Baseball Fans

Baseball fans (and non-fans alike) can expect sunny skies Friday with highs in the mid-50s and some strong wind gusts for the Orioles' Opening Day, according to the National Weather Service. Steady 10 to 20 mph north winds are expected, with gusts up to 30 mph. The day is expected to get off to a cold start, with a freeze warning in effect through 9 a.m. in Carroll, Harford and northern Baltimore counties. An overnight freeze could come Friday into Saturday as well, with lows in the mid-30s.

Give the Orioles credit: They sure do stadium renovations well. Way better than they play ball. I say that after getting a sneak peek Wednesday at all the changes to Camden Yards we've been hearing so much about. Bottom line? You're going to love what they've done to the place, even if you're a hard-core fan who's not big on a lot of architectural frou-frou at the ballpark. Assuming, that is, there are any hard-core baseball fans left. "I think we still have hard-core fans," said Janet Marie Smith, Orioles vice president of planning and development.

Opening Day is a week away, and little has changed in AccuWeather's long-range forecast -- the Orioles could be meeting the Minnesota Twins under drizzly skies. But the outlook isn't unanimous. Next Friday is still a few days outside the National Weather Service's forecasts, but AccuWeather is calling for a high of 61 with "a few showers" in the area. That's slightly less wet than the forecast looked 10 days out. Weather Underground predicts a zero percent chance of precipitation and a high of 59. The Weather Channel, meanwhile, is also calling for clear skies, but it is predicting a high of 69 degrees.

"Baseball Superstars 2012" Developer: Gamevil Platofrm: iOS/Android (free) Score: 7/10 There's a saying that baseball is a simple game until you try and explain it to someone who has never played it. With major league teams gearing up for the 2012 campaign, I would like to amend that statement to "baseball is a simple game until you try and explain it to someone through a Korean role-playing game. " That is was Gamevil has done with “Baseball Superstars 2012,” the latest iteration in the popular mobile series.

Saturday was Dan Duquette's official welcome to Baltimore baseball fans. Amid the hoopla and carnival atmosphere that filled the Baltimore Convention Center for the team's annual FanFest event, it was the executive vice president of baseball operation's introduction to Orioles fans. Orange balloons were everywhere. Fans brought backpacks of memorabilia, posters, bats and jerseys for their favorite players to sign. Approximately 9,000 fans — about 1,000 fewer than last year — braved the aftereffects of the season's first snowstorm to attend the team's official season-kickoff event.

Talk baseball with Washington native David Paulson for a few minutes, and his obsessive lifelong fandom pours out in facts, figures and lore. He recalls how he loved the most obscure of Washington Senators players, like outfielder Stan Spence. How he admired third baseman Cecil Travis less for his career average (.314) than his combat service in World War II. And how he got to see Frank Howard, a soft-hearted, 300-pound slugger from Ohio, hit 34 homers a year for the hometown team even as they cemented their reputation as one of baseball's perennial doormats.

Someone ought to tell the University of Maryland's new football coach that putting the players' names on their jerseys is not done for the players' benefit. It is done for the fans. The Commissioner of Major League Baseball ought to tell the management of the Yankees and the Red Sox the same thing and require all major league players to have their names on their uniforms. Baseball fans might recognize Jeter and A-Rod and Big Papi, but it is annoying to watch a game on TV or even from in the stands and have to wonder who the players are. Edward J. Gutman, Baltimore

Like a lot of you, I've long had mixed feelings about interleague play. I was for it at the beginning, turned against it soon thereafter and now apparently owe commissioner Bud Selig an apology for insisting that it was a get-richer-quick gimmick that eventually would lose its appeal to the masses. Clearly, it hasn't, if the attendance numbers from the past weekend are any accurate representation of how much the nation's baseball fans like it. Nearly 1.65 million fans showed up to watch a weekend of what was largely non-rivalry interleague play.

If you run into Walt Wagner, don't be surprised if he tells you right away, that his son — HIS SON!! — is one of two guys Major League Baseball is paying — PAYING!! — to hole up and watch every last inning of every last ball game. His boy, born in Baltimore and raised on the Orioles, beat out 10,000 people for the chance to "eat, sleep and live baseball" for the entire season — albeit behind glass in a Manhattan storefront. "I still get the shakes when I talk about it," gushes Wagner, a retired city cop. "That's my son. " Ryan Wagner, who's 25, is spending the next seven months with fellow winner Mike O'Hara, lazing on a sofa, sipping Budweisers and fixing his attention on what will turn out to be 2,430 games — a head-spinning number of pitches, countless fly balls, who knows how many stolen bases.

Most Orioles fans don't need a study to know that things have gotten pretty depressing in Birdland after 13 straight seasons of losing baseball. But in case you've had your head in a paper bag all these years, I'll pass along the findings of a recent study. Avvo.com, a website that gives out medical and legal advice , claims that Baltimore is the third most depressed baseball city in America behind Washington and Oakland. According to a press release, Avvo "evaluated the cities that are home to the 18 MLB teams that haven't won a World Series in the past 20 years, and also looked at the teams' on-field performance.