Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland and are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League.

In its first year, it was a team in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers, The team was next moved to St. Louis and became the St. Louis Browns where it remained for 52 years. The Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954.

They adopted the name from the Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula), a small blackbird of the passerine family. The bird got its name in 1808 because the male's colors resembled those on the coat of arms of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who was part of the Calvert family that established the Maryland colony in the 17th century. The Baltimore Oriole is also the state bird of Maryland.

Earlier short-lived Baltimore teams, in the early 1870s, were called "Lord Baltimore" and "Maryland" respectively. The first club to be called the Baltimore Orioles was a charter member of the American Association in 1882. When the AA folded after the 1891 season, four of its teams were brought into the expanded National League, including the Orioles.


The newly-formed American League wanted to compete directly with the National League's New York Giants, but the Giants used their political clout to block the American League from placing a club there. Instead, a team was placed in Baltimore in 1901.

So, in 1954, when the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, they adopted the city's old traditional baseball nickname.

Many fans, and the team itself, also refer to the team as the "O's" or the "Birds".