25 years later, still a a good Joe

Altobelli remains consummate pro after six decades

By Mike Klingaman | Sun Reporter

April 6, 2008

Taking over for Earl Weaver, Joe Altobelli led the Orioles to the world championship. "Someone had to do it," he humbly says. (Sun file photo -- 1983)

If Opening Day were any indication, the 1983 Orioles were due to be blown away - like the parachutist the club hired to land on the pitcher's mound before the game.

Winds whisked him onto the stadium parking lot instead.

On the field, Joe Altobelli watched the descent in horror.

"I looked up and I saw him going by and I thought, 'Oh, God!' " the Orioles' first-year manager said. "[Broadcaster] Chuck Thompson thought the guy landed on his car."

The rest of the day went just as well.

Shortstop Cal Ripken made a costly error, as did Dan Ford, who dropped a routine fly. The crowd roundly booed the club's new theme song, "That Magic Feeling." And the Kansas City Royals won the game, 7-2.

Afterward, Altobelli heard the tired refrain of who he wasn't.

"Earl [Weaver] would have won this one easy," a reporter said of the manager's predecessor.

Altobelli, who had been trying hard that spring to quit smoking, bit hard on an unlit cigar.

"Yeah, I think I'm going to be hearing that for a long, long time," he said. "But that's OK. I've been compared to worse people."

The gibes vanished quickly. The Orioles won the next game, the American League pennant and the World Series. Without the volcanic Weaver. Altobelli shepherded the club to a championship with what one reporter called "the calm, reassuring tones of a parish priest."

Twenty-five years later, Altobelli - never one to brag - still shrugs off his part in taking the Orioles the distance.

"Someone had to do it," he said.

Now a radio voice of the Triple-A Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings, Altobelli hearkened back to April 4, 1983, a warm, sunny afternoon at Memorial Stadium filled with 51,889 buoyant fans - then the second-largest regular-season crowd in club annals.

Leaving his office beneath the ballpark, Altobelli brushed against a good-luck gift - a floral arrangement in the shape of a horseshoe.

On the field, Brooks Robinson threw out the first pitch (from third base) and 3,000 balloons raced skyward. As the team was introduced, one by one, it was Altobelli who received the loudest cheers.

"I left tickets for a lot of Italian people that day," he said.

Nervous? Don't ask.

"I remember the butterflies," he said. "If you don't get them on Opening Day, you never will."

The Orioles were going without Weaver in the dugout for the first time in 15 years. He had retired as the winningest manager in team history.