Fenway

BOSTON - What does it look like when 86 years of pain and suffering are over and an entire Nation pauses to celebrate? It looks so good that Fenway fans were on their feet yesterday, 45 minutes before the first home-park pitch of 2005. They were standing on chairs and tables, lined up along the aisles and catwalks all around the old ballpark. They craned their necks and ducked under elbows to take a snapshot of history. They hugged and laughed in giddy anticipation. They wrapped their arms around their friends' and families' shoulders.

BOSTON -- The Orioles have needed a little extra to win seven of their eight games at Fenway Park so far. Four games have gone into extra innings, including Saturday's afternoon-into-evening, 12-inning, 9-6 victory over the Red Sox. If the Orioles can win Sunday, they will earn their second sweep in Boston this season. They would also tie their club record for most wins at Fenway in a season (eight), set in both 1960 and 1966. They've won a total of nine of 10 dating back to last September. They've already won all three series here this season.

While the Orioles were winning three out of four from Boston over the weekend in Fenway Park, I was touring the O's half-built park at Camden Yards -- and continually being reminded of its similarities to Fenway."

The Pesky Pole got the best of the Orioles on Sunday afternoon. In the Orioles' 2-1 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the 100-year-old ballpark's fabled right-field corner played a huge part in two key plays. With the tying run on first in the top of the ninth inning, pinch hitter Jim Thome laced a line drive down the right-field line — it is just 302 feet down the line — that one-hopped over the short fence for a ground-rule double. "It's part of playing in different ballparks," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said.

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- The sound is what they seem to remember most vividly. It resonates across the years, 25 of them now, enough of them to suggest the sound will never diminish, not in this case, not in the tragic case of Tony C."Just the noise," said former California Angels manager Bill Rigney, anguish creasing his face. "I just remember the noise."Their facial muscles contort when they are asked to describe the sound it created, as though they are hearing it for the first time, or wishing they were hearing it for the last.

In Al Jackson's estimation, the long-held belief that Fenway Park is ruinous to lefthanded pitchers is a myth."I've seen lefthanders be successful there," the Orioles' pitching coach said. "They're usually guys who throw sinkerballs and make the batters hit ground balls."Jeff Ballard is one of those. The Orioles lefthander, 1-1 lifetime in Fenway, will oppose Red Sox lefty Matt Young tonight (7:35, Ch. 2) in the opener of a four-game series in Boston."I'm supposed to be a ground ball pitcher, and that's what I'll try to do," Ballard said.

Dwight Evans has one regret about this weekend's series between the Orioles and Red Sox at Fenway Park.No, he's not going to say he's angry with Boston management for snubbing him after 18 productive years. Nor does he bemoan the fate that has kept him from participating with a team that has a chance to win the world championship he says the New England fans deserve.Very few players in the history of baseball have ever played as long in one city as Evans did in Boston, and then returned wearing a gray uniform.

BOSTON - The Orioles knew they did their jobs last night. They could hear it in the groans. On a cool evening at Fenway Park, an angry crowd let the Boston Red Sox have it on several occasions, and these weren't just the sounds of one poorly played game. They were the sounds of a city seeing its team lose steam in the American League playoff chase. Rodrigo Lopez tossed eight strong innings to win his fifth consecutive start, and the Orioles battered Red Sox starter Rolando Arrojo for a 9-2 victory that broke their three-game losing streak.

BOSTON -- The 70th All-Star Game should offer something for everyone. The traditionalists will love the 1912 aura of historic Fenway Park. New-age fans will surely enjoy watching the pumped-up, high-tech stars of the coming millennium showcase their skills in baseball's version of the Time Tunnel.The midsummer classic has come back to Boston to celebrate the game's storied past before one of the oldest ballparks in the major leagues falls victim to baseball's search for a better economic future.

Good morning --Boston Red Sox --No one is allowed to utter the word "Irabu" at Fenway.

BOSTON -- Orioles right-hander Jason Hammel threw a brief side session from halfway up the mound before Friday's series opener against the Boston Red Sox, the first time he threw downward since coming out of his Sept. 11 start with pain in his surgically repaired right knee. Before throwing in the bullpen, Hammel said he his balky right knee has shown progress, but that he didn't want to throw off a full mound until he was certain the knee was pain free. “It's starting to feel really good, but I'm not going to get on a mound and throw another pitch until it feels normal,” Hammel said.

