Photography By Edwin Remsberg
Aberdeen, may be located within shouting distance of the Chesapeake Bay, but it is in no way a cute and cozy Maryland bayside village. Named after an early railroad man’s hometown in Scotland, Aberdeen has no skipjacks, no crab shacks, no quaint waterfront shops. But what it does have is a homegrown baseball hero—and the town uses Cal Ripken and his impressive baseball legacy to its full advantage.
With most of the town situated between the bustling Amtrak/Conrail/U.S. 40 corridor and I-95, the Harford County town was first a tobacco-growing center, then a hub of the vegetable canning industry. Since World War I, it’s been the home of the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), a vast weapons-testing facility that employs many local civilians but cuts off their access to the Bay. This tepid tribute comes from a Harford County Sun editorial celebrating the town’s 1992 centennial: “Bisected by rail and highways, this utilitarian place of 13,000 residents is more gritty than pretty, but it’s a survivor with a lot of civic pride and a plan for growth.”
The description pretty much holds true today, though much of the plan for growth has come to pass. During the past decade, Aberdeen has turned itself into a manufacturing and distribution center for major companies such Frito-Lay, Saks Fifth Avenue, Clorox, Pier 1, and Hardee’s. Situated twenty-five miles northeast of Baltimore, it’s also become a regional high-tech hub, its HEAT (Higher Education Applied Technology) Center home to more than a dozen high-tech firms; units of Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, Harford, and Cecil community colleges; and the Ohio-based defense contractor Battelle.
Most prominently, Aberdeen has become world capital of Ripken Baseball, a network of hardball-related enterprises run by townies Cal Ripken, Jr., and his brother Bill, also a former major leaguer. Cal was born three miles away in Havre de Grace (which does possess the requisite Chesapeake-side scenic and commercial trappings). Both his parents, Cal Ripken, Sr., and the former Violet Gross, have deep roots in the Aberdeen area, a forefather of Vi’s having fought hereabouts in the American Revolution. But except for summers when the family accompanied “Senior” (as he’s known locally) on peregrinations to Orioles’ farm clubs in locations that included Aberdeen, South Dakota, the family lived in a “three bedroom frame house—just up the hill from what are now the Amtrak railroad tracks and about three miles from the front gate of the famous Aberdeen Proving Ground, where the Army tested its latest munitions with window-rattling blasts,” writes Cal in his autobiography, The Only Way I Know.
“Cal’s mother still lives here,” says George Englesson, proprietor of downtown Aberdeen’s New Ideal Diner, Aberdeen’s mayor from 1986-91, and a font of local lore. “Billy lives in the upper part of the county, and another brother, Fred, lives around here somewhere. He didn’t go into baseball, but they say he was a better baseball player than all of them.”
The Ripken network includes the minor-league Aberdeen IronBirds—"iron" a reference to The Streak (Cal’s 2,632 consecutive games), “birds” to the Orioles with which the team is affiliated and where Cal spent his entire career. A member of the Class A New York-Penn League, the IronBirds play thirty-eight home games during the June through September season—almost all of them sellouts—in the 6,000-seat state-of-the-baseball-art Ripken Stadium. Each August, the city-owned stadium also hosts the Cal Ripken World Series for top teams in the twelve-and-under Ripken division of the Babe Ruth League. Situated on the outskirts of town alongside I-95, the open spaces around Ripken Stadium incorporate fields for the Ripken Youth Baseball Academy. It’s modeled after the classic major-league ballparks Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium—and is soon to be adorned with the original fifteen letters that spelled M-E-M-O-R-I-A-L S-T-A-D-I-U-M on the now-demolished structure’s facade.
A 198-room Marriott will materialize behind the mini-me Camden Yards right-field wall, and an adjacent retail-entertainment-condominium project is in the works.
The network used to include the Ripken Museum, a collection of Ripken family relics and other baseball treasures situated in downtown Aberdeen (at the honorary address 8 Ripken Plaza). But the museum closed last November, eventually to reopen in the next two seasons out in the stadium complex. In the meantime, a sampler of museum items on display in the Ripken Stadium grandstand will be accessible during IronBirds games and, at other times, via The Hangar, the stadium’s year-round gift shop.
One change that nobody in Aberdeen expected (or desired) resulted from 9/11. The APG, whose personnel played a large role in supporting local business, all but isolated itself from the Aberdeen community. “Since 9/11, it’s difficult to get on and off the post,” says Englesson. “But Aberdeen is not really an army town. People would think it’s an army town, but it’s not.”
Still, APG contains Aberdeen’s paramount all-season visitor attraction, the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum, which charts the history of the Ordnance Corps and displays its weaponry. To reach the museum, we civilians have to present a driver’s license and vehicle ID to obtain a day pass (at the Maryland Avenue gate, Route 715) and then drive a mile or so past a formation of demobilized tanks and armored cars. The museum itself is surrounded by a martial sculpture garden of more than 200 tanks, cannons, missiles, and other heavy ordnance in militarily hued khaki, olive drab, and white.
Inside, the exhaustive collection of pistols, rifles, and machine guns range from antiques such as a Gatling Gun, Colt .45 “Peacemaker,” and Dillinger-era tommy guns to an ugly grenade- and lethal-dart-shooting device called the SPIW (Special Purpose Individual Weapon), dubbed “the deadliest gun that never was.”
A popular display memorializes Women Ordnance Workers—or WOWs—who numbered over 85,000 by the end of World War II. An army photographer took morale-boosting shots of one particularly wow-a-licious worker named Norma Jean Baker—and thus launched the career of Marilyn Monroe. Even restroom breaks are learning experiences. Men’s room dŽcor is World War II German Camouflage, Mediterranean Scheme, and stall walls depict diagrams of classic military latrines.
