Baltimore Sports and Recreation

Baltimore has had an on-again, off-again relationship with major league sports dating back to the 1890's. The city is currently home to Major League Baseball and National Football League franchises.

The relocation of the Baltimore Orioles to Oriole Park at Camden Yards in the Inner Harbor area greatly added to the vitality of the downtown. The unfortunate decision to built an adjacent, much less used football stadium for the relocated Cleveland Browns served only to make it more difficult to find parking at Orioles games - and to deplete several hundred million dollars from the state treasury.

The golf boom of the late 1990's brought the building of quite a few great golf courses in the Baltimore area. Just a few miles north of Baltimore, near Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, Bulle Rock golf course is now the site of the annual LPGA Championship. Several older public courses in the city, such as Mount Pleasant and Pine Ridge, have historical significance as sites of major tournaments in their younger days.