Clubhouse

March Madness has struck the Orioles. Shortstop Miguel Tejada arrived at camp yesterday wearing a Maryland Terrapins T-shirt, and the clubhouse was full of players filling out tournament brackets. If anyone cares, my Final Four is Wisconsin, Ohio State, UCLA and North Carolina ... with the Badgers going all the way. I would have picked UCLA, but that's against my religion.

An excited bunch of Orioles filed out of the Fort Lauderdale Stadium clubhouse yesterday for the first workout of spring. They were greeted by about 20 fans ... and a nice, stiff wind. It was cold enough that several Orioles, including some who had trouble getting to Florida because of snow and ice on the East Coast, scurried back to the clubhouse to grab a sweat shirt or a jacket. "It's all relative," manager Sam Perlozzo said. "If I called up north right now and complained, I don't think I'd get any sympathy.

ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. -- It started back in February, when one of the Orioles' new relievers struck up a conversation with a team leader before the second full-squad workout of the spring. Jamie Walker, a self-proclaimed redneck with a thick Southern drawl, had never spoken to Miguel Tejada, the Spanish-speaking shortstop whose English remains a work in progress. Soaking in adjacent whirlpools in the cozy clubhouse at Fort Lauderdale Stadium, the Tennessee-born pitcher, who went to the World Series last season with the Detroit Tigers, and the Dominican shortstop, who yearns to get back to the playoffs, found a common ground.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- When Brian Roberts returned to his locker in Kansas City earlier this week, there waiting was a detailed analysis of his at-bats against Gil Meche, who was starting for the Royals the next day. The second baseman took a quick look at it and then tossed the reports into a clubhouse trash can. Roberts has always focused on himself, not the pitcher he is facing. And it doesn't seem to matter who Roberts is facing these days as he is in the midst of one of the best stretches of his career.

CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Indians are on a pace to score 1,123 runs. The modern-day record, set by the 1931 New York Yankees, is 1,067.Yes, it's early, but not that early, with the season nearly 20 percent complete. The Indians have used their Opening Day lineup only six times in 31 games. Once everyone is healthy, they might be even scarier.As it stands, they're averaging nearly seven runs a game, leading the majors in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, not to mention total bases and runs scored.

In Baltimore CountyAppeals panel spares golf clubhouse but limits activityKINGSVILLE -- The county Board of Appeals agreed yesterday to limit activities at Mount Vista Golf Course, but stopped short of requiring the owner to knock down the illegal clubhouse.The board, ruling in a decadelong dispute, said the golf course cannot open a kitchen and the driving range cannot be lighted. It also limited clubhouse hours of operation and said occupancy cannot exceed 100 people.Board member Lawrence Stahl favored demolition of the clubhouse because it exceeds size limits approved by the zoning commissioner.

If any doubt remained that the Orioles' 3-week-old season lay in ruin, the aftermath of yesterday's 11-10 loss to the small-market, small-talent Oakland Athletics provided irrefutable evidence.The question isn't where to begin but where it will end.Infuriated by his team's inability to hold a 10-6 lead after seven innings, manager Ray Miller questioned his team's character and its courage following a violent venting that left his office wall splattered with food and his right hand likely fractured.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Having already restricted clubhouse access in response to what he considers a violation of protocol, Orioles general manager Frank Wren yesterday blistered media coverage of outfielder Albert Belle's Thursday outburst at his locker.An animated Wren likened Belle's tantrum to a "pimple on an elephant" and called it a "non-issue" while also accusing reporters of exercising a double standard against the temperamental slugger. As punishment, Wren indicated that clubhouse access would continue to be denied during games.

NEW YORK -- Future Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson was back in the New York Mets' starting lineup yesterday, a day after leaving Game 4 in a huff and sparking a clubhouse controversy.Henderson was miffed Saturday night when manager Bobby Valentine pulled him for defensive replacement Melvin Mora at the start of the eighth inning.His gripe: That Valentine -- caught up in plotting his pitching strategy -- embarrassed him by letting him take the field before removing him from the game.The veteran outfielder reportedly told teammates, "I'm outta here" and headed for the clubhouse.

