No one in Baltimore needed an explanation why a teary-eyed and emotional Michael Phelps, who had just won his 20th gold medal, suddenly burst into laughter atop the podium at the 2016 Rio Olympics. But the rest of the world did.

What was so funny? This is how he explained it to NBC afterward: My boys from Baltimore were down on the other end, and back in Maryland, we all say “O!” for the Orioles during that part of the National Anthem. And all of the sudden I hear them roar “O!” and I knew exactly where it came from, and I just lost it…

Anyone who has ever attended Camden Yards or M&T Bank Stadium—or run in the St. Patrick’s Day 5K, for that matter—is familiar with Baltimoreans shouting “O!” at sporting events in tribute to our beloved Birds during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But most probably do not know the tradition’s origin story.

It dates, not surprisingly, to the rowdy, it’s-not-over-until-it’s-over summer of 1979. Sparked by a league-leading 48 come-from-behind victories, the Orioles topped all of baseball that year with 102 victories. On 11 occasions, they won after trailing by least three runs. Those O’s also delivered five ninth inning rallies, including a special night on June 22 when Doug DeCinces blasted a two-out, two-run, walk-off homer that sent Memorial Stadium into delirium and launched a phenomenon officially coined “Orioles Magic.”

However, the untold story behind shouting “O!” during the National Anthem did not emerge until many years later. Not until Memorial Stadium’s legendary Section 34 diehards gathered for a reunion after superfan Wild Bill Hagy passed away in 2007.

A local reporter began inquiring how it all started and the Section 34ers pointed the finger at a blonde, 5-foot-2, then-24-year-old Northern High School grad who rarely missed a game. Now 70 and still a diehard, Mary Powers spontaneously yelled “O!” during the first word of the second-to-last line—as in, “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave”—completely upsetting the normally solemn hush of the moment. And literally upsetting some patriotic fans in the upper deck around her.

“It was warm that night and I’m pretty sure it was a Friday because there was a big crowd,” recalls Powers, a retired financial services assistant. “A lot of people turned and shot me dirty looks, you know, they didn’t think it was appropriate.”

A local reporter began inquiring how it all started, and the Section 34ers pointed the finger at a blonde, 5-foot-2, then-24-year-old Northern High School grad who rarely missed a game.

One person who did not shoot Powers a dirty look was Hagy, the beer-guzzling, cowboy-hatted Dundalk cab driver famous for leading the O-R-I-O-L-E-S cheers from his Section 34 perch. He glanced back at Powers and smiled.

So did a crazy, then-26-year-old fan named Marty Bass, who confirmed this account shortly before retiring last month after a singular 48-year Baltimore broadcasting career.

“Mary was standing right behind me when I heard her scream ‘O!,’” reiterates Bass, who remains friends with Powers to this day and eventually got her on camera a few years ago to recount the saga.

“We knew Marty as the morning TV guy, but nobody ever treated him any differently than anyone else,” Powers says. “Just one of the group.”

She adds that before most games, she, Bass, and much of the Section 34 crew would pregame nearby at Waverly’s Olympic Lounge, which put out a big deli buffet, especially for the late 8:05 Friday starts. As The Washington Post once noted, not only Memorial Stadium but Waverly itself was colorful—“an interesting mix of working-class blacks, aging socialists, artists, retirees and renovating couples”—with not one but two sports bars just north of 33rd Street and Greenmount, the Olympic Lounge and the Stadium Lounge.

Powers explains the inspiration behind her now‑iconic slice of Baltimore history wasn’t anything she’d thought about beforehand. That summer, she and her baseball pals had simply gotten into the habit of accentuating the “O” at the start of all kinds of words— “O”-ver, “O”-nly, “O”-lympic Lounge, etc.—a jokey way of celebrating the team’s rebound from fourth place the year prior.

Hagy picked up on it the next night and slowly but surely it moved from section to section to the point where it could be heard during broadcasts that fall of the World Series (the results of which will not be discussed here).

Of course, it’s coincidental the pronunciation of “O” is a signature feature of Bawlmerese and that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was penned under bombardment in the city’s historic harbor.

Over time, yelling “O!” didn’t merely catch on, it morphed into a uniquely Baltimore statement of hometown pride.

“But don’t overthink it,” Bass says, winkingly. “It was, and is, just a little fun thing we do.”

Fireworks aren’t the only thing to look forward to for Independence Day. Baltimore is full of events to keep the red, white, and blue spirit going all day long. From cruises to pet parades, there is no shortage of things to do in the city to show your patriotic pride. Whether you’re looking for a full day’s worth of star-spangled fun or a dinner on the water, we’ve got you covered.

