Bird Tapes Podcast: The Brooks Robinson Interview

To publish my oral history of the Orioles in 2001, I interviewed nearly 100 players, managers, front office executives, broadcasters, scouts and others.

Brooks Robinson, the Hall of Fame third baseman, was the only one who sat for two interviews, one in the fall of 1999 and another in the spring of 2000 as I neared the end of my reporting journey for the book.

There was just so much ground to cover with him that I knew we couldn’t get to it all in one sitting. As Brooks acknowledged once the interview concluded, he knew, or at least knew of, just about everyone who’d ever played for the Orioles, having signed with them in 1955, their second year of existence.

Fortunately, and not surprisingly, he indulged my request for one chunk of his time and then another chunk. All told in the two interviews, both of which took place at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, he spoke to me for nearly two hours.

We discussed a wide range of topics including his early years in the game, his influences, the Orioles’ (and his) best and lowest World Series moments, his heavy involvement in the baseball labor movement and whether his roots in Little Rock, Arkansas impacted his relationships with Black teammates.

A quarter-century later, you can now hear this rare biographical interview with a paid subscription to the Bird Tapes, which also gives you access to my entire (and growing) archive of interviews with former Oriole players, executives, broadcasters, managers and others. To upgrade from free to paid, click on the “subscribe now” button.

To set the scene, when Brooks and I are conversing in 1999 and 2000, he is in his early sixties, a little more than two decades removed from the end of his playing career. He is no longer on the team’s TV broadcasts, and in fact, as he relates in the interview, he doesn’t have any role with the team at the moment, much to his chagrin.