ven though he’s wearing enemy colors, Ed Soth is greeted the same way he usually is when he walks into Robbie’s First Base—with some good-natured ribbing.

“We’re going to stop letting you in here with that hat,” says Robbie Davis Jr., half of what might be the most well-known Senior-Junior tandem in the world of Baltimore sports . . . memorabilia. “How’d you get to be a Yankees fan?”

The conversation that ensues is similar to ones that take place in bars, at barbershops, and during ballgames every day: a group of old friends shooting the breeze about sports. The fact that it happens to be taking place in what is likely the world’s only sports memorabilia/mail service store just adds to the fun.

When Robbie Davis Sr., 71, opened the store in this small Lutherville strip mall in 1989, he had no idea that one day he’d be working alongside his sons, Robbie Jr., 43, and Matthew, 32. He didn’t know that the business would morph from dealing primarily with FedEx and UPS packages to making deals for Frank Robinson and Johnny Unitas autographs. He certainly couldn’t have imagined that the family would star in an ABC reality series and be featured in a Netflix show scheduled to drop this summer.

The exchange going down is exactly what has attracted television producers, audiences, and, most importantly, regular old customers to Robbie’s.

“I grew up at the old stadium, used to sneak in all the time,” says Soth, who often comes in to send packages and stays to hang out. “Want to hear a funny story?”

It’s a rhetorical question—everyone at Robbie’s is always up for a laugh.

“One day I was there, I’m 11 years old, and I’m sitting in the stands and Mantle is in the field,” Soth says. “Ball is hit, comes right to me, and I reach over and grab [it]. Ball hits me in the hand and falls to the [warning] track. Swear to God, Mantle walks over, picks the ball up, looks at me, and I think he’s gonna toss it up to me. That sonofabitch turned and walked away.”

Sitting at his cluttered desk behind the counter, Senior, as many people call him, lets out a belly laugh. From his slightly less messy desk a few feet away, Junior does the same.

“We have a lot of people who just come in and talk sports,” Junior says. “We get 85-year-old grandmas in here on a Monday morning talking Ravens. They’ll say, ‘Did you see that play that Lamar made?’ I can’t believe my ears. That’s what makes it cool.”

Robbie Davis Sr. grew up in West Baltimore, where, as he likes to remind people, he was a “really good” baseball player at Edmondson-Westside High School.

“I always tell my son that even though he got signed to a pro contract, I was better than him,” he says. “And he can’t refute it, because I’m the only one who’s seen us both play.”

After graduating, he served as a combat medic in the Army before going into the car business. At one point, he co-owned 12 dealerships in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Among them were All-Star Dodge and All-Star Chevrolet on Route 40. Orioles’ legends Brooks Robinson and Eddie Murray were among the athletes that did commercials for the dealerships, and Davis developed friendships with several guys on the team. When the O’s went on road trips, Davis would occasionally house-sit for Murray.

“Eddie Murray knew me before I knew who he was,” Junior says. “To me he was just a guy who was friends with my dad.”

One of Senior’s partners at the dealership collected baseball cards, and he took note when the man made some money buying and selling them. When he left the car business and opened a postal services store in Catonsville, then another in Lutherville, Senior put out a few boxes of baseball cards on the weekends.

Quickly, he realized that the Topps were topping his sales. He began buying and selling other brands that were hot at the time, like Upper Deck, and closed the Catonsville store to focus on the one in Lutherville.

 

“. . . THE BEST PART WAS GETTING TO BE AROUND PEOPLE THAT WERE AS PASSIONATE ABOUT COLLECTING MEMORABILIA AS WE ARE.”

 

“You never have a business where you can make money right away,” he says. “Well, the first month we opened up we were in the black.”

Perhaps his biggest challenge was keeping his sons from playing with his inventory. Where Senior saw an investment, Junior saw a pastime.

“He would buy all these unopened boxes and tell me, ‘Don’t open them,’” Junior recalls. “He would put them in our house in this room, and of course, I’m a little kid, so I’d be in there opening the packs because that’s what kids do. It’s no fun to just sit there and look at a box.”

