Baseball or speeches, then the pyrotechnics

For some 50 years, from the early 1930s up until the ascendancy of the Inner Harbor, Memorial Stadium was the place to go for fireworks on July Fourth. Crowds as big as 55,000 would turn out.

In the Orioles’ lean years, a preceding baseball game was considered a dull opening act. Always, politicians were considered to be even duller.

In 1963, speechifying dragged on and on. “At one point, a large segment of the crowd booed Mayor McKeldin when he suggested that he tell a story about Gen. John Eager Howard, the Maryland Revolutionary War Hero,” The Sun reported. “It had been a long ceremony and Mayor McKeldin sat down.”

In 1964, the sponsors got the Orioles to agree that no inning would start after 8:15 p.m. The game, between the Orioles and the Kansas City Athletics, began at 5:30 p.m. It ended — at approximately 8:30 p.m. — after nine innings, with the score tied 6-6. The game was not resumed the next day, a Sunday — or ever.

The Sun explained why the game ended, officially, in a tie: “If the final regulation frame had not started, it would have been labeled a “suspended game” and been completed [the next day] … Under baseball rules, since nine innings were played, it is ruled a complete game.”

How did the curfew go over? Not so well.

“Announcement that there would be no overtime play was roundly booed by the season-high Baltimore baseball crowd of 37,922,” The Sun reported.