Sports

Baltimore's relationship with magic goes back to 1787, when an Italian showman named Falconi set up shop at the Old Theater and charged 75 cents a seat to watch things that were inexplicable, and probably weren't. A crowd of 50,000 showed up on a Tuesday afternoon in 1916 to watch Houdini possibly fall from a building downtown. He didn't fall. Baltimore has been like this for a long time.