Empty Seats

With hundreds of new homes rising around historic Ellicott City, young mothers like Courtney Watson worry that Howard County's laws regulating development don't prevent crowded classrooms.Farther south, in Savage, William B. Waff is worried, too -- about how many more cars will whiz past his home when a new village-style development starts rising nearby, despite a law that tries to match development to the capacity of roads and schools.But Jim Eacker, who helped draft the county's adequate public facilities ordinance in 1992, said the law "has worked extraordinarily well."

The sight of it should have sent a shiver through the offices of Major League Baseball.In the aftermath of one of the most exciting seasons in baseball history, there were large banks of empty seats at Turner Field in Atlanta for Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.That should be a wake-up call for both the players and owners. There are going to be more and more empty seats if baseball persists in marketing itself as an upper-class sport.OK, OK, so that's not what they say they're doing.

SCHOOL construction is perhaps the most expensive and frustrating public works program run by county government.No matter how carefully the school system plans, a mismatch always seems to exist between students and classrooms.South River High has about half the number of students it's designed to hold. Annapolis Middle, with about 500 students, operates at about 25 percent of capacity.By contrast, too many students attend Fort Smallwood Elementary, operating at 150 percent of capacity, and Odenton Elementary, at 142 percent.

SOME PEOPLE are grumbling about the lack of parking spaces in downtown Westminster these days (the holiday season, when meters do not need to be fed). But they overlook an important fact. Plenty of free parking spots are available in the Carroll County seat; they just may not be convenient to where you want to shop or visit.That's something like the situation facing Carroll County schools: There could be enough total seats in schools to meet expected enrollment increases. But they're not in the right grades or school buildings or parts of the county.

The Pied Piper comes every generation in many guises and the late Marshall Applewhite is only one of them.This is 1997. Millenialism will get much worse in the next three years.Orioles ticket prices will go up until there are empty seats. -- Economics 101Tara Lipinski is on top of the world now, but Olympic Year she will be 16 and have to throw some body fat around.Pub Date: 3/31/97

Orioles and Blue Jays, Mike Mussina and David Cone, a deep blue sky on a warm, windy Sunday afternoon at Camden Yards -- baseball perfection, or very nearly, and the sun glistened off several thousand empty seats yesterday.Over the course of a three-game weekend series between the Orioles and their most bitter rivals, a series blessed by fabulous springtime weather, some 18,000 tickets went unsold.Such indifference, however slight, was unthinkable before now; most games at Camden Yards, certainly ones against the Jays, sold out months ahead of time.

It's just not the same. There's no question about it.To be sure, there was Orioles baseball at Camden Yards yesterday for the first time since last August and the club announced a sellout crowd of 46,523, though there clearly were empty seats.But this was not like other home openers. You could feel the difference.Downtown at midday (the Orioles' 7-0 loss to Milwaukee didn't actually start until 3:17 p.m.) people were being asked if they were still angry about the players strike and if they were going to attend the ballgame.

On Oct. 10, in New Orleans, the Rolling Stones faced something they hadn't seen in years.Empty seats.Of the 38,000 seats available for the band's show at the Louisiana Superdome, just over 32,000 were sold.This was not any cause for alarm: The show still grossed $1.4 million. The Stones' Voodoo Lounge tour, playing almost exclusively outdoor stadiums, has, after 34 shows, been seen by 1,493,818 people and grossed more than $69 million -- and that's with much of America not yet played and Mexico, South America and Europe still to go.The Stones are obviously not going to be relegated to playing bars for beer money any time soon.

NEW YORK -- Cameron Mackintosh, producer of "Miss Saigon," has acknowledged buying unsold seats to the musical during the January-February attendance slump.By making such purchases he could maintain the perception that it was the only new musical of the past two seasons to sell out consistently, when, in fact, there were periodically empty seats.Although Mr. Mackintosh would not confirm figures, members of the theater staff estimate he bought between 10 and 120 seats at various performances.

THE EMPTY seats at tomorrow's Maryland-Clemson football game at Memorial Stadium can be blamed on Maryland's failure to promote its only Baltimore appearance and Baltimore's total lack of promotional know-how. As Jim Henneman, of this sports staff, said to me this week: "Does anybody know they're playing this game?"* It'll be a treat to have teen-aged stars Jennifer Capriati anMonica Seles at the Baltimore Arena for the fifth annual First National Bank Tennis Classic Nov. 27, but of more importance will be the comeback effort of the woman who lined up the show, Pam Shriver.

