NEWS

Orioles pitching coach featured in The Press Box

By Keith Mills
Press Box Online
June 28, 2007

When Cal Ripken Jr. is inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame next month, Tim Norris, unlike so many other long-time Orioles fans, won't be making the trip to Cooperstown. He’ll spend the weekend watching a pair of amateur baseball games, first at Bachman Park in Glen Burnie, then Shirley Povich Field in Bethesda.

Norris is the pitching coach for one of the premier amateur baseball teams in the country -- Youse’s Maryland Orioles. It’s an Under-20 team made up of some of the best professional prospects on the East Coast, including nine players from area high schools: Dulaney’s Steve Bumbry (Virginia Tech), Mount St. Joseph’s Nick Natoli (Towson) and Bryan Hamilton (UNC-Charlotte), Centennial's Scott Swinson (George Washington), Old Mill’s Alex Buchholz (Delaware), Atholton's Ed Bach (UMBC) and Calvert Hall’s Joe Velleggia (Old Dominion), Bobby Lucas (George Washington) and Wink Nolan (Maryland).

Norris was also Ripken’s first roommate in 1978 in Bluefield, W.Va.

''Twenty-nine years,'' Norris said. ''It’s been that long?''

Yes, it has.

Norris now assists Orioles scout Dean Albany with the Maryland Orioles amateur team. Al Bumbry, whose son Steve plays outfield and bats second, is one of the assistant coaches. So is Jason King, a 1990 graduate of Cardinal Gibbons and the former coach at Randallstown and Dundalk Community College. Mike Leone, a 1975 graduate of Brooklyn Park High, is an assistant coach as well.

Norris was the Orioles' fourth-round draft pick in the 1978 amateur draft (Ripken was one of the team's four second-round picks) and was actually known more for his high school baseball success in Baltimore than Cal was. He was an All-Metro pitcher for Al Frank in 1977 and '78 at Archbishop Curley, forming a nasty one-two punch with left-hander Bobby Jones, and was the Evening Sun's high school Player of the Year in 1978. Ripken was the All-Metro shortstop.

''I spent some time with Cal at Memorial Stadium,'' Norris said. ''At the pre-draft workout and again when we signed. But that was about it.''

That changed in early June of '78 when Norris and Ripken began a journey that would change both their lives. One day after they signed with the Orioles during a ceremony at Memorial Stadium, Ripken met Norris at Archbishop Curley High in East Baltimore. Ripken, Norris and Norris' mother and girlfriend then piled into his Monte Carlo for the five-hour trip to Bluefield, 100 miles southeast of Charleston and home to the Orioles' Rookie League baseball team.

''We didn’t talk about much,'' Norris said, ''because he pretty much slept the whole way.''

That, too, changed when they arrived in Bluefield and settled in as Baby Birds.

''That's one of the rare times he slept,'' Norris said. ''We were always at the ballpark, but if we weren't on the field it was me against him -- in basketball, pinball, wrestling, whatever. We both wanted to win, no matter what we were playing.''

Norris and Ripken shared more than a competitive fire, a Maryland ZIP code and an affection for the Orioles. They shared a love of the game that made the grueling life of a low-level minor leaguer almost bearable.

''We made $400 a month and $6.50 a day in meal money,'' Norris said. ''That was either one big meal at Hardee's or two small meals at Hardee's.''

Norris and Ripken shared a house with two other Orioles draft picks, Larry Sheets of Lee High School in Staunton, Va., and Mike Boddicker, the team's sixth round pick from the University of Iowa. It was a draft that also included Bobby Bonner, the third round pick out of Texas A&M, and Don Welchel, the seventh round choice from Sam Houston State University. That draft class has gone down as one of the best in Orioles history.

***

Norris, Ripken, Mark Eckerl of Cardinal Gibbons, Pete Liberto of Mount St. Joe, Rob Gillen of Loyola Blakefield, Tony Maggard of Kenwood, Marty Hall of Glen Burnie, and Bobby Jones, Norris' teammate at Archbishop Curley, were also members of the Evening Sun All-Metro baseball team in 1978.

