stopped Jim Palmer in the midst of a recent conversation covering his 61 years with the Orioles.
He has never traveled to Baltimore for a baseball spring without knowing Brooks Robinson would be there. Robinson, who died in September, was more than a longtime teammate and hot corner hoover who kept runs off Palmer’s pitching ledger.
“It was deeper than that,” Palmer said, thinking of the countless times Robinson and his wife, Connie, nurtured Palmer’s family with their kindness and wisdom.
Such melancholic moments arrive more frequently now that Palmer is 78. He doesn’t look his age or sound it when he calls games in his fourth decade as an Orioles broadcaster. But he says goodbye to more friends every year.
As the Orioles prepare to celebrate 70 years in Baltimore, Palmer is the living thread that binds all eras of the club’s history. He pitched for every Orioles team that made the World Series, accepted mentoring from the men who built the team’s culture and dispensed it to the generations that followed him. He remains a vital, candid voice connecting fans to the current Orioles, who pack so much youthful promise that they remind Palmer of the great teams from his pitching heyday.
He’ll be at Camden Yards on opening day, heralding a new season from the broadcast booth, because that’s where he still wants to be.
“He has become the conscience, reminding the franchise of its better self,” said former Baltimore Sun columnist John Eisenberg, who spoke to almost every key figure from the club’s annals for his 2002 oral history “From 33rd Street to Camden Yards.”
Eisenberg struggled to think of an equivalent figure in another baseball city. “I would dare you to find somebody else who has a Hall of Fame former player calling the games that was on the team in 1965 and can see the big picture like he can,” he said.
“Not many guys do that, become that iconic in the city where they played,” agreed Ken Singleton, who played with Palmer for 10 seasons and went on to a 25-year career broadcasting New York Yankees games.
Palmer remains a marvel in conversation — dates, locations and anecdotes spilling out of him as he tells the Orioles’ story in grand arcs that begin and end with epiphanies. In five minutes, he’ll jump from a car ride to Delaware with Robinson to a team flight in 1977 on which he talked Mike Flanagan through a lapse in confidence as he shifted the overhead fan to blow Flanagan’s cigarette smoke across the aisle.
What about his first day in the big leagues in 1965? The home fans booed Mayor Theodore McKeldin, crooner Jerry Vale forgot several lines in “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Palmer didn’t pitch. He roomed with pitcher Robin Roberts, twice his age and headed for the Hall of Fame, who would gently urge him to pipe down with his questions because they needed to get some sleep.
“I think about Jim Palmer, I think about the stories. … You know Jim; he’ll go around the map to get to his point, but he’ll eventually land the plane, so you’ve got to pay attention,” said Ben McDonald, who was the Orioles’ next great pitching hope when he met Palmer in 1989 and who will call this year’s opener beside him.
Palmer did not have to be an Oriole. He had options as a 17-year-old phenom. Play basketball for John Wooden at UCLA? Pitch for Arizona State and earn a degree near his family’s home in Scottsdale? Ten other major league clubs offered deals the day after he signed with Baltimore — $30,000 to him, $10,000 to his parents, $8,000 toward college — but Orioles scouts Jim Russo and Jim Wilson had put in time building a comfortable relationship with the Palmers.
Just like that, he was bound to the franchise that would shape his identity for six decades and counting.
Palmer does reflect on roads not taken. What if the Orioles had dispatched him to Stockton or Fox Cities instead of Aberdeen, South Dakota, for his year of minor league seasoning in 1964? He would not have played for Cal Ripken Sr.
“I was making what, $414 after taxes, $3-a-day meal money, 13-hour bus rides — you’d get one hour of sleep and then it’s Whistle Day in Winnipeg with 8,000 little leaguers making noise,” he remembered. “But the Oriole way was basically: Never let anybody outwork you, get a little better every day, play as a team. I remember Cal telling us, ‘There are no shortcuts, and let’s have fun,’ which means we’re going to win.”
He learned to be a pro from the father of the Hall of Fame shortstop who would back him up at the end of his career.
“How lucky was I?” Palmer said.
Or what if he hadn’t tried the anti-inflammatory drug Indocin on the recommendation of a pharmacist friend sitting beside him at a Baltimore Bullets game in 1968? His career was at its nadir two years after he’d become a Word Series hero, outdueling Sandy Koufax nine days before his 21st birthday. Palmer had torn the rotator cuff in his pitching shoulder, and even instructional league hitters were teeing off on his 85-mph fastballs. The Orioles left him unprotected in that year’s expansion draft. He had a wife and young daughter, so he obtained his real estate license as a backup plan.
“I thought my career was over,” he said.
But he tried the medication and a few days later, his fastball sizzled again at 98 mph. He won 16 games in 1969 and at least 20 in eight of the nine seasons after that. His productive friction with cantankerous manager Earl Weaver was essential to baseball’s most consistent winner. He became the bridge between the era of Brooks and Frank Robinson and the next championship team, led by Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken Jr.
“An artist,” Singleton said of watching him pitch in those years.
“I played with some of the greatest who ever played,” Palmer said, awe and gratitude in his voice at the way it all worked out. “Some guys never get to go to a World Series.”
He began working as an ABC broadcaster when he was still playing, learning the craft beside the likes of Keith Jackson, Al Michaels and Tim McCarver, but he did not start his long residency in the Orioles’ booth until the late 1980s. If you had told him then that he’d still be doing it in 2024, would he have believed it?
“I enjoy it,” he said, leery of suggesting there was any grand plan. He sat next to a cognitive specialist about 10 years ago and asked how long his mind would keep humming if he stopped preparing for broadcasts — scouting the Orioles’ opponent, visiting the clubhouse pregame — the way he used to for pitching starts.
“I’d give you about 18 months,” the guy told him.
McDonald said the Palmer fans don’t know is the “big brother” who’s available any time to share wisdom on career, marriage, whatever. But his candor, unsparing yet optimistic, transfers from personal conversations to his commentary on the Orioles. It’s why fans cherished Palmer’s voice throughout the club’s losing years from 1998 to 2011 and again from 2017 to 2021.
“The older you get, the harder it gets to hold your tongue,” McDonald said, chuckling. “But Jim has a way of saying things in a positive way that are negative.”
“I’m surprised I can still talk,” Palmer joked. In all seriousness, though, he said he’ll stop broadcasting when he’s no longer sure his insights add value.
He’s gently reminded sometimes that he’s no longer the high-kicking hurler and underwear-modeling sex symbol of 45 years ago. A few seasons back, he was ambling past the sculpture of him behind the outfield wall at Camden Yards. A woman was snapping a photo of the bronzed Palmer. “This is the guy you want in your picture,” his then-broadcast partner, Gary Thorne, told her. She scanned the real-life Palmer; not making the connection, and said, “No no, I’m fine.”
But he threw his last pitch for the Orioles in 1984, and when Corbin Burnes throws the club’s first pitch of the 2024 season on Thursday, Palmer’s voice will tell the story.
“Forty years later,” he said, “and I’m still here.”
