Brooks Robinson - Other

Other

• Brooks Robinson started his career at Lamar Porter Field, a neighborhood baseball field in Little Rock, Arkansas.

• In 2008, Brooks released a charity wine called Brooks Robinson Chardonnay with all of his proceeds donated to the Baltimore Community Foundation in a fund created in the name of Brooks and his wife Connie Robinson.

• Brooks Robinson currently serves as president of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA), an organization that assists players and fans to interact off the field. Major League legends Bob Boone, George Brett, Chuck Hinton, Mike Hegan, Robin Yount, Rusty Staub, Carl Erskine and Al Kaline preside as Vice Presidents. As well as the non-profit missions of the MLBPAA, the organization assists former major-leaguers through its wholly owned for-profit organizations MLAM (Major League Alumni Marketing), and MLAS (Major League Alumni Services). MLAM goals include implementing a player pool and gaining compensation for former players through appearances and endorsements, while protecting the name and likeness of former players from unauthorized uses.

Robinson is one of the investors in the Opening Day Partners group, of which owns four teams in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. The group named the Brooks Robinson Plaza at the entrance of Sovereign Bank Stadium in York, Pennsylvania in his honor. In the 1970s, Robinson published his autobiography entitled Third Base is My Home.

He met his future wife, Constance Louise "Connie" Butcher, on an Orioles team flight from Kansas City to Boston in July 1959, where she was working as a flight attendant for United Air Lines. He was so smitten with her that he kept ordering iced teas for her. Some of his teammates encouraged him to go talk to her. After drinking his third glass, he returned it to her in the galley. There he told her: "I want to tell you something. If any of these guys, the Baltimore Orioles, ask you for a date, tell 'em you don't date married men. Understand? I'm the only single guy on the team." Before the plane landed in Boston the two had made a date to go out. He was not the only bachelor on the flight, something he lied about to keep her from talking to them. Brooks and Constance were married in her hometown of Windsor, Ontario, Canada on October 8, 1960. Originally raised a Methodist, Robinson eventually converted in 1970 to the Catholic Church, his wife's faith.

On March 31, 2011, Robinson was admitted to Greater Baltimore Medical Center for emergency surgery after he developed an infection and fever. In the two weeks he spent in the hospital, he received an outpouring of letters and well-wishes from fans around the country. He had also previously been successfully treated for prostate cancer in 2009.