FOOD

Topside
Celebrate Independence Day by chowing down on a BBQ-inspired menu, featuring ancho BBQ ribs, housemade sausage, smoked brisket, corn pudding, broccoli salad, and cornbread. Although the Mt. Vernon restaurant doesn’t provide a front row view of the fireworks in the Inner Harbor, Topside does offer panoramic views of the Washington Monument—and what’s more patriotic than that?

Summer in the Squares
Listen to live music while enjoying a summer picnic in the west square of Mount Vernon Place. Enjoy refreshments in by the picturesque fountain and celebrate Independence Day with two Baltimore-based ensembles: Ghost Sugar and Brandon Woody’s Upendo. To give you time to get to your favorite fireworks, the performance will begin in the early evening. 6 p.m.

Independence Day Deck Party
Climb aboard the U.S.S. Constellation and watch the Inner Harbor fireworks show from the deck of the historic ship. Along with a top-notch view, take advantage of all-you-can-eat barbecue favorites, special boat tours, and even cannon firings. 7-10 p.m. Free- $75.

Fourth of July Fireworks Dinner
Take a three-hour cruise with incredible views of Baltimore’s fireworks show while indulging in a three-course buffet style dinner. Enjoy an open bar, DJ, dance floor, and games. All guests must be 21 or older. 7:30-10:30 p.m. $124.90+.

FESTIVITIES

Towson Four on the 4th
Start the holiday off on the right foot with a four-mile race through the heart of Towson, beginning at the courthouse and winding through Towson University’s campus. If that distance is too daunting, participate in the 1776 (feet) Family Fun Run at 8:30 a.m. and then stick around for the annual parade. 8:15 a.m. $35- 40.

Visionary Pets on Parade
What could be better than a dog dressed in red, white, and blue garb? Try hundreds of pets of all shapes and sizes competing for costume prizes such as most visionary, owner and pet lookalikes, and most patriotic. Watch in awe as local pets parade around the American Visionary Art Museum and compete in a talent show. 9 a.m. Free.

Red, White & Zoo
Spend the Fourth of July with the biggest party animals around at The Maryland Zoo. Watch as the animals receive special holiday treats, including “fishsicles,” and papier-mache toys. A team of zookeepers will educate guests on the importance of enrichment activities for the zoo’s inhabitants. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. $17.99-25.99.

Hanover Street Gallery
Experience the opening celebration of Reframing Pathways, a diverse collection of artwork showcased on the Hanover Street Bridge facade. The Hanover Street Bridge will be transformed into a gallery with the heart of the works highlighting different art-making perspectives from pattern and design to more representational works. 1-9 p.m.

FIREWORKS

Cherry Hill Arts & Music Waterfront Celebration
Celebrate the cultural vibrancy of this South Baltimore neighborhood with live performances, local food trucks, artistic activities, and a fireworks show. Don’t miss seeing Abu the Flutemaker and the organization Safe Streets Cherry Hill receive honors for its commitment to the community. 1-10 p.m. Free.

South Point
South Point, a pop-up outdoor seasonal space, will be open early for first-come-first-served seating areas to bask in the rockets’ red glare. Throughout the day, standard food service will be available and the bar will be open to patrons 21 and older. Stick around for the afterparty starting immediately following the fireworks. 4 p.m.-12 a.m.

Dogfish Head Takes Over at the Sandlot
Join Sandlot and Dogfish Head for Fourth of July at Harbor Point. The Delaware brewery will take over taps and the event features: two live bands, games on the beach, multiple food stations, various draft and can beer stations, and one of the best firework views in town. Expect additional food pop-ups by The Charmery, Blacksauce Kitchen, and The Local Oyster. Food will be available from 4-9p.m. and stick around for fireworks at 9:30 p.m. $5 kids through age 12. $10 cover. $10 event parking.

Independence Day Celebration
Secure a spot on the waterfront lawn of the Baltimore Museum of Industry for a picture-perfect view of the fireworks over the Inner Harbor. If there’s time before or after the show, take a tour through the Federal Hill museum. Admission is included in the ticket price. 6-10 p.m. $65.

Picnic at the Top
Climb to the highest floor of the World Trade Center to enjoy a Picnic at the Top. Visitors can take in a 360-degree view of Baltimore and festive fireworks from 27 floors above the Inner Harbor. The event offers catered food and beverages, children’s activities, a live DJ, and photo booth. This is a non-alcoholic, family-fun event, and doors open at 7:15 p.m. 7:30-10 p.m. $35-$75.

As we are all aware, the Orioles are in the midst of a historically bad season for the franchise. Nonetheless, some pretty awesome things are happening on the field this month.