I am a Red Sox fan (I now live in New England), by way of having been a Braves fan (they were the team of the deep South in the '70s) , by way of having been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan as a very young child (their enemy was the Yankees, and they hired Jackie Robinson). I am a devoted Sox fan, and watch almost every Red Sox game on TV, unless I am at Fenway. It always seems weird to me to see a ballpark half full when I am used to Fenway full for every game. OK, there were lean times for theO'sin the past, but how can your city not come out to support the team this year?

Before we move on to other business, we need to savor that baseball epic on Sunday, when the duende visited the Orioles in Fenway Park. The duende is from the realm of the metaphysical, a certain something that rises from dark corners to imbue flamenco dancers, singers and athletes with perfect skill and grace under pressure. I think I know it when I see it, and I saw it with the Orioles in Boston. I've presented this theory of the duende at work sparingly over the years. To do otherwise - to suggest its presence in a wishful way, without certainty - risks diminishing its meaning.

The visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park is one of the most uncomfortable places in baseball. It's cramped, it's old - a bandbox with few idle places where you won't be in the way. When you're losing, it can be a place of misery and seem more suffocating. But when you're winning, as the Orioles are? Well, let's see. Right-handed reliever Luis Ayala carried a giant, mulitcolored pinata under his arm coming out of the showers following Friday night's 13-inning win. The same night, reliever Darren O' Day poked into a postgame interview scrum with Mark Reynolds, using a hole puncher as a mock microphone.

Chris Davis hadn't thrown a pitch in nearly six years, dating to his days as a draft hopeful playing at a small junior college in Corsicana, Texas. But more than five hours - and 15 innings - into the Orioles' series finale with the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday afternoon-turned-evening, manager Buck Showalter turned to Davis, the club's everyday first baseman, in the visiting dugout and directed him toward the bullpen to warm up. The Orioles had exhausted all other relief options - eight relievers combined to allowed one run over seven innings - in a game tied at 6. Davis shrugged.

The Orioles felt pretty good about themselves Monday afternoon. By Monday night, they just wanted to lick their wounds and duck out of Fenway Park for a few hours. Continuing their success against potential playoff teams, the Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-5, in the first game of a day-night doubleheader on Monday before dropping a dreadful 18-9 shootout in which the starting pitchers combined to surrender 14 runs and 17 hits. The nearly four-hour bashfest started ugly, with the Orioles scoring three runs against beleaguered Boston righty John Lackey, only to see shellshocked lefty Brian Matusz hand the lead back in the bottom of the first.

BOSTON -- Imagine the new Camden Yards ballpark as Colonial Williamsburg -- a loving restoration, a tribute to what was, an attempt to create a history that breathes. What's missing are grit and dirt and tears and life and death.In baseball, you can still get real life. You can still get at the essence of the game. You can come to Fenway Park, age 71, for living history.Sure, they've tried to touch up the old place. They've even got sky boxes stacked awkwardly atop the creaking structure, which is like parking a Maserati in front of the Roman Colosseum.

Two Essex residents, a 29-year-old man and a 9-year-old boy, today were recovering from injuries received last night when the moped they were riding hit a cable across a driveway at an apartment complex on Fenway North, Baltimore County police said.Police said Mark Watts, of the first block of Fenway North, was riding his girlfriend's moped with the woman's son on the back shortly after 8 p.m. when he attempted to enter a driveway at the Riverdale Apartments in the first block of Fenway North.

Orioles starters Chris Tillman and Zach Britton will experience an important first this week: their first appearances at Fenway Park in Boston. "It's time. What are we going to do, keep them from pitching there?" Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "They pitch. It's part of the process. I'd like to think it won't be the last time they pitch there. We'll see. " Tillman, who is 2-3 with a 6.15 ERA, will start Monday's game against Daisuke Matsuzaka . Britton (5-2, 2.42)

The emotions were already running high for Orioles left-hander Troy Patton on Wednesday in Boston, as he was pitching in his first big league game in more than three years. But there was something else extraordinary that guaranteed it would be a night he'll never forget: He pitched in front of his 34-year-old half-sister, whom he hadn't met before this week. It's an incredible story, and one that was made possible by the social media site Facebook. Patton's father had been married previously.