Orioles’ Linda Warehime Butcher, MLB’s First Ball Girl, Looks Back on Her Time at Memorial Stadium

“Memorial Stadium? Oh my God. I’m not sure how I would put it. I loved that place. It was home.”

From 1968 to 1974, Linda Warehime Butcher was a Memorial Stadium fixture along with Brooks and Boog, American League pennants, Earl Weaver’s tantrums, and PA announcer Rex Barney calling out, “Give that fan a contract.”

As authentically Bawlmer as Esskay hot dogs and Natty Boh—National Brewing Company president Jerold Hoffberger owned the team in those days—she landed a “job” at 11 years old sweeping off the bases between innings with a big straw broom.

“I was so nervous that first day,” recalls the now-68-year-old lifelong O’s fan. “I don’t know how many people were there, maybe 30,000. I was shy and pretty introverted, and afraid I was going to trip over a base or something.”

Instead, the blonde schoolgirl discovered a previously unknown gift for hijinks. Running from base to base in reverse order—starting at third, closest to the Orioles’ dugout, then to home, the pitcher’s mound, first, second, and back to third—she didn’t just sweep the bases, but began sweeping the dirt from the O’s cleats as she scampered past them in the middle of the fifth inning, drawing cheers.

Pretty soon, she started swatting opposing third-base coaches as she ran back to her seat down the left-field line, where the self-described tomboy scooped up foul balls during play as Major League Baseball’s first ball girl.

Sensing which coaches and umpires were game, she coaxed more than a few into playing along. A Red Sox coach pulled out a water pistol and squirted her one game. She soaked him back the next night. A Cleveland coach once sneakily planted a fake mouse on third base, causing Butcher to scream when she came by and knock it halfway home. She kissed an Angel’s coach on the cheek, who promptly fell flat on his backside. A Royals coach once greeted her by doffing his cap and offering a bouquet of flowers that he’d hidden behind his back.

“Jay Mazzone [the O’s batboy who had lost both his hands in a fire at two years old and famously did his job with metal hooks] was in on it,” she notes. “I was in shock. It was touching.”

When Butcher describes the “Old Grey Lady,” as Memorial Stadium was affectionately known, as home, she means it (almost) literally. Her father, a Baltimore police lieutenant, directed traffic. Her three brothers were all on the grounds crew. Her mother came to every game

The gig lasted until she graduated from Overlea High in 1974 and needed a full-time job. Along the way, she landed in Sports Illustrated and the 1970 World Series program—a series during which she smacked umpire Emmett Ashford on the rear before a nationally televised audience. She attended team parades and functions and made appearances on two of television’s most popular shows, To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line?

Today, a bat autographed by the 1970 championship club and a World Series ring that her parents purchased for her 13th birthday  remain cherished mementos—as do so many photographs.

“I went to Opening Day a few years ago and Boog Powell remembered me—it’d been nearly 50 years—and he signed an old photograph of us that I had,” Butcher recalls. “He seemed like a giant, a gentle giant, when I was a girl. But other than [former ace and longtime O’s color man] Jim Palmer, there aren’t many links left between Camden Yards and Memorial Stadium.

“Well, except for Clancy,” the O’s beer vendor who started when he was 15 and is now in his 50th year, she adds. “He was there.”