I was born in October of 1982. Three days before my first birthday, the Baltimore Orioles won the World Series. They have not been back since, but at least I can say they have technically won a championship in my lifetime.

It’s funny how memory works, because obviously I don’t remember the 1983 series, but I’ve seen the last out of Game 5 so many times it’s like I saw it live. A soft line drive snagged by a young Cal Ripken, Jr., at shortstop. He throws both hands in the air and the team celebrates on the rock hard astroturf of Philly’s Veterans Stadium. I can hear legendary announcer Jon Miller (then in his first season working with the team) call the final out on the radio: “The cheering you hear is from Oriole fans. Everybody else is in muted silence. The pitch! Line drive! Ripken catches it at shortstop! And the Orioles are champions of the world!”

The Orioles had been to six of the previous 17 World Series, winning three. They were a model franchise, with “The Oriole Way” having led to sustained dominance and producing multiple home-grown Hall of Famers.

I don’t really remember The Oriole Way. The first Orioles season I can remember, 1988, started with the team losing their first 21 games. A standard of futility that remains a record today. Oh, but I was hooked. I listened to Miller call the games on the radio every night before bed, and on the rare occasion my dad would brave one of the country’s worst traffic corridors to see the team at old Memorial Stadium, I remember walking through the tunnel from the concourse and seeing the greenest grass I’d ever seen in my life. It was magic, even if the team was shitty.

You see, I grew up in Northern Virginia. At the time, Washington, D.C., was a twice failed baseball market (with the Senators having left town twice, first to become the Minnesota Twins and then to become the Texas Rangers). So the Orioles were unquestionably the team of the Mid-Atlantic, for better or worse.

After the championship in 1983, the Orioles didn’t make the playoffs again until 1996. They did so in an iconic new stadium that instantly became one of baseball’s jewels and remains so to this day. Cal Ripken, Jr., was still at shortstop, having played every single game in the interim years. They made it to the American League Championship Series against the hated New York Yankees, one round away from a return to the World Series.

I was at Game 5 of that series. I remember my excitement walking up to Camden Yards. I remember walking past people selling baseball gloves on broomsticks (a nod to the events of Game 1, when a child my age illegally caught the ball away from the Orioles outfielder, the resulting “home run” tied the game, and the Yankees would eventually win). I remember those gloves on sticks getting confiscated at the gate. I remember the Yankees scoring 6 runs in the third inning. And I remember watching the Yankees celebrate on the field after the final out. They would go on to win the World Series.

Looking back on it, watching a hated rival celebrate on my team’s field is one of the worst feelings in sports. The magnanimous part of me empathizes with what Philly fans must have felt watching the Orioles celebrate way back in 1983. But that was cool and this sucked.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the team that got me to believe in the Orioles. Over the next seven or so months, we will relive that season together (If you’re up for it). Starting on March 1, come with me back to 1996 with daily updates of what was going on with the team in real time. We’ll start with an introduction to some of the colorful cast of characters that made that season so unforgettable, well, at least to me. There will be dingers (lots of them), LOOGYs, a controversial literal loogie, and a grave playoff injustice that makes grown men angrily mutter a child’s name under their breath (“Jeffrey Maier, gah!”) to this day.

Because a 13 year old’s memory is hardly reliable so many decades later, I’ll be primarily relying on the coverage from two iconic sports sections with reporters dedicated to the team (The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post). I hope it will be a reminder of the value of local sports journalism and what private equity, Jeff Bezos, and company have taken from us.

I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane with me. As I left the stadium with my dad that October night in 1996, I thought the Orioles would compete forever. And while they had an even better season in 1997, it would be 27 years before I would attend another Orioles playoff game. I am still waiting to attend my first playoff victory.

This is The Ghosts of ’96.