Jimmy Foit and Mike Federline of Mount St. Joe, Steve Doherty and Mike Wisniewski of Arundel, Chris Connell and Chuck Reiniger of Brooklyn Park, Jimmy DiPino of Calvert Hall, Norris and Ripken were among players named to the News American All-Metro team.

Ripken's team won the state Class A championship while Norris' Friars lost to Mount St. Joe in the MSA A Conference finals. Both players were signed by Dick Bowie, the Orioles’ mid-Atlantic area scout -- Ripken as an infielder, Norris as a hard-throwing right-hander with an 89-mph fastball and a nasty curve.

''We get down there and because of [Ripken] Senior, I think Cal knew what to expect a little more than I did,'' Norris said. ''For me, it was totally new. I was a little intimidated at first. There were all of these college guys, and I'm out of high school. It was really tough mentally.''

But it was Norris who got off to a better start.

''Actually,'' Norris said, ''Cal hurt his arm and had to sit out for two weeks. He was miserable.''

It was during the first couple of months in Bluefield when Norris heard the whispers from his teammates.

''A lot of guys would come up to me and say, 'I know Cal got drafted because of his father, because of Senior,''' he said. ''But by the instruction league that fall, everybody was saying this kid's going to be something. He struggled early, but he was really determined and he worked really hard. It wasn't all handed to him. He worked at it.''

So did Norris.

''It was tough,'' Norris said. ''Everybody wants to play in the big leagues. In our case, being hometown boys, it was a little more intense. And at that time, being a pitcher in the Orioles' farm system wasn't easy. They were loaded with pitchers. Even to move from Single-A to Double-A was a big challenge, much less thinking about the big leagues.''

Mike Flanagan, Jim Palmer, Scott McGregor and Dennis Martinez formed the Orioles' starting rotation in 1978. Steve Stone arrived in 1979. Sammy Stewart, Dave Ford, John Flinn and Paul Hartzell were knocking on the door. Doug DeCinces played third and Mark Belanger played shortstop with Kiko Garcia ready to replace the perennial Gold Glover.

At Bluefield, Ripken was the third baseman while Bonner was the shortstop.

''We'd go out every day and he'd take 100 ground balls and he fielded 99 of 'em clean. Of course, the one he didn't was my fault because I didn't hit it right,'' Norris laughed. ''But he never stopped working to get better and deserved everything he got.''

Ripken, Norris, Sheets, Bonner, Welchel, John Shelby, Allan Ramirez and Dave Huppert all moved through the Orioles' system together, first Bluefield, then Miami in 1979 and Charlotte in 1980 (Boddicker was promoted from Bluefield to Charlotte in 1978). Only Norris never made it to the Orioles.

He suffered arm problems at Charlotte, a team managed by future Orioles’ first-base coach Jimmy Williams, and though Cal slammed 25 home runs in his breakout year and Charlotte won the Southern League championship, 1980 was Norris' last in professional baseball.

''I actually went 10-4 that year and had really learned how to pitch,'' Norris said. ''But my arm never really recovered, and I decided that was it.''

***

In 1980, Norris and his girlfriend, Chris, married. Three years later, Brooks Norris was born. Norris coached his son both in the Maryland Orioles amateur program and at Archbishop Curley, where he worked with his mentor and coach, Al Frank. Brooks, named after Orioles Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, pitched at both the University of Maryland and Towson University.

His father?

Tim Norris sits on a stool outside the dugout at Bachman Park in Glen Burnie and helps the next class of prospects master the art of pitching. He spent his time in the Orioles' farm system wisely, listening to pitching coach Al Widmar and managers Williams, Junior Minor and Lance Nichols. He is now considered one of the area's leading pitching coaches in amateur baseball.

His staff is filled with big, strong, hard-throwing college freshmen and sophomores who grew up watching Ripken on television and will, no doubt, pay close attention when the Iron Man is inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame.

So will his former roommate.

''I think it's great,'' Norris said. ''He's been a class act, and it's well deserved. He loved to compete. We'd be the first ones to the field and the last ones to leave. Then we'd go home, and he'd wrestle you for an hour. You might as well get it over with because he was going to bother you until he gets it out of his system. But that was just Cal. He loved to play.''

Issue 2.26: June 28, 2007. Copyright The Press Box, 2007.