William Randolph Hearst would try anything to boost his newspapers' circulation, offering his subscribers racehorses, gold coins, fabricated stories about starving orphans and yellow journalism that ignited the Spanish-American War.But the scheme hatched by his Washington Herald was so outrageous that he fired the publisher responsible for it. The Herald built a utopian, all-white summer colony north of Annapolis, used its front page to sell lots in "Herald...

On the same day that president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail confirmed that Dave Trembley would remain as manager at least through the end of this season, the Orioles exploded for their biggest offensive performance of the year and tied a couple of club records to boot. If you're looking for some greater meaning here, you're probably going to be disappointed, but the surprise mugging of the first-place Los Angeles Angels in Friday night's series opener at Camden Yards is proof - if nothing else - that the O's still have a pulse at this discouraging juncture of the 2009 season.

Frederick Keys catcher Caleb Joseph occasionally lingers after games, assists the clubhouse attendant, orders some pizza and then crashes at the stadium. Talk about eating and sleeping baseball. "It's been about 30 percent of nights in the clubhouse at Frederick that I have spent the night on the couch," said Joseph, 23, a right-handed hitter. "I didn't want to leave. You never know when your last day is going to be." A 2008 seventh-round pick out of Lipscomb (Tenn.) University, Joseph is in no danger of being sent home.

Popular sentiment suggests Nick Markakis and Peter Angelos are more than casual Facebook friends. After all, they're both of Greek heritage. They probably attend the same church, visit the same butcher, brunch together on Sundays, right? Actually, Markakis had never met the Orioles owner before this week. In fact, neither had most players in the clubhouse. "I'd never even seen a picture of him," reliever George Sherrill said. The Orioles' exciting Opening Day win over the New York Yankees on Monday was packed with drama and at least a couple of on-field shockers.

Kevin Millar, at 37, still has something to offer on the field and in the clubhouse of the right team, but the Orioles are truly going in another direction. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog)

The one-story clubhouse in Southeast Baltimore has wood floors and framed photographs of members who have died. It feels like a chapter of an Elks Club, the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars. But the members are big beefy men who wear red crosses on their backs. Many are covered in tattoos, and some grow long pointed beards. They belong to the Chosen Sons - a motorcycle club started by city police officers in 1969 that bills itself as the largest in the state. For decades, the Chosen Sons has been an insular group, wary of outsiders and little known except in the East Baltimore neighborhoods where they gather.

The clubhouse television usually is turned off in the mornings, unless reliever Jamie Walker decides to crank up CMT and torture his teammates with the latest country hits. But players gathered around the set yesterday to catch a few innings of the Boston Red Sox-Oakland Athletics season opener from Tokyo. By the time the media was allowed inside at 8 a.m., the game already had progressed to the sixth inning. Jeremy Guthrie and Jim Johnson pulled up chairs so they could watch in comfort.

During the early months of the 2007 baseball season, I took it upon myself - on a number of occasions - to talk Orioles fans off the proverbial ledge as the club floundered for the 10th straight season. Now, I'm standing on it myself. The team that was supposedly turning a corner has turned south again, this time in such dramatic fashion that I could have sworn I heard Jim Hunter's voice crack during that 11-run eighth inning in Tuesday night's 15-8 loss to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Things have gotten so bad that the big media question going around the clubhouse afterward was which game was worse, that one or the 30-3 fiasco against the Texas Rangers that sent the Orioles into their current spiral.

There's a perfectly logical explanation for the way the Orioles have collapsed during the week or so since the team took the interim tag off manager Dave Trembley, but it's not what you think. The obvious factors - the struggling bullpen, the thin roster, the late-season assimilation of unproven players - might seem to be reasons enough for the ugly six-game losing streak that includes one of the ugliest losses in modern baseball history. And that might be the end of the story if not for the odd timing of this odd tailspin.

Tike Redman, Orioles outfielder What are your early impressions of the atmosphere in the Orioles' clubhouse? Everybody is laid-back, but at the same time, they're all about winning. People are positive around here, which is real good. The whole atmosphere is changing.

Richie Bancells, Orioles head athletic trainer "Some of my fondest memories ... came at the unfortunate time when he was having his back problems. We would start his rehab program at 8:30 a.m. at his house. This was during the middle of winter. He had me outline the program on grease boards in his workout room. He had to have a plan, as always. ... I doubt that in my career I will have another ballplayer with that kind of intensity and dedication to his profession. During that time he had the bad back, he was telling me he was going to get me in shape!"