Cards release James, also cut Hood, LaBoy nfl The Arizona Cardinals on Tuesday granted running back Edgerrin James' wish to be released and cut two others who played significant roles in the team's run to the Super Bowl. While the James move was expected, the releases of cornerback Rod Hood and defensive end Travis LaBoy were not. The moves clear significant salary cap space for the Cardinals, who want to sign new deals with linebacker Karlos Dansby and safety Adrian Wilson, and eventually with unhappy wide receiver Anquan Boldin.

I couldn't help but notice those empty seats in Tampa, Fla., last weekend during the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game. Here's the thing about the ACC. All this parity (mediocrity?) is great for the individual campuses because each school can imagine it has a shot at the title. And most do have a shot. But having no dominant teams - no heavyweights - doesn't play as well on the national stage because there's no compelling story line. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/terpsblog)

There's taking one for the team, and then there's the punishment devised at a school in Alabama. Shawn Rider, a pitcher at Bevill State Community College, missed a practice and then lied to coach Ed Langham about where he had been. Once the truth came out, it didn't exactly set Rider free. Langham had Rider put on a catcher's mask and chest protector, then told him to kneel about 45 feet from a pitching machine, according to a report in The Birmingham News. While Rider stayed in place with his hands behind his back, the coach set the machine to fire 80 to 90 mph fastballs at the player, the report says.

Orioles@Twins 8 p.m. [MASN2] The Orioles begin a three-city, nine-game road trip tonight in Minnesota, and if they don't start putting together some wins, they're going to find themselves playing in front of a lot of empty seats when they get back to town and face Pittsburgh. I don't think Pirates Nation can step in and fill up Camden Yards.

WASHINGTON - Air fares are going up and planes will be full this summer because carriers have cut back on flights to reduce their fuel costs, the airline industry said yesterday. Airlines and airports hope to avoid the delays that afflicted last summer's vacation travel, but much depends on the weather and whether improvements are made at the three major New York-area airports from which problems spread quickly across the whole country, according to the industry forecast. "We're going to face a challenging summer," said James C. May, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association of America, the trade organization representing the major U.S. airlines.

The Orioles announced a sellout for their regular-season opener yesterday at Camden Yards, which probably evoked a measure of skepticism from anyone looking for companionship in the upper deck above left field. To be fair, the team is entitled to count all those empty seats if they can persuade someone to buy them, even if that someone - whoever that someone might be - bought the tickets only to make sure the Orioles did not have to suffer the indignity of failing to sell out Opening Day at Oriole Park for the first time.

The decline in the general population and student enrollment in Baltimore over the last several decades has led to an immense excess physical capacity in our public school facilities: 125,000 seats for an enrollment of 82,381 students. The school system's consultants project a further decline to 70,000 students by 2015. This excess capacity is an albatross around the city's neck, costing millions of dollars a year in keeping vacant or underutilized school space open, and at the same time creating uncertainty as to where much-needed renovation efforts should be focused.

What does it say about Baltimore as a football town that around 15,000 seats weren't filled when the Ravens played the Houston Texans earlier this month? It doesn't say nice things, that's for sure. And what does it say that the scene likely will be repeated to some degree as the Ravens close out their home schedule against the Green Bay Packers on Monday night and the Minnesota Vikings on Christmas night? Again, whatever it says, it's not a compliment. Baltimore's bona fides as a football town would seem to be beyond reproach - the Colts once sold out 51 games in a row, and the Ravens have sold every ticket for every game since moving from Cleveland a decade ago. Even when the Orioles were at their best in the late 1960s, the Colts easily outdrew them.

SO, RAFAEL PALMEIRO is still lawyering up. Fine. He spent the last nine days of his 10-day steroid suspension in silence and solitude. If it's good enough for him, it should be good enough for you, Orioles fans. Wondering what to do tonight, the official end of Palmeiro's insultingly brief punishment, when he suits up again at Camden Yards? Try this: stay home. Baltimore, you've got one shot at this. There will never again be a first game back for the first superstar caught by baseball's steroid program.

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be so depressing. A midweek Orioles game, a chilly night, an opponent - the Toronto Blue Jays - with little charisma, and a crowd that would once again challenge the record for the smallest turnout since Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened its retro doors more than a decade ago. But two friends in the area from England wanted to see a baseball game, and I had agreed to act as their tutor in these arcane arts and this game was the one...