Baltimore Baseball

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Councilman Brandon M. Scott announced Tuesday that beginning this year, the Baltimore City Public Schools baseball championship will be held at Camden Yards. The title game will take place at 2:05 p.m. on May 5. Admission is free. Gates will open at 1 p.m. with parking available in lots B and C. "Playing the biggest game of the year at the greatest baseball stadium in the country is a priceless opportunity for our student-athletes," Rawlings-Blake said in a news release.

Generations of kids have spent summer evenings pounding their cleats and sliding into home on a West Baltimore baseball field. Now, a longtime youth baseball organization is hoping to refurbish the fields on which it has instilled teamwork and responsibility in those children for more than half a century. James Mosher Baseball, Maryland's oldest continuously operating league for African-American children, started in 1960 to keep kids occupied in the summer. But after decades of play, its fields need help.

How the Washington Senators invited the Baltimore Orioles to join them in the American League, without asking for a penny of indemnification, qualifies as one of the most gracious acts in the history of professional sports. Baltimore has reason to be eternally grateful and also should return the kindness now that it's in a position to do so.But, upon investigation, there is evidence Washington did receive a special kind of consideration that was so insignificant it's ridiculous. It was such a giveaway, something so minimal, when compared to what Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators, could have charged, under baseball's territorial invasion laws, that it became virtually pro bono.

James Hall Bready, an Evening Sun editorial writer for more than three decades and originator of the "Books and Authors" column that was published in The Baltimore Sun for nearly 50 years, died Saturday of renal failure at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Homeland resident was 92. Mr. Bready, whose parents were staff members of the old Philadelphia Ledger, was born in Philadelphia and raised in southern New Jersey. He was a graduate of Woodbury High School and Moorestown Friends School, both in New Jersey.

Lillian Easley had so many brothers and sisters growing up in rural Virginia that there were enough kin to field two baseball teams, an umpire, a scorekeeper and someone to chase foul balls.The 11th of 21 children, Lil played center field."My father was the pitcher, and my mother kept score," Easley said of her Depression-era childhood on a farm 70 miles southwest of Richmond. "We'd have an early dinner and go out and play ball until it got dark."This week, the 65-year-old Northeast Baltimore resident will play ball in Colorado during Major League Baseball's All-Star break.

The orange glow of my grandfather's cigarette was the only object visible in the room. As your eyes adjusted to the darkness, the dim outlines of his imposing figure would come into view as he sat regally in his armchair with the radio close by his side. The game was in the late innings by then, and each pitch became a matter of critical analysis. My favored position was sprawled across the foot of his bed, in the spot where the humid scents of the summer night air flowed in from the open window.

To see how closely linked the Orioles are to Baltimore's self-image, walk three blocks west from Camden Yards to a rowhouse owned by Bill and Sharon Reuter.The couple has lived there for 11 years; they're so concerned about the city's reputation that when a contractor said he'd have park a Dumpster outside their house during the playoffs, the Reuters balked."With all the national media here, we just didn't feel that a Dumpster would put Baltimore and the neighborhood in the best light," says Bill Reuter, 42, who has postponed construction of a third-floor loft until after the postseason.

Consider the Ravens, landing in a town that for years had only one love, the Orioles. The Ravens were a different breed entirely - big, loud and slightly scary compared with the low-key if not downright lackluster Orioles, bad in a town of unrelenting niceness. But after just five years, the Ravens have stolen the hearts of the seemingly mated-for-life Baltimore fans, whisking them on a whirlwind post-season affair that culminates today in the ultimate out-of-town assignation, the Super Bowl.

JON MILLER remembers his first day in Baltimore as the Orioles play-by-play announcer. It was 1983, and he was just up from spring training, attending a workout at Memorial Stadium the day before Opening Day. "They put us on buses, and we headed down to the Inner Harbor where they wanted me to emcee a pep rally or something," says Miller. He could scarcely believe the sight that greeted him. "There must have been ... [40,000] or 50,000 people down there. They stretched as far as the eye could see. I was pretty astounded because the team had lost the previous year.