Baltimore Sun: O’s fans pay homage to Wild Bill Hagy

Wild Bill…remembered.

I found some guys who certainly do believe, and they weren’t wearing those beards to hide their identities. (Hey, it’s not always easy being an Orioles fan.) They were paying tribute to an iconic figure: Wild Bill Hagy, he of the straw hat, the scruffy beard and the pony keg gut. From his seat in Section 34, he was the wand that stirred Orioles Magic each night on 33rd Street.

“He was part of our childhood,” said Charley Case, 39, who grew up a 15-minute walk from Memorial Stadium and now runs an inn in Aspen, Colo. Case and his buddies remember watching Wild Bill from afar during their grade-school years. Later they would sneak their way into Section 34, a rite of passage in Baltimore. In college, they dressed as Wild Bill at Halloween parties. And when Baltimore’s most famous fan died last August, the group of childhood chums passed around sad e-mails and shared old stories.

...In the van en route to the stadium, Case hypothesized that “if you have a dozen guys in fake beards, it’s a scientific fact that anything is possible,” and Clapp immediately readjusted the odds to 3-2 that someone might make it atop the dugout.