A baseball addict from a young age, Junior played center field in college and was signed by the Milwaukee Brewers. When his career fizzled out in the minor leagues, he began working with his father in the store. As Robbie’s grew, the Davises began buying and selling all kinds of sports memorabilia: jerseys, autographed baseballs, seats from the old Memorial Stadium and Cole Field House. One of the most expensive items they acquired was a Babe Ruth signed baseball for $20,000. They later sold it for a tidy profit.

As their reputation continued to grow, more and more athletes started stopping by the store. Al Bumbry has been friends with Senior since they met in the mid-’80s. The Orioles Hall of Famer, who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the Army during the Vietnam War, still drops in often.

“The store presents a very social, laidback, easygoing atmosphere,” says Bumbry, the 1973 American League Rookie of the Year and a member of Baltimore’s 1983 World Series championship team. “People don’t feel pressured there because Bob’s a people person. Once he connects with you and becomes friends with you, he’s one of those guys that I would take in the foxhole with me.”

Lewis Brown was a 15-year-old kid when he first went to Robbie’s.

“Senior, he likes to take chances on people,” he says. “I didn’t grow up the richest, so sometimes I’d be in there and I’d go, ‘Mom, I want to get this,’ and she’d say, ‘Well I don’t have the money for it.’ There was a Barry Bonds-signed baseball. It was like a hundred and some dollars. He was like, ‘Just take it, and when you get the money just come in and pay for it.’ Ain’t nobody does that.”

It took Brown, now 35, a few weeks to scrape together the money. When he returned to the store, Senior offered him a job. He’s been working there ever since. When he was trying to save $10,000 for a down payment on a house, Senior asked how he was going to do it.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll figure it out,’” Brown says. “He goes, ‘I’ll lend you the money and you can just pay me back when you get it.’ That’s the type of guy he is.”

In 2010, the producers of the reality show Pawn Stars contacted the Davises with an idea. They wanted to film a series about the business and its cast of characters. The core four in the show would be Robbie Sr., Robbie Jr., Brown, and Robbie Reier, another longtime employee. There was only one problem: way too many Robbies. Thus, Senior became Senior, Junior became Junior, Brown became “Sweet Lou,” and the then-baby-faced Reier became “Shaggy.”

In 12 episodes of Ball Boys, the guys goofed on each other, debated sports, negotiated with buyers and sellers, and interacted with greats from the sports world. They played basketball with former University of Michigan Fab Fiver Jalen Rose. Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon fired footballs at them. The legendary running back Jim Brown came to the store, but of all the sports royalty they met, baseball’s hit king, Pete Rose, was their favorite.

After shooting a segment, Rose asked for a restaurant recommendation for lunch. When Senior told him the production company would only pay a pittance for their food, Rose whipped $10,000 cash out of his pocket.

“He’s the kind of guy that if you go to a bar you want to hang out with,” Senior says.

When Sweet Lou asked for a personalized autograph, Rose wrote, “To Lou, you big fat piece of shit.”

“I loved that,” Brown says.

The show ran for just one season in 2012, but it was rebroadcast for years after that and is still available on ABC’s app. It raised the store’s profile both locally and nationally—they still get customers who say they heard of Robbie’s from Ball Boys.

“It was awesome,” Junior says. “I liked being on TV, but the best part was getting to be around people that were as passionate about collecting memorabilia as we are. We met people from all around the country, and we got to share our stories.”

Bob Windsor, aka Burger King Bob, is milling about the store, going back and forth with Senior about . . .something or other. The two are old friends. They get together on Sundays to watch football at Windsor’s house, where he makes sure Senior always has chips to snack on and Hennessy to wash them down.

An avid collector, he’s bought everything from a Babe Ruth-autographed baseball to Michael Jordan’s shoes at Robbie’s. But the products aren’t what keep him coming back.

“If there was a pot belly stove and an old dog, you’d be there for hours every day,” says Windsor, whose nickname stems from his job as a “financial guy” for several Burger King franchises. “It’s that homey.”

