The Birds of Summer: Basking in baseball relevance

For the Birds of the 1960s, 1970s or even the early 1980s, contending was a given, and teams playing at Memorial Stadium were populated by future Hall-of-Famers like the Robinsons — Frank and Brooks — or Jim Palmer, Boog Powell or Paul Blair. But it’s now been 40 years since the Baltimore Orioles appeared in the World Series, nine years since they won a playoff series and seven years since they last made the playoffs, losing in the wild card round.