On a recent spring day, three Orioles walked into Vaccaro’s, the pastry shop and cafe that’s been serving in Little Italy since 1956. They walked past the case of cannolis, pignolis and napoleons to order from the gelato counter.

Kyle Gibson is an evangelist. Going back a decade, the pitcher has been coming into the shop on visits to Baltimore long before he ever wore Orioles orange. He brought Adam Frazier and Gunnar Henderson with him on this trip, preaching the merits of the black cherry ice cream.

The next day, two pounds of Italian cookies were sitting in the clubhouse — an offering from the veteran hurler.

“That’s a place that I’ve told everybody about,” Gibson told me recently. “Everything there is good.”

I had heard of Gibson’s affinity for Baltimore’s Little Italy and Vaccaro’s. A few days ago, I pulled him aside in the clubhouse to yank on a thread that I’ve been thinking about for a while: What do free agent athletes really think about Baltimore?

Gibson was the team’s most prominent free agent signing this offseason on a $10 million, one-year deal. That fact was a bit of a surprise to some who thought general manager Mike Elias and the Orioles were looking to land bigger fish in the pitching market — but the results have borne out well: In eight games, Gibson has a 4-2 record with a 4.40 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP through mid-May.

He admits he’s not an ace, but he doesn’t have to be. Leading off the starting rotation, Gibson has characterized the fight of the Orioles’ starting pitching staff, pitching aggressively into the strike zone and getting good results in high-leverage situations (holding hitters to .192 batting average in them, according to Baseball Reference). He doesn’t mow opposing lineups down, but he fights. If the bullpen has been the heart of the Orioles’ success, Gibson has been the backbone, giving the staff structure and resilience.

I was more interested in how he got here — perhaps projecting a bit as a fellow 35-year-old Kyle G. who was similarly wooed to come work in Baltimore. Even before the Orioles entered their rebuild, building through free agents has been dicey here, and some of the biggest signings (Alex Cobb, Ubaldo Jiménez, anyone?) have been disappointing. With the franchise on the right side of the AL East this season, it feels like the Orioles are going to be looking to spend in free agency for the coming years.

Can this city still turn on the charm? That’s what I hoped to learn from Gibson.

His answer, though, had less to do with the city itself and more about baseball here. Not only its bright future, but its not-so-distant past, too — the memories of which may have dimmed in the wake of the prolonged rebuild.

Gibson has glowing memories of starts past in Baltimore. Even though his mid-2010s Twins only came to Camden Yards twice a year, he still has great affinity and respect for the lineup of that era. He listed them by name, sweeping from third to first: Machado, Hardy, Schoop and Davis, with Markakis and Jones as outfield mainstays and Wieters behind the plate.

“It was one of those lineups where you came in and you knew it was going to be a tough outing,” he said.

He and Adam Jones had memorable back-and-forths while facing off just 27 times: Four of Jones’ five career hits off of Gibson were homers. Jogging around the basepaths, Jones would tease the then-young pitcher for throwing a slider instead of his sinker, a tougher pitch to hit.

But Gibson loved playing against the Orioles, a confident team that he felt brought out his competitive spirit.

“This place was a pretty fun place to play,” he said. “You were facing a team that had three or four All-Stars, and a team that was winning a lot in the AL East and going to the playoffs. I enjoy those times. I enjoy the competition. And it just overall left a good taste in my mouth.”

So yes, Baltimore left a positive impression, and when free agency rolled around this winter, Gibson already knew that he would enjoy pitching in Camden Yards — which has been more attractive to pitchers anyway since the left field wall moved back.

But while I was curious about Gibson’s affinity for Italian pastries and the Inner Harbor, he had something more interesting to say about why he wound up here: a strong feeling that the Orioles were positioned to finally win.

He peppered Elias and manager Brandon Hyde about the timing of the rebuild, if the team was trying to compete in the coming year. He looked into the defensive support and catcher Adley Rutschman, with whom he’d need to carve out a good relationship. His taste for Baltimore as a city helped — but he chose the Orioles mostly for their baseball merits, which is quite a statement after he pitched for the NL champion Phillies last season.

“To me, the markets that look for, ‘Oh, we have good places to live, oh, we have good restaurants, oh, we have good stuff away from the field’ — for the most part, a free agent who’s coming here or any other city, for the most part they want to win,” he said. “I was just in the World Series last year and had a chance to get to that part of the game, and I want to experience that again.”

Added Gibson: “As much as I enjoy Baltimore, that’s still down the list. Because ultimately a player comes in and they want to know how this experience is gonna be. Because we spend 95% of our time with these people in this room and at this stadium.”

Last season, the Orioles signed Jordan Lyles to a similar contract, a one-year, $9 million deal. Lyles told Gibson what to expect, a phone call that helped sell him on coming to Baltimore. Now, if he were to pay it forward, Gibson knows what he’d pitch.

“So if I’m telling a free agent right now about coming to Baltimore, it’s about the guys in here,” he said. “It’s about the locker room. It’s about the personalities. It’s about how they put a premium on bringing good people here. How these young guys are gonna just elevate this team to a whole ’nother level, and it’s all around the field.”

Going 3-3 against the Atlanta Braves and Tampa Bay Rays in the last week has helped herald that the Orioles are a real threat, even in a stacked division — that their early momentum might be more than a fortunate turn of schedule.

He’s not the first big-leaguer to discover Vaccaro’s gelato, but a winning Orioles season? Gibson saw that as early as anyone.

Now the secret is out.

“It’s just a lot of good people from the staff to the locker room to the training room to everywhere,” he told me. “When you have good people and you win, the word travels pretty fast.”

kyle.goon@thebaltimorebanner.com