That’s never changed at Robbie’s, but the preferences of memorabilia consumers are ever-evolving. After a down period in the ’90s and 2000s, cards are back in vogue. And not just baseball cards. These days, Pokémon is as popular as Paul Molitor.

“I had a kid buy two $8 packs and he got a $700 card in there,” Junior says. “That’s what these cards are all about now. It’s all about the gamble.”

That being said, there are some athletes whose appeal is timeless in Baltimore. Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Gary Williams, and Ray Lewis items always sell quickly. But there’s one athlete whose popularity Junior says is unprecedented.

“Nothing’s been like Lamar,” he says of the Ravens quarterback. “[Jackson] has been the biggest craze that we’ve seen in this business since we’ve been open. People can’t get enough of him.”

Although the Davises are hometown fans—they live and die with the Orioles and the Ravens—and love sports memorabilia, the business requires a sort of cold lack of sentimentality. Anything they acquire could be gone the next moment.

“People say, ‘Is this for sale?’” Senior says. “I say, ‘Come on, if it’s got a price tag on it, it’s for sale.’”

Still, there are a few items in which they seem to take special pride. Near Senior’s desk hangs a signed photo of Orioles Mike Morgan and Fred Lynn from the mid-’80s. Lynn’s note reads, “To Bob, the second-best ballplayer I know.”

“That’s because I always told him I was as good as him,” Senior says, chuckling.

Above Junior’s desk is another framed photo, this one with Lynn and Eddie Murray standing over Senior, who is sitting in a chair with his then-eight-year-old son, Robbie Jr., on his lap.

Neither of those items have a price tag.

Homeplace

John Lingan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Homeplace is an honest, bittersweet, and at times humorous look at small-town America through the lens of Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Lingan, who grew up in Catonsville and has written for Oxford American and New York Times Magazine, examines Patsy Cline’s hometown and its longtime resident Jim McCoy, the honky-tonk owner who discovered her (and who continued to smoke, drink, and make music well into his 80s). What we ultimately see is a town in the midst of an identity crisis—from a slow-paced, Southern area known for its apple production to a burgeoning suburb of new establishments (Apple Blossom Mall, for instance) that have attracted an influx of urbanites from D.C. and Northern Virginia. But the book also feels like a travelogue at times—clearly the observations of an out-of-towner with a voice of his own. His four years of researching and writing it is evident, as he reveals the town’s (and neighboring towns’) quirks while bringing into focus a broader, nostalgic story of a vanishing way of life, as factory farms, opioids, big-box stores, and even music streaming services swallow up what once was.

Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula and the Rise of the Modern NFL

Jack Gilden (University of Nebraska Press)

No quarterback-coach combination had a more profound impact on the NFL than Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas and legendary head coach Don Shula. From the 1950s, when they played together in Baltimore, to the 1960s, when Shula coached Unitas, to the 1970s, when both men won Super Bowl titles, they helped launch the NFL into a billion-dollar industry. The title promises more than it delivers regarding their clashes, but the book well chronicles their deeply intertwined careers, including substantial interviews with former Colts greats.

Jack Gilden will be in conversation with John Eisenberg of BaltimoreRavens.com from 2-3 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Baltimore Book Festival at the Inner Harbor.

When the Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame arrived on the sports scene 60 years ago, it didn’t tiptoe into existence. It jumped in with both feet. The first class of inductees included baseball legends Babe Ruth, Frank “Home Run” Baker, Jimmie Foxx, and Olympic champion Robert Garrett.

Today, as it was in 1956, the MDSAHOF honors the legendary athletes of our state for their widely recognized achievements. Glancing through the 200-person-plus MDSAHOF archive is a trip down memory lane. Gene Shue, Lefty Grove, Chuck Foreman, Cal Ripken Jr., Pam Shriver.

Those who worked tirelessly behind the scenes form an elite group as well. Charley Ellinger, Chester O’Sullivan, Jack Scarbath, John Steadman, Vince Bagli—right on up to legendary high school baseball coach Bernie Walter, who has chaired the MDSAHOF since 2011.

