Camden Yards

Hammerin' Huff Aubrey Huff put a mediocre spring behind him with a long three-run homer in the third inning. Huff, the team's leading slugger last season, was hitting .214 with a .321 slugging average for the spring. His home run off Nationals starter Shairon Martis ricocheted off the second deck in right field. on deck The Orioles will work out at Camden Yards on Sunday afternoon and open the regular season Monday at 4:05 p.m. against the New York Yankees. Jeremy Guthrie will start for the Orioles against the Yankees' new ace, CC Sabathia.

Their lockers were very close, but Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis barely spoke during the Orioles' 2006 season. There was no animosity, no lingering jealousy between one of the team's biggest stars and its hot-shot rookie. Roberts and Markakis were perfectly compatible as teammates. They just decided very early they weren't going to be good friends. "I just didn't feel myself hanging out with him or talking to him," Markakis said. "I didn't dislike him. I just didn't see him as a guy I'd hang out with."

I am not going to tell you "Wild Bill" Hagy was a choirboy, because someone who guzzles nine or 10 Budweisers and shot-puts his cooler from the upper deck of a stadium before being led away in handcuffs probably doesn't qualify for that. "Drinking nine or 10 beers, you get a little impulsive" was how he explained that crazy cooler-toss, his personal Gandhi moment back in 1985, when he protested the Orioles' new policy prohibiting fans from taking beer into Memorial Stadium. So there will be no attempt here to canonize Hagy, who died Monday at age 68 and was once the most famous baseball fan in the country.

The Orioles' losing streak may have more than one casualty. Slumping attendance has left the city's two sports museums in the red, with a projected deficit of $600,000, according to the foundation that runs the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum and Sports Legends at Camden Yards. To help ease the financial woes, the city's Board of Estimates took the unusual step yesterday of transferring $125,000 intended for renovations to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum into an operating grant - another sign that attractions outside the Inner Harbor are struggling.

As baseball moves toward the World Series, the Orioles are mere spectators again after completing a 10th straight losing season and finishing with the second-worst average attendance in their 16 years at Camden Yards. But if you think those failures on the field and at the box office have diminished the franchise's value, think again. Because of the excellent fiscal health of Major League Baseball, the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network by Orioles owner Peter Angelos and the league, and the continuing adoration for Camden Yards, the Orioles are worth more than ever before, investment bankers and financial analysts say. The team is valued at about $400 million, says John A. Moag, president of Moag and Co., a Baltimore-based investment banking firm that specializes in sports transactions.

The weather didn't exactly call to mind the phrase "Play Ball!" but an April Fool's Day sun that kept trying to pierce the clouds above Camden Yards set the right tone yesterday for FanFest. The thousands who flocked to the ballpark for the team's fan-friendly, two-hour workout - a first glimpse before the Orioles depart on a six-day road trip to begin the season - radiated the kind of muted enthusiasm you might expect from fans who know all too well that the team hasn't been a winner since 1997 but still have spring optimism.

Good morning -- Camden Yards fans -- Be warned: That video board could end up looking like the end of The Sopranos.

When her husband and son headed off to a lacrosse game yesterday morning, Debbie Brown, a 43-year-old former college softball player, dusted off her glove and set off for Camden Yards. Brown, unbeknownst to the family, had her mind focused on becoming an Orioles ballgirl. "I just wanted to do something on a whim," said Brown, who heard a radio advertisement for the job a few hours before tryouts were set to start at noon. "I'll probably tell them where I've been at all afternoon when I get back."

It doesn't matter that Mike Flanagan asked out of the Orioles' organizational meetings last week in Florida. For them to be held without him just doesn't sound right, or promising for his future in his current position. As we vilify Travis Johnson for taunting Trent Green while he lay unconscious with a concussion, we confirm again that the health and well-being of the quarterback is way more important than that of some lineman. So by all means, let's heap sympathy on a player who chopped at a colleague's knees and risked both their careers in the process.

By now, Chris Prybylo can deliver the blueprint verbatim: A 4,000-square-foot House of Dew entertainment area, 6,000 yards of freestyle motocross dirt, a hulking vertical ramp and more than 50 semi loads of machinery. "It's essentially a big Lego set. We have well over 10,000 pieces of equipment," said Prybylo, senior director of events for the AST Dew Tour. Everything has been assembled, and from tomorrow through Sunday, the Camden Yards sports complex will host the first of five stops on the 2007 tour.

A look at some of the best and worst of the Orioles' otherwise forgettable 2009 season: Team MVP: Second baseman Brian Roberts set career highs in runs and RBIs, and his 56 doubles were a franchise record and the most by a switch-hitter in baseball history. From the leadoff spot, he was fourth on the team in home runs with 16, and he played in 159 of 162 games, not bad for a guy who had several nagging injuries and whose focus and effort were questioned earlier in the season. Most disappointing player: While the offensive dropoffs of Melvin Mora and Aubrey Huff drained the lineup, it's hard to argue against the choice of Opening Day starter Jeremy Guthrie, who went 10-17 with a 5.04 ERA. Guthrie didn't miss a start and pitched 200 innings, extremely valuable for a club with four rookies in the rotation.

