Fans

Baltimore fans always show support for the Orioles on Opening Day. Then the optimism fades as the losses mount. But at Camden Yards stadium Monday, fans, players and team management said they had every reason to feel good about the direction of the Orioles - and not just because of a 10-5 victory over the New York Yankees, their biggest rival. In many respects, the Orioles' future appears brighter than it has in years. The club has signed its two best players, Nick Markakis and Brian Roberts, to long-term contracts.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting, which means it's time once again to ask how much longer fans plan to put up with what baseball is doing with performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe this is the year, and this is the moment, they stop, with Alex Rodriguez's failed drug test stinking up spring training. But if last year wasn't it - after the Mitchell Report, after the Roger Clemens circus, after Barry Bonds' numbers still taunted everybody even as he was being blackballed from the game - then it will never happen.

TAMPA, Fla. - The Hit rendered us all motionless. At the point of contact, it was perhaps no different from the legalized brutality we will celebrate every weekend. One man hits another. Maybe he inflicts pain. Or maybe he simply jars the ball loose. At any rate, half the fans scream, half wince, and in short order they all get excited about the prospect of seeing an even bigger hit on the next play. But this time, Ravens running back Willis McGahee lay still on the field, and for a few brief minutes, we were all left motionless.

When this offseason began, just about everyone in Birdland was hoping and praying for the Orioles to get the big guy, which is why the signing this week of former NBA forward Mark Hendrickson has been viewed in certain quarters as some kind of cruel joke. The big guy, of course, was free-agent slugger Mark Teixeira, and big was a figurative term. He was the top position player in the free-agent market, and he's from Severna Park and he would have made a big difference in the way a generation of disengaged Orioles fans view the beleaguered O's franchise.

There was a lot of talk over the past week about the cross-generational battle lines between Ravens fans and Colts fans, about how those old enough to remember the Mayflower moving vans should know better than to root for a team that used to play in Baltimore. But there's a segment of Colts fans who don't know any better - those born after 1984. They are no different from Brooklyn kids who rooted for Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers, not knowing the angst Walter O'Malley caused when he left for the West Coast.

The NFL draft: an event that can induce anxiety, sweat and even a little bit of nail-biting. But it doesn't have to be. While in the company of your favorite team, the anticipation may be a bit easier to swallow. The Baltimore Ravens are offering this opportunity to more than 10,000 fans Saturday. At the 10th annual Spring Football Festival, players past and present will be at M&T Bank Stadium, as the first three rounds of the NFL draft air live on its big screens from New York's Radio City Music Hall.

The report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball tempts me to cynically say that given the inclusion of 19 present or former Orioles among the 87 players named, you would think that we would have witnessed a better on-field performance than we have had to endure for the last 10 seasons. But the findings of former Sen. George J. Mitchell strike me in a way that leads my mind back to Game Four of the 1970 World Series, when the trees visible beyond Memorial Stadium's open end were full of glorious fall color.

San Francisco -- From one city by the bay to another, Steve O'Neil felt right at home. Despite being in a hostile environment in an opposing city, O'Neil, 28, was able to eat food, drink beverages, and whoop it up with other Ravens fans before yesterday's game between the Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. "I've been blown away all weekend," said O'Neil, a 1997 graduate of Boys' Latin who lives in Washington. "We saw guys in bars and on the streets with Ravens jerseys and hats on. It's been building all weekend."

The project began from basic curiosity. Being a professional cartographer and a baseball fan led to a fascination about foul balls - who hit them, how many were hit, where they all went. I started by creating a custom score sheet that allowed me to track several types of data. I then observed all 2,657 pitches in a nine-game Orioles homestand from the right-field club level, in Section 288. The result was a database that held the location of every foul ball hit plus other information, such as pitcher, batter, pitch type, pitch speed, inning, etc. For the graphic, I decided to keep the focus on balls that were hit into seats because this is where the game interacts with the fans on a unique level.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- You know his swing, so short, sweet and powerful that it prompted one baseball lifer to say that Nick Markakis could become one of the Orioles' best hitters ever. But everything else about Markakis is hidden. He gives few clues to teammates, reporters and fans, who imagine the 23-year-old outfielder as the organization's cornerstone for the next decade. Out of uniform, he is almost always in sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt, most advertising baseball equipment companies.

Ravens cheerleaders are dabbing on makeup and curling their hair in a changing room at M&T Bank Stadium. Poe, the team's overstuffed mascot, is pulling on his costume. And just a locker or two down, Rise and Conquer's personal assistants are trying to coax Baltimore's newest and most fussy football stars into their game-day uniforms. Conquer lays one gray beady eye on his outfit and lets loose a warning squawk. When Sandy Ziolkowski, an animal technician from the Maryland Zoo, nevertheless tries to work the black satin suit over the bird's twitching head and past its fearsome beak, the feathered one starts wildly flapping, banging a locker and knocking over a stack of Gatorade cups.

