It’s March 13, 1996, and the Orioles played a spring training doubleheader today against Montreal. Tony Tarasco led off the first game in right field for the Expos. Immediately after the game — a 10-1 O’s win — he went to the Baltimore clubhouse to meet his new teammates. That’s because O’s general manager Pat Gillick and Expos GM Jim Beattie spent most of the game negotiating, and by the seventh inning had agreed to send Tarasco to the Birds in exchange for outfielder Sherman Obando. (Baltimore Sun, p. 3D, March 14, 1996)  All offseason, the O’s have been looking for a left-handed hitting, solid defensive outfielder, and that’s what Tarasco should bring.

Tony Tarasco was born in December of 1970 in New York City. The son of an Italian American father and a Trinidadian American mother, Tarasco lived in the Bronx until he was 7. His dad worked as a vendor at Yankee Stadium. When he was 13, the family moved across the country, to Santa Monica, Ca., where he said he became the only kid in Malibu surfing with a jheri curl. He didn’t fit in with the rich kids, and he found community with kids in his neighborhood as a member of the Santa Monica Graveyard Crips. 

“When we moved to Santa Monica, it turned out that it doesn’t matter where you go, if you fit in the economic bracket you’re going to be in that type of area, no matter where you are,” Tarasco would later say in a 1999 interview with the Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Va. “A lot of what I was doing in the early part of the 80s was no different from what you would see in ‘West Side Story’, a lot of street gangs and fighting and stuff.”

There was always a lot going on in Tony’s life as a kid, but through it all he was very good at baseball, and everyone knew it. Seeing that their friend had a rare talent, some of his closest friends in the Crips encouraged him to leave the gang and focus on baseball instead. One of them was Chris Pickett, who Tarasco said would later be killed the day after his 22nd birthday by a Los Angeles police officer, who shot Pickett dead while looking for a different person the officer claimed was a robbery suspect.

“It happened around the time of the Rodney King trial,” Tarasco said. “It was an unlawful shooting. There were investigations. I went home for the funeral, but I couldn't stay when they delayed it for an autopsy. That dragged me down.”

But Tarasco had listened to Pickett’s advice, left the gang, and went all-in on baseball. The Atlanta Braves drafted him out of high school in 1988, and five years later he made his major league debut. 

After two partial seasons in Atlanta, he was traded to Montreal shortly before the 1995 season as part of a package for Marquis Grissom. With the Expos, he finally got regular playing time and made the most of it, hitting 14 homers, stealing 24 bases, and playing solid defense in left and right field.

He was going to be the Expos’ leadoff hitter this year, but instead he is off to Baltimore. His speed and defense are something that the O’s have been looking for all offseason, and his left-handed bat could platoon with longtime Oriole Mike Devereaux. He could also be used as a late-inning defensive replacement for Bobby Bonilla.

“He gives us the player we’ve been looking for,” said Orioles manager Davey Johnson, “a left-handed bat, great arm in the outfield, speed and youth.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 3D, March 14, 1996)

After switching clubhouses between games of the doubleheader, Tarasco is ready to get to work. “It’s a better team,” he said. “I’ll see what they have planned for me. … I’m excited.” With Opening Day fast approaching, the roster is getting more complete by the day, and Tarasco should be a semi-regular this season.  

In case you are wondering, Tarasco is listed at 6 feet tall. For comparison — and for no reason at all whatsoever, why do you ask? — the right field wall in Yankee Stadium is roughly 8 feet tall.

The NBA suspended Nuggets star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (on March 12, 1996) without pay for refusing to stand for the National Anthem. Though he hasn’t been standing for the anthem for a while, the NBA now decided he was violating a rule that required players to “stand and line up in a dignified posture.” Calling the flag “a symbol of oppression, of tyranny” he said, “My beliefs are more important than anything. If I have to give up basketball, I will.” (Associated Press story appearing in Baltimore Sun, p. 6D, March 13, 1996)

Here he is, in his own words:

Welcome to a recurring segment where I find fun things in today’s (in 1996) Baltimore Sun!

On March 13, 1996, The Baltimore Sun had a staff foreign correspondent in Berlin writing about a museum of East German erotica. It appeared in print next to a lengthy feature on political humorist Molly Ivins written by Sun staffer Laura Lippman. Truly a different era.