Crowded streetcars lurch toward Camden Yards, sacred ground, with the happy and expectant.The sidewalks are swollen with a sea of fans drenched in orange and black as they perambulate from every direction of the compass toward the ballyard where crisp flags and pennants flying overhead snap in th e wind and street vendors selling  everything from peanuts to Orioles merch are only too happy to take your money.Welcome to bedlam.Welcome to Opening Day in Baltimore.Thursday’s opener in Toronto was just a dress rehearsal for the REAL home opener Monday where dyed-in-the-wool baseball fans talk as much about past glories and triumphs as hopes for the current season, and this brings us to where an Oriole great and a broadcaster who so shaped our memories of the game are spending eternity. Just under three miles from the now-demolished Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street — the local venue for his greatest triumphs — lies the grave of Brooks Robinson, No. 5, known as the man who owned third base, and the greatest defensive third baseman in Major League Baseball history, who rightfully earned the moniker the “Human vacuum cleaner.”Robinson’s grave, sitting on a slight knoll of St. Mary’s Cemetery at 233  Homeland Ave., behind the now-shuttered St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Govans, fittingly overlooks an athletic field on the back campus of Notre Dame of Maryland University. Brooks Calbert Robinson Jr., a Little Rock, Arkansas native, was 18 when he joined the Orioles in 1955, and over the next 22 seasons accumulated numerous awards and lasting deep affection from fans who still think of him “Mr. Oriole.”He was a two-time World Series champion; 18-time All Star; winner of 16 consecutive Gold Glove Awards; and entered Cooperstown in 1983.After Robinson’s last Orioles game on Aug. 13, 1977, the team retired his number.Reflecting on his career, Robinson explained, “I played 23 years with the Orioles and believe me, it has come back to me tenfold.”He was 86 when he died of heart failure at his Owings Mills home in 2023. “He was the heart and soul of the Baltimore Orioles. Always has been. Probably always will be,” former Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey told The Baltimore Sun at his death.“You understood why the Orioles became a powerhouse, because Brooks Robinson just paved the way, the way he played. Everybody else fell in line behind him,” he said.“Never has a player meant more to a franchise and much more to a city than Brooks has meant to the Orioles and the city of Baltimore,” wrote the late broadcaster and baseball historian Ted Patterson, author of “The Baltimore Orioles; Four Decades of Magic from 33rd Street to Camden Yards.”The ashes of egendary Baltimore sports broadcaster Chuck Thompson rest inside a large fieldstone fireplace at the Hunt Valley Towne Center. Photo by Dan Rodricks.And the legendary Baltimore sports broadcaster Chuck Thompson had been an eyewitness to Robinson and those great Orioles years.  The great play-by-play announcer whose voice penetrated through the humidity of a still Baltimore August summer night when the Orioles were on fire was that of none other than the great Chuck Thompson, whose enthusiasm was infectious and undeniable.Who can ever forget, who was alive in those glory years, his trademark phrases: “Go to war, Miss Agnes” or “Ain’t the beer cold!” when the action on the field got hotter than the thermometer.A Massachusetts native, Thompson began his broadcasting career in Reading, Pennsylvania, and later moved on to Philadelphia as a sports announcer. After fighting with the Army at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, Thompson returned to Philadelphia, before moving to Baltimore in 1949 when the Gunther Brewing Co. hired him to do play-by-play on WITH-AM Radio for the International League Orioles and the Baltimore Colts.Whether he was on TV or radio, Thompson was always dressed in a sport coat, white shirt and tie, which he topped with a rakish summer straw hat.He was a fixture on WBAL and WJZ between 1962 and 1978, and from 1979 to 1982, was at home with WFBR-AM, when “Orioles Magic,” promoted by the station, swept Maryland and warmed the hearts of Oriole fans everywhere.One of his broadcasting partners was Robinson who shared the booth with him from 1978 to 1987.From 1979 to 1987 he was on WMAR-TV, and retired that year after the death of his longtime broadcast partner, Bill O’Donnell, who also had an enormous local following.From 1959 to 1966, Thompson was Maryland Sportscaster of the Year, and in 1993, received the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.Thompson returned to WBAL part time in 1991 when Orioles play-by-play announcer John Miller was away.He collaborated with Associated Press sports writer Gordon Beard on his autobiography which is aptly titled, “Ain’t the Beer Cold,” which was published in 1996. A Lutherville resident, Thompson stepped away from the broadcast booth for good in 2000 after being diagnosed with macular degeneration.He died at 83 in 2005 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center after suffering a stroke.  Whereas Robinson’s grave is in what essentially is a country churchyard,  Thompson’s ashes rest inside a large fieldstone fireplace at the Hunt Valley Towne Centre, 118 Shawan Road, Cockeysville, where passersby can offer homage or sit for a reflective moment.“Chuck Thompson wasn’t just a Hall of Fame announcer,” wrote former Sun reporter Laura Vozzella, “He also was a husband, the kind who parked himself on a shopping mall bench while his wife roamed the stores. So his final resting place — in the courtyard of a revamped shopping mall — could not be more fitting.” ...read more read less