As far as downtown Aberdeen is concerned, there’s not much there any more. “When I came here in 1955, everything that went on went on downtown,” says Englesson. “But little by little over the last twenty to twenty-five years, downtown kind of went away.”
Brochures available at the Aberdeen branch of the Harford County Visitors Center chart walking tours to downtown’s scant historic sites, including one memorializing Aberdeen’s longstanding connection to baseball. Aberdeen was the home of Les German, a pitcher during the 1890s for the Baltimore Orioles of the old American Association and other major-league teams; he later became an ace trap-shooter and toured with Annie Oakley. German’s sprawling Victorian home (at 17 N. Philadelphia Blvd., U.S. 40) has been supplemented with a storefront annex occupied by the Breath of God Christian Fellowship.
Aberdeen’s high-rent district consists of turn-of-the-century mansions built by canning magnates on the 400-600 block of W. Bel Air Avenue. Of note is a sprawling Victorian built in 1896 by U.S. Congressman William B. Baker (No. 468) and an 1850s mansion that was originally the Grove Presbyterian Church manse (No. 602).
If you’re looking for non-chain hotel lodging, the choices are slim, beginning and ending with one of Aberdeen’s most sumptuous mansions, a restored Queen Anne Victorian. Built in 1896 by canner James Bromwell Baker, it was converted into the Baker House Bed & Breakfast. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the house has seven bedrooms, nearly 1,000 square feet of covered porches, and an acre-and-a-half of formal and not-so-formal gardens. Twelve years ago, the house was nearly a tear down, but a previous owner began the restoration, and the current owners, Dennis and Lura Riddell, have continued the work. The Riddells, who between them work three other jobs, didn’t quite know what they were getting into. “We saw an ad in a local real estate magazine, and I said to my wife, ‘Let’s drive by this monster,’” says Dennis. Lura adds, “I’ve never even stayed at a B&B.”
Today, Baker House offers modern conveniences amid Victorian pomp. The opulent music room where the Bakers entertained themselves now has luxurious armchairs and a sofa fronting a home-entertainment system. A hearty country breakfast—eggs, French toast, bacon, sausage, generous fruit plate—is served in a formal dining room trimmed from top to bottom—including the floor—in chestnut. Exhibits throughout the house include groupings of Victorian-era dolls, samples of Baker-label canned goods—tomatoes, sugar corn, shoe peg corn—and memorabilia of the O’s reigning pre-Ripken deity, Brooks Robinson. The Riddells are currently in the process of transforming a neglected carriage house into a venue for weddings, murder mystery dinners, and comedy cabarets.
The best place for hearty meals and political palaver is Englesson’s New Ideal Diner, a green-striped stainless-steel classic diner (a 1952 Jerry O’Mahony, diner buffs) that augments road food staples with tasty Maryland specialties like crab cakes, crab soup, and various crab- oyster-lobster concoctions.
If that fails to entice, George Englesson has a response to those who would deem Aberdeen neither a great place to live or to visit. “People used to say to me, ‘Too bad you don’t have a waterfront like Havre de Grace.’ I’d say, ‘Tell me one city where the waterfront is as close to the heart of the city as the waterfront at Havre de Grace. It’s three miles away.’ We consider their waterfront part of our heritage—you know what I mean?”
Theodore Fischer writes from his home in Silver Spring, Md.
Locals’ Guide to Aberdeen
Hear All About It
Aberdeen’s only media outlet, radio station WAMD (970 AM), airs oldies music and oldies commentators like Paul Harvey.
Real Deals on Designer Threads
The Saks Fifth Avenue Company Store in Saks’ massive distribution center offers dramatic discounts on labels from fashion’s top names—all of them smudged out with black markers. But watch out for rips and stains. 500 Hickory Dr. 410-297-5200.
Big Hair Mecca
Kate Pierson of the rock group B-52’s makes regular pilgrimages from New York City to get her prodigious coiffure teased to perfection at Aberdeen’s beauty superstore, Odyssey Salon and Day Spa. 29 N. Parke St. 410-272-5330.
Take Me Out to the Sports Bar
Swap insights on the IronBirds and the O’s, or keep track of a dozen or more games on the wall-to-wall TVs at the Iron House Sports Bar & Grill in the Quality Inn, about a half-mile from Ripken Stadium. 793 W. Bel Air Ave. 410-272-6970.
Blasts From the Past
Old canning devices, APG brochures, and lots of baseball memorabilia—from the 30s semi-pro Aberdeen Canners team to primo Ripkeniana—are on display in the Aberdeen Room Archives and Museum. Open Tues. & Thurs., 10 a.m.-1 p.m.; first Sat. of month, noon-3 p.m. 18 N. Howard St. 410-273-6325.
Contacts
Aberdeen IronBirds
Ripken Stadium
873 Long Dr. (get it?)
410-297-9292
http://www.ironbirdsbaseball.com
Baker House Bed & Breakfast
452 W. Bel Air Ave.
410-575-6055
http://www.bakerhousebandb.com
Harford County Visitors Center
211 W. Bel Air Ave.
410-575-7278
http://www.harfordmd.com
The New Ideal Diner
104 S. Philadelphia Blvd.
410-272-1880
U.S. Army Ordnance Museum
Aberdeen Proving Ground
410-278-3602
http://www.goordnance.apg.army.mil/sitefiles/OrdnanceMuseum.htm