The O’s are set to become the first team in American professional sports history to incorporate Braille lettering into their game-day uniforms when they take on the Toronto Blue Jays at Camden Yards this September 18.

The Orioles also will host international concert pianist and singer Carlos Alberto Ibay, who has been blind since birth, to perform the traditional pre-game Star-Spangled Banner. The president of the National Federation of the Blind, Mark Riccobono, will throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

During the 7:05 p.m. Tuesday night contest, O’s players and coaches will wear specially designed jerseys with the script lettering of “Orioles” and player last names in Braille. Afterward, the game-day jerseys will be autographed, authenticated, and auctioned via the Orioles team website to benefit the National Federation of the Blind.

“The National Federation of the Blind is proud of our 78 years of working together to help all blind Americans live the lives they want,” said Riccobono. “For 40 of those years, we have coordinated that work from our headquarters here in Baltimore, where we have invested tens of millions of dollars to create a top-notch facility that benefits our organization and the surrounding community.”

The first 15,000 fans will receive a co-branded NFB/Orioles Braille alphabet card, the team said in a press release, which will be distributed by National Federation of the Blind volunteers.

The NFB, founded in 1940, is the oldest and largest nationwide organization for the blind, with 50,000 members. With affiliates in every state, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the NFB offers programs and resources to enhance learning, advance job opportunities, help with recreation activities, and improve the quality of life for blind persons.

Though this is a marketing campaign for the team, the sentiment has been hitting home with baseball fans around the country.

Gifted

June 11, 2017
Auburn Drive

“You can’t run without passing the baton and we’re very good at passing the baton,” says Donnell Banks, 23, moments after he and his three teammates win gold in the 4×400 at the Special Olympics Maryland Summer Games at Towson University. “We practice together every Saturday and we’re very close,” Banks adds with a smile, standing alongside his running mates. “We work well together.”

So well, in fact, this is the third year in a row that the foursome—Banks; Calvin Anderson, 17; Niki Kohli, 17; and Vu Tran, 30—has won gold in the 4×400.

Events at this weekend’s 47th summer games include track and field, swimming, cheerleading, softball, and bocce—and more than 1,500 mostly under-40 competitors.

With temperatures reaching 93 degrees, Lori “Action” Plaxen, 28, who won five medals overall, cools off after her last event beneath the light spray of local fire trucks. “Special Olympics is a family,” says her mother, Joyce, the Montgomery County track and field team manager for the past 10 years. “What can you say? It makes them feel accepted. It makes them feel like they can do anything.

“Look around, too,” she adds. “There is every nationality, race, and religion competing here and getting along and loving each other.”

Along those lines, Jason Schriml, of Special Olympics of Maryland, recalls a favorite moment while coaching the Maryland team at the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Boise and other locations in Idaho. “We were on a long bus ride leaving the opening ceremonies and I dozed off,” Schriml says. “There were teams from Iran, Iraq, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, South America on this bus and when I woke up, they’re all exchanging gear and taking selfies. One guy from India was showing his turban around to everyone. It was surreal. 

“We also had four Maryland athletes competing in the snowshoe events in Boise,” Schriml continues. “What amazed me was the team from Egypt. Apparently, they practice with cardboard boxes, tied around their feet with rubber tubes, and train in the sand. I mean, they were good.”

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True Colors                       

June 14, 2017

E. Pratt Street

Historian K. A. Wisniewski clicks his laptop and puts a PowerPoint image of 16 varying red, white, and blue flags on the screen at the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House. Most of the flags include the traditional stars of the American flag in differing configurations—concentric circles and abstract designs, for example—but not all. Wisniewski asks the small crowd how many of those flags were considered the official American flag at one time or another?

 “All of the above,” he says, answering his own question.

 Wisniewski explains that the U.S. has employed 27 flags since its inception. Early on, different flags were even acknowledged as official American flags at the same time. In fact, to this day, while there’s still debate over the identity of the original seamstress of the flag that became the known as “The Stars and Stripes”—the question over who designed the flag has largely been settled, according to Wisniewski. That would be Declaration of Independence signee Francis Hopkinson. At least, he’s the only known person to have billed Congress for the job.

Wisniewski’s presentation is part of the 90th Flag Dag celebration at the Flag House, which includes a museum and the attached former home of seamstress Mary Pickersgill, who stitched the famous Star-Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McHenry. Events today include free tours, a replica flag-raising, and a performance by Fort McHenry Junior Fife and Drum Corps.