Jewel, who will be performing Tuesday night at the Lyric, became a pop superstar right out of the box; her first studio album, 1995's "Pieces of You," sold 12 million copies in the U.S. alone and spawned three hits, including the chart-topping "You Were Meant For Me." Fans and critics lauded her as the decade's premier singer-songwriter, thanks to her home-grown lyricism, her clear, multi-octave voice and her shy, almost introspective stage presence. But the 21st century has proven difficult to navigate for the 35-year-old Alaska native.

PHILADELPHIA -- George Sherrill never wanted to leave Baltimore. That was his stance back in July, when the Orioles dealt their 32-year-old closer to the Los Angeles Dodgers for two prospects. Ultimately, it was all out of Sherrill's control. So he accepted the move. Learned to embrace it. Now, he ponders it philosophically. "Everything happens for a reason, and maybe this is supposed to be my first shot at the playoffs," Sherrill said before Monday's Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.

WASHINGTON - - DeShawn Stevenson returned to Cleveland last week and got an instant reminder that there will always be one city in the United States that reviles him. When the Washington Wizards' plane landed at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport on Wednesday morning, the runway marshal greeted each member of the team until he spotted the scraggly bearded Stevenson. "I hate you," Stevenson recalls the airport employee telling him, to which Stevenson responded with an equally incensed retort.

Let us now praise Comic-Con. On the occasion of the 10th annual Baltimore Comic-Con, it's time to celebrate comic-book fans and what they've wrought. By providing an audience for comic books that shared the concerns and upheld the standards of literary yarn-spinners as different as J.R.R. Tolkien and Jim Thompson, it expanded critical and popular recognition across the board for the richness and pertinence of escapism. In particular, this audience helped revitalize the fantasy heritage of moviemaking, compelling filmmakers such as Peter Jackson to renew the expansionist and inventive impulses of early masters from Fritz Lang to Ray Harryhausen.

The day began 20 years ago with overcast skies and wisps of fog, a Friday. Despite the fact that the weekend is not expected to brighten, Baltimore baseball fans bask in a warm glow that has been building since April. Their team, the American League cellar-dweller just a year earlier, has a chance to win the pennant. Just one game back of the Toronto Blue Jays with three to play, the Orioles need a sweep at SkyDome to make everyone forget about the previous season, the one that began with 21 losses and ended with 107. "From the beginning, everybody figured they didn't have a chance," recalls Peter Angelos, still nearly four years away from becoming the owner.

Paul Kase and Chuck Sabia have endured plenty of lousy news this year, from the impacts of an unstinting recession to another losing season by the Orioles. But none of that mattered Sunday as they and thousands of other purple-clad Ravens fans swarmed the streets of downtown, guzzling beers, whooping about how their team finally has a quarterback and swapping optimistic predictions of Super Bowl trips. Despite an afternoon full of tense moments, the Ravens rewarded an expectant crowd of 71,099 with a thrilling 38-24 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

Notice more purple and black around town lately? That's a sure sign that the Ravens' season opener is approaching, transforming the Baltimore area's visual landscape just as surely as fall foliage will soon dot the countryside. But there's more: The aromas of sizzling sausage cooking on a tailgater's grill, the pulsating sounds of the marching bands, the thousands of fans who chant and cheer in a fist-pumping frenzy. The behind-the scenes staffers working to make sure everything goes without a hitch.

When you arrive at M&T Bank Stadium for today's regular-season opener between the Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs, you're going to be hard-pressed to find anyone who doubts that Joe Flacco and friends are going to fight deep into the playoffs this season. Really, there's going to be so much purple passion bubbling up around Camden Yards that it might even leave a ring around Oriole Park. And why not? The Ravens shocked the NFL world last year when their rookie quarterback and rookie coach took them all the way to the AFC championship game, and now they are a year older and a year wiser and, you would think, a year better than the team that fell a couple of big plays short of the Super Bowl.

From his post at Padonia Station, bartender Mike "Tee" Trageser can hear the town's telltale heart thumping Ravens Ravens Ravens. The beat's been building for months, he said, the steady chatter about Joe Flacco and company revealing a wave of anticipation for the 2009 season, which opens Sunday in Baltimore. "After the performance they had last year," he said, "the expectations are really high this year." Where Baltimore fans gather - at bars, on talk radio, through blogs - there's the sound of confidence, a setup for winter's glory or discontent.