Clubhouse

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)

Tavon Austin, the highly recruited Dunbar running back, said he would not make his final college selection until the official signing day in February. But he did say he has a current favorite. "West Virginia," he said. "You know how you just go somewhere and get a good feeling about someone? That's what it was like for me there. It was a warm place. I really liked the coaches and the players. It was so good. It reminded me a lot of Dunbar." Austin said he will take all of his allowed visits in an effort "to figure out which coach and team is best for me."

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.

BOSTON -- Steve Trachsel has pitched in the big leagues for 15 seasons, but he said the Orioles' clubhouse was probably the "most fun" of any he has been in. So when he stopped by Fenway Park yesterday to pack up and said goodbye to his former teammates, he went locker to locker shaking hands and accepting congratulations. The Orioles yesterday traded the veteran starter to a team in the middle of a pennant race, sending him to the Chicago Cubs for two minor leaguers -- third baseman Scott Moore and right-handed reliever Rocky Cherry, who have both spent most of the season at Triple-A Iowa.

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.