 As many Baltimoreans know, Philadelphian Betsy Ross, thanks to aggressive marketing by her ancestors, typically gets credit for designing and sewing the “first” official American flag. However, Wisniewski says, evidence suggests Hopkinson, who lived in Philadelphia and knew both Mary Pickersgill’s family and Betsy Ross, would not have handed his design to Ross. “In one correspondence, Hopkinson pays Betsy Ross a kind of backhanded compliment,” Wisniewski says. “He suggests she was good at something, but it wasn’t sewing.

“In other words, he thought she was a second-rate seamstress.”

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Pulp Stores

June 17, 2017

Swann Drive

As the packed bus pulls away from the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botantical Gardens at Druid Hill Park, arborist Gary Letteron points out a state champion bur oak, a city champion white ash, and the Grove of Remembrance—pin oak trees, one for each state, planted 25 feet apart—representing the first living memorial to the veterans of World War I.

Letteron, along with Ted Martello, is leading the morning bus portion of TreeBaltimore’s “Notable Tree Bus Tour,” which is headed next to Cylburn Arboretum, but not before passing several massive English oaks near the park’s disc golf course. “We don’t know how old those trees are,” Letteron says, “but there are pictures of Civil War soldiers sitting underneath them. That’s how big they already were then.”

 Entering Cylburn, the tour bus passes a showy magnolia in full bloom. Walking the 200-acre arboretum, and now led by Glenda Weber, a naturalist with Baltimore City, attendees get up-close looks at a silver maple, a Himalayan pine, a Chinese chestnut, and a 1970 progeny of the iconic, now-deceased Wye Oak tree, an Eastern Shore specimen once recognized as the nation’s largest white oak.

  Later, the three-hour tour heads to Chinquapin Run Park, passes by a weeping cherry donated by Al Capone to Union Memorial Hospital (Johns Hopkins refused to treat the Chicago gangster’s syphilis), and visits Evesham Park and its nearby city champion male ginkgo biloba—a species that dates back 2.5 million years.

 Beneath a giant bald cypress at Evesham Park, Weber explains that many trees have a single gender—male trees with flowers that produce pollen, or female trees with “ovaries” that produce fruit. Other trees have both characteristics; still others can switch genders during their lifetimes.

 “They are all different and they are all my friends,” she says with a smile while discussing the nuanced gender and reproductive systems of trees. “Look closely and take notice of each one.”

What led to you tackling a book-length history of the anthem?
The idea flashed into my head in 1996 during a graduate history seminar at Stony Brook University. I love music and knew the song dated to 1814, so it had a significant heritage. Aware that its 200th anniversary would arrive in the not-too-distant future, I was pleasantly stunned to learn that very few books had been written about the most controversial song in American history.

Did you set out to write a biography of a song?


Indeed, it is a living, evolving entity that will never die. As I researched the song’s history that semester, I knew I was on to something big. The political uses of the song, the malleability of its meaning and the quirks of its trajectory intrigued me. Americans revere the song, but they don’t necessarily like it. I wanted to know how this composition became the official anthem, why it took 117 years to make it so and what made Congress act in 1931.

What is the greatest misconception about “The Star-Spangled Banner”?


In addition to the belief that the song is hard to sing, the notion that it glorifies war. Like a journalist, Francis Scott Key merely described what he saw on the night that England’s Navy bombarded Fort McHenry. Compared with The Marseillaise, the French anthem, which calls for patriots to water their fields with the enemy’s blood, Key’s verses are pretty tame. In the fourth verse, he also justified war (“then conquer we must”) only “when our cause it is just.”

I assume you visited Baltimore while researching the book. What did you think of the city and Baltimoreans’ relationship to the song?


Thanks to a Smithsonian Institution fellowship, I conducted considerable research at Fort McHenry, the Pratt Library and the Maryland Historical Society, where I discovered pivotal documents that enhanced the narrative. Baltimore is a main character in the book and local patriots helped make “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem. Most Americans dismiss the War of 1812, but the Battle of Baltimore represents a major David-vs.-Goliath victory.

What’s your favorite rendition? Why?


I am partial to Jose Feliciano’s singular, yet controversial version, performed almost a year before Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary rendition at Woodstock. Feliciano took heartfelt, creative liberties with the melody to forge one of the most distinctive performances in the song’s history. Honorable mention also goes to Marvin Gaye for originality and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s a capella take for spine-tingling beauty.

There have, over the years, been rumblings about changing the anthem. Do you believe that will ever happen?
Never. Such talk is folly. Due in part to the inspiring circumstances of its creation and its focus on the flag, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the de facto national anthem soon after it spread after the Battle of Baltimore. The major challengers over the years—including “Yankee Doodle”; “Hail, Columbia”; “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”; “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America”—are flawed. None of them have the same historical gravitas, or the edgy melody, of Key’s creation.