“Our state offers a multi-faceted sports program that includes but is not limited to true amateurs, collegians, and professionals,” says Walter, who points out MDSAHOF inductees range from major sports down to niche sports such as skeet shooting, bowling, and badminton.

In 2012, Walter’s MDSAHOF board revised the rules that had only allowed people born in Maryland to be inducted. Now “adopted Marylanders,” like Johnny Unitas and Brooks Robinson, who not only starred as Maryland athletes, but became a part of the community after retirement, could be elected.

At Walter’s urging, more women were named to the board and a wider selection process saw X Games standout Travis Pastrana inducted in 2011 for action sports and the first four-legged inductee Native Dancer in 2014.

What sets Maryland’s athletes apart?

“For such a small state, the quality and quantity of athletic achievement is incredible,” says Walter. “This was reflected in these past Summer Olympics. If Maryland were a country, it would have ranked second on the gold-medal list.”

Walter and what he calls the “incredible group of doers” who comprise his MDSAHOF board are thrilled to celebrate the organization’s 60th birthday.

This year’s induction class, which will be honored Nov. 3 at Michael’s Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie, includes the Hall’s first female soccer player and a cross-section of talent:

Brady Anderson

Orioles Hall of Famer, three-time American League All-Star.

Twenty years ago, Anderson hit 50 homers, which was the most by an Oriole until Chris Davis had 53 in 2013. His name still appears all over the Orioles career leader list. Now vice president of baseball operations for the team, Anderson was asked if he aspires to one day run the team. “If I do my job really well, it will help the current GM keep his job,” Anderson says. “If you’re focused on things like that, you would have to be thinking about the current GM not doing well. To me, that would be a very twisted thought.”

Wheeler Baker

Ten-time winner of the American Power Boat Association National Championships.

Five-mile races in hydroplanes weren’t for the faint of heart. “We’d get to the turn and sometimes four or five of us were going at the same time, and you don’t slack up. You slack up, you lose,” recalls Baker, a native of the Eastern Shore. He went on to serve as a county commissioner and in the House of Delegates. He is president of the Kent Narrows Racing Association and chairs the Chesterwye Foundation, which helps adults with developmental disabilities.

Louis Carter

Running back for the University of Maryland and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Carter led the Terps in rushing for three seasons in the 1970s, went to the NFL, and threw the first touchdown pass in Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ history. He has gained insight from late wife’s illness, battling cancer himself, and counts his blessings. He recalls life after the NFL playing flag football with his Maryland classmates. “It wasn’t the NFL, but it doesn’t give you brain damage, either.”

Gary Jobson

World-class sailor, television commentator, and author based in Annapolis.

A three-time All-American collegiate sailor, Jobson was part of Ted Turner’s crew (tactician) that won the America’s Cup in 1977 aboard Courageous. He became a sailing analyst for the likes of ESPN and NBC and won two Emmys. Once a sport for the rich, sailing “has done a good job of opening the doors wide,” Jobson says. “Right here in Annapolis, there are eight high schools with sailing teams.”

Laurie Schwoy

Rewrote McDonogh record book in 1990s as four-sport star.

Parade magazine national soccer Player of the Year, Schwoy went on to North Carolina, winning three national soccer titles. Injuries kept her off U.S. national team as peers like Mia Hamm made history by winning the 1999 World Cup. “It was a bitter pill to swallow,” Schwoy admits. “It made me a much better human being because of that heartbreak.”

Jack Thomas

All-time lacrosse great at Hopkins.

On the last freshman team not allowed to play, Thomas made it to the national championship the next three years, finally winning as a senior. He was the only player in JHU history to average more than 70 points per season. At Towson High, he was a three-sport star under his dad, Bill Thomas Sr. Thomas taught in Howard County schools for 40 years and “learned it makes a tremendous impression on kids when you have a Wikipedia page.”

