Brooks Robinson and the Baltimore Orioles

[roarfrom34]

After a disastrous 1988 season there were a lot of new faces in Orioles camp the following spring & among those faces were two african american right handed pitchers by the identical name of Mike Smith. One hailed from Jackson, MS and the other from San Antonio, TX.

For identification purposes in Spring Training one was referred to as simply Mississippi Mike and the other as Texas Mike. To help aid the ID process, the Orioles placed a silhouette of their home state on the back of their jerseys.

Neither pitcher made the club out of ST and were both sent to AAA Rochester. Mississippi Mike was eventually dealt to Pittsburgh in June and Texas Mike did get recalled from the Orioles the same month and pitched in 13 games.

At Fan Fest in January 1990, Texas Mike was in attendance and while he was by that the time the only player in their system by that name, I did ask him if he would add the "Texas" moniker & while he didn't appear to be too thrilled about it, he did oblige.

I was able to obtain Texas Mike Smith's '89 ST jersey recently and I thought most people here would like to see how unique it was (now I need to find Mississippi Mike's lol):