It was a cool, cloudy September morning in 1896 when the Orioles stepped off the train in Ellicott City and into the crowd gathered to pay homage to the best team in baseball. Baltimore had just clinched its third consecutive National League flag (there was only one league) and the club had come to play an exhibition game at nearby St. Charles College.
The students at the Howard County school, a Roman Catholic seminary founded in 1848, were geared up as the players approached the winding drive, and its spouting fountain, in an omnibus drawn by six horses.