In addition, longtime sportswriter and Camden Yards official scorer Jim Henneman is being honored by the MDSAHOF as winner of the John F. Steadman Lifetime Achievement Award. A former batboy, usher, and more, Henneman confidently says, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more Orioles games than anybody alive.”

Six decades ago—right about this time of the year back in 1956—an unknown rookie quarterback named Johnny Unitas walked onto the gridiron of Baltimore’s consciousness.

And he never left. Not today, some 14 years after his death nor more than 30 after the team with which he is synonymous—the famed and fabled Baltimore Colts—quit town for some obscure Midwestern burg.

Unitas was perfectly in tune with the psyche of the unsung factory town on the Patapsco in which he set records, won trophies, and made lifelong friends.

“I came into the league without any fuss. I’d just as soon leave it that way,” he said upon leaving the game in 1973 en-route to the Hall of Fame. “There’s no difference I can see in retiring from pro football or quitting a job at the Pennsy Railroad. I did something I wanted to do and went as far as I could go.”

Unitas’s debut in 1956—the tectonic plates of American football about to shift though no one knew it—has been dramatically misremembered for decades. Even Unitas was wrong, going to his grave in 2002 believing it had been one way when it was another.

Jim “Snuffy” Smith, 73, a longtime Baltimore area basketball coach and fervent fan of all Crabtown sports, tells it like this.

“I was 13 and watching the Colts play the Bears at Wrigley Field. The Colts weren’t good yet,” said Smith of the game, in which Chicago crushes Baltimore 58 to 27. In that game, starting quarterback George Shaw broke his leg and out came a young Lithuanian-Catholic from Pittsburgh wearing No. 19, his scrawny right arm not yet cast in gold.

“Unitas was forced into the game and we didn’t know a thing about him, a skinny kid with stooped shoulders who walked like an 80-year-old man,” said Smith. “His first pass was intercepted for a touchdown and the rest is history.”

Yes, history, lots of it. Unitas quarterbacked the Colts victory over the New York Giants in the 1958 “Greatest Game Ever Played” championship and was a member of two other Baltimore title teams.

But Smith’s version history—the same one Unitas believed up until his fatal heart attack—jumps the gun by two games.

In 2006, veteran Baltimore Sun reporter Mike Klingaman set the record straight, pointing out that the first time the locals got a glimpse of Unitas under center was not via television from Chicago on October 21, but in front of 42,622 fans at Memorial Stadium on October 6.

The Colts lost that game as well, 31 to 14 to Detroit. But Johnny U was launched, right about the time Brooks Robinson was going gold at third base for baseball’s Orioles, and Baltimore would never be the same.

Late in the life of Johnny Unitas, the children from his second marriage played a lot of community and school sports in and around Baltimore County. At one lacrosse game in the 1990s, Hampden resident Joe Mooney had a daughter in a game against a member of the Unitas progeny.

Mooney grew up going to Colts games with his parents in the 1960s and, like thousands of other kids back then, had Johnny U’s autograph and pictures on his bedroom wall.

“He was critical of the refs whenever he felt like it,” said Mooney, 63. “All I could think of was, ‘What must that be like for [a small-time] lacrosse refs to get chewed out by Johnny Unitas?’”

After the game, Mooney walked over to the other team’s side and asked if he could shake the hand that had thrown 290 touchdowns in an 18-year professional career, all but one of them in Baltimore.

Remembers Mooney: “I said, ‘Do you mind?’ And he said, ‘Not at all.’”

The hand that Mooney shook was the first to throw for more than 40,000 career yards. In 1959, he set a record with 32 touchdowns, the first to throw more than 30 in a season. Between 1956 and 1960, he threw a touchdown in 47 consecutive games, a feat once compared to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

All of those National Football League statistics have been broken by bigger and faster athletes who now play 16-game seasons and are aided by rules designed to protect the quarterback from injury.

Yet the aura of Unitas permeate the metropolitan area not unlike, we daresay, that of Babe Ruth.

