BALTIMORE — On what might have been a perfect spring afternoon to sit with a beer and a hot dog and watch baseball, an eerie emptiness greeted the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday in what was believed to be the first major league game played without spectators.

Except for two scouts sitting behind home plate and a press box full of reporters, the 45,971 seats and three decks at Camden Yards were an empty expanse of green when the first pitch was thrown at 2:06 p.m. in what became an 8-2 Orioles victory.

“This isn’t the way you want to make history,” Chris Davis, the Orioles’ first baseman, said before he hit a three-run homer in the first inning as Baltimore took a 6-0 lead.

The police presence was light around the empty stadium amid the unrest in this troubled city after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American who died after sustaining a severe spinal injury while in police custody.