When Cesar Izturis heard "La Vida Es Un Carnaval," by Celia Cruz after the sixth inning Sunday afternoon, the Orioles shortstop acknowledged sheepishly that his eyes began to water. And that started a chain reaction: When his friend and teammate, third baseman Melvin Mora, saw Izturis get teary, he started to choke up. Then there was the female fan near the Orioles' dugout who was bawling as Mora stepped onto the field after the sixth, waved to the crowd and touched his heart as Cruz's salsa tune - the one that is played before Mora's at-bats at Camden Yards - blared.

June 19, 2007: Trembley's debut as interim manager The Orioles suffer their ninth consecutive defeat, a 12-6 loss to the San Diego Padres, a day after naming Trembley interim manager when Sam Perlozzo is fired. "For me, I'm very aware of who I am, what I am and where I've come from, managing in the minor leagues a long time," Trembley said at the time. "In my wildest dreams, I could never imagine getting the opportunity to manage the Baltimore Orioles." Aug. 22, 2007 : O's remove the interim tag, and get crushed Before a doubleheader with the Texas Rangers at Camden Yards, the Orioles remove the interim label from Trembley's title and officially announce that he will return as manager in 2008.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - -For about 15 seconds, Orioles manager Dave Trembley felt as if time were standing still. It had been far too long since he last experienced the feeling; there had been far too much heartache since he last witnessed his players gather for the handshake line. It didn't come easily, but nothing ever does for Trembley and the Orioles. When struggling closer Jim Johnson gloved Akinori Iwamura's comebacker and threw to first baseman Michael Aubrey for the game's final out, the Orioles had a 3-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, and a 13-game losing streak and the most trying stretch of Trembley's career had mercifully ended.

Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, looking healthy and acting as jovial as ever, made a rare on-field appearance Friday night at Camden Yards before the Orioles' game against the Boston Red Sox. He received a standing ovation from the crowd moments before presenting Melvin Mora with a third base bag in a pre-game ceremony for the Orioles' current third baseman. "Actually, the Orioles lost my phone number," Robinson joked about his infrequent appearances on the Camden Yards field. "We haven't been able to catch up."

There was a time earlier this season when the Orioles couldn't find playing time for Felix Pie. Now, with center fielder Adam Jones out for the remainder of the season with an ankle sprain and left fielder Nolan Reimold dealing with an Achilles tendon injury, missing Pie for the past few days has been a blow to the club's starting lineup. Pie, who hadn't played since leaving Friday's game with back spasms, ran, threw and swung a bat Monday and arrived at the park early Tuesday to swing again before pronouncing himself healthy.

At first, it seemed unlikely to provide much inspiration - a drunken prank in a city where there's usually much better fodder for the man I've come to think of as the Bard of Baltimore Badness. But I was wrong. Even so amateur a crime as the heist of the Cal Ripken Jr. No. 8 statue at Camden Yards - conducted right under a security camera by hapless perps who would be caught almost immediately - managed to serve as muse for the master. Soon, we had an addition to his ever-growing canon, the always expanding compendium of his art. Call it the ineffable poetry of Frederick H. Bealefeld III. We may know him today as Baltimore's police commissioner, the white-haired, dark eye-browed, Bawlmer-accented cop's cop. But surely future scholars will come to appreciate his unrecognized literary genius, the found art of his pronouncements, the lyricism of his inadvertent verses.

Members of a Baltimore design committee urged the city slots developers Thursday to consider a bolder design and do more to enhance the Russell Street corridor. "We have expressed a bit of concern that the concept is not quite what we're looking for," said City Planning Director Thomas J. Stosur after listening to a one-hour presentation by Reich & Petch, the Toronto-based architecture firm that will design the casino. The Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel advises the city's planning department on major projects but does not have the authority to veto a design.

It's the most recognizable digit in Baltimore. Authorities said that didn't dissuade four young men from ripping Cal Ripken Jr.'s 3 1/2 -foot-tall aluminum number 8 off its base in front of Camden Yards Tuesday night, throwing it into the back of a gray pickup truck and parading it through the city. The men, described in a police report as juiced up on alcohol, apparently got rowdy while stopped on the east side of Patterson Park, and someone called the police to complain. By then, Maryland Stadium Authority guards had flagged down passing police outside the ballpark, and detectives had reviewed a surveillance video showing four young men "pulling and kicking" the sculpture.

For Orioles fans, there are times when hating the Yankees evolves from the usual small-minded parochial envy into good, clean fun. Boy, is this September one of those times. If you were at Camden Yards the past three nights to watch the Yankees beat up on the Orioles, you saw a classic case of baseball's haves against the have-nots. Let's look first at the Yankees, who have so much going for them right now it should be illegal. They have baseball's best record (85-48). They're 34-11 since the All-Star break, best in the majors.