From the Beltway sign announcing the exit for “Unitas Stadium” at Towson University to the statue of Unitas outside of M&T Bank Stadium to the flurry of blue and white No. 19 jerseys at Ravens’ home games, he is here.

“He’s the foundation of Ravens football,” said Jimmy Rupert, a 30-year-old Pasadena realtor born the year after the Colts left town. “Growing up watching football with my father and grandfather that’s all I ever heard about—Johnny Unitas, the guy who put up the big numbers.”

Rupert goes to at least two Ravens games a year, sometimes more. Before each game, he joins fellow pigskin pilgrims in touching the one of the Johnny U statue’s high-topped cleats, now discolored from years of the tradition.

He does it, he said, “For good luck.”

A legendary local name appears headed to take over a well known North Baltimore business.

John C. Unitas III, grandson and namesake of Baltimore Colts football legend and Golden Arm restaurant owner Johnny Unitas, has emerged as the prospective lead buyer of the Grand Cru wine bar and wine shop, nearly six months after the sudden death of former owner Nelson Carey.

Unitas and a business partner, Jacqueline Beal, are identified as prospective buyers of the popular gathering spot in Belvedere Square Market, including its liquor license, in documents on file with the Maryland Board of Liquor License Commissioners for Baltimore City.

Unitas and Beal have formed an entity called BSq Wine Co. LLC to buy Grand Cru. An application to transfer Grand Cru’s seven day liquor license to BSq Wine Co. LLC was filed on January 6, and a public notice was posted on the exterior of the wine bar last week. The current license holders are Christina Carey, Nelson’s widow, and David O’Ferrall. Christina Carey and the Grand Cru staff have operated the wine bar since Carey died of a heart attack last year, at age 50.

Stan Meros, manager of Belvedere Square Market, said the management of Belvedere Square supports the new owners.

“We’re upbeat about the transfer,” Meros said. “It is working out very well. It’s a bad situation whenever someone dies, but we have made the best of it.”

Meros said the business is changing hands because Christina Carey has another career and did not want to continue operating Grand Cru after her husband passed away. He said Grand Cru has been an asset to Belvedere Square and the management wants to keep it that way. Meros also noted that Unitas’s grandfather operated the Golden Arm restaurant about a mile north of Belvedere Square.

Unitas, 26, said he is currently a buyer for Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia but has worked on the wine team at Cinghiale in Harbor East and as a server at Petit Louis Bistro in Roland Park. He said he is excited to be taking over a business with such a strong reputation and following.

“I want to get back into the food industry,” he said. “What better way to do that than to have a place with such a great legacy and such a great soul? . . . I have tremendous admiration for what Nelson Carey accomplished . . . I would say the experience will not change. It’s a great meeting place, a great place where people can get together. The legacy that Nelson built at Grand Cru will always remain part of Grand Cru. That will not leave.”

Unitas, who goes by “JC” and called his grandfather “Pop-Pop,” said Grand Cru was his “date night spot” before moving to Philadelphia and he knew Carey from being a patron there.

He added that with the last name of Unitas, “I have always been handed a huge pair of shoes to fill . . . I am ready for the challenge.”

Since opening in 2003, Grand Cru has become a magnet for a diverse mix of patrons from North Baltimore and beyond, including attorneys, doctors, developers, educators, politicians, clergy, artists, television personalities and the occasional Pulitzer Prize winner. Its success was largely attributed to Nelson Carey, whose sudden death was followed by a wave of tributes. Hundreds attended his memorial service at The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.

According to the liquor license transfer application, Unitas will have a 99 percent financial interest in the business, and Beal, 28, will have a one percent financial interest. Unitas will be the “full time operator.” Additionally, the sale price of the business, including the liquor license, is $200,000. Grand Cru’s monthly rent at Belvedere Square is $6,630 per month.

The liquor board has set January 22 as the deadline for people to protest the proposed liquor license transfer. According to Douglas Paige, assistant executive secretary of the liquor board, a public hearing on the application likely will be held in February. If approved by the liquor board, the sale of the business and transfer of the liquor license could take effect shortly afterwards.