Leave Baltimore

Calling it "one of the greatest days of my life," former Orioles second baseman Roberto Alomar signed a four-year contract yesterday with the Cleveland Indians, giving the club a current or former All-Star at every position and pushing it further ahead of dTC the other teams in the American League Central.The deal is worth $32 million and reunites Alomar with his brother, Sandy, the Indians' catcher."It's real special because I have good family values," said Alomar, who spent three seasons with the Orioles.

THE PLANE LEAVES for Phoenix in an hour. I am dressed in comfortable pants and a long, loose blouse, eager to attend my first national biology teacher's conference. My husband will drop me off at the airport on his way to work. I hear evidence of the morning's activities -- the shower, a hair dryer, the soft thud of the refrigerator door closing. The aroma of a pop tart wafts upstairs.''Where's the jeep?'' my husband asks, standing at the south window facing our driveway.''The jeep?''I open the east window overlooking our front yard.

As announcer Jon Miller signed a five-year deal yesterday with the San Francisco Giants, his former employer, Orioles owner Peter Angelos, took shots at Miller and his Baltimore-based agent, Ron Shapiro, centering on their stated preference for Miller to remain here.In a conference call from Los Angeles, Miller reiterated that he did not want to leave Baltimore, but decided to do so when he perceived that the Orioles no longer wanted him and that Angelos would require more advocacy for the team on the air."

Society's ills don't limit themselves to city lifeI do find quite moving Lalita Noronha-Blob's expression (July 23) of her sense of loss and insecurity resulting from the theft of her family's vehicle.But I cannot agree with the sentiment implied when she writes: ''Maybe it's time to leave Baltimore, move to the suburbs. Find a place where we are entitled to own a new car, walk through the neighborhood . . .'' etc.Of course, she is entitled to live where she pleases. But she is mistaken if she thinks that the suburbs will provide a haven of escape.

WASHINGTON -- There comes a time when a city has to play hardball to protect its political interests. No more hand-holding. No more sweet-talking. No more kidding around.There comes a time when a city has only one choice: Bring out the go-go boots and the marching band.That's exactly what Baltimore did yesterday. Baton twirlers and high-steppers jumped and gyrated in front of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in a high-decibel effort to win a $100 million federal grant for an empowerment-zone project.

Ron Franks ought to raffle a howitzer to attract NRA contributions to his Senate campaign. Assault rifles are so puny.Justice Breyer's confirmation was all but unanimous. Senators are counting on him to build a marina on Capitol Hill just like the one in Boston.Bill's military advisers say the best time to invade Haiti is mid-September. Political advisers say mid-'96.Alex. Brown can't decide whether to leave Baltimore or acquire it.

When Billy O'Dell left Clemson University after his junior year to sign with the Orioles in the spring of 1954, few expected him to pitch more than a couple of seasons in the big leagues.He threw pretty hard, but scouts questioned whether he eventually would wear down: O'Dell was only 5 feet 10, 154 pounds."I used to joke that I saw everybody else leave," recalled O'Dell, who was given the nickname "Digger" after a character in a radio show. "Everybody but six people who were in the major leagues when I started were gone by the time I retired.

The agreement that would keep the Washington Capitals' top developmental team in Baltimore next season is rapidly unraveling in the wake of the financial difficulties of Skipjacks owner Tom Ebright.Capitals general manager David Poile said yesterday he is beginning to prepare for a Baltimore alternative."I thought we had a deal based on Tom wanting to go forward another year," Poile said. "Then I read the article [in Thursday's Sun] and spoke with Tom. He's had a complete change of heart in terms of not wanting to lose the money that he has been losing each year, and is very disappointed he's had no reaction to his press conference."

Service to celebrate end of Cold WarThe Central Maryland Ecumenical Council is sponsoring a worship service to celebrate the end of the Cold War. The inspiration for the service is the strategic role of religious institutions in the fall of communism throughout Eastern and Central Europe.Representatives from each of those countries will participate in the service. They are executives from a small, burgeoning non-profit sector in their home countries who are visiting the United States to study non-profit management techniques at the Institute for Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University.

A guy called on the phone the other day to ask the betting line on the Pro Bowl, which suggests a couple of things: One, he has way too much time and money on his hands; two, life without pro football in your town does something destructive to the brain waves.Yes, another season has officially passed without pro football in Baltimore, leaving us only with the age-old argument of whether or not to support the Redskins (the politically correct position is, of course, to root against). Oh, one other thing we're left with -- hope.

It was a day in August 17 years ago, and they were building a public square in memory of a 6-year-old girl caught in a drug dealers' crossfire in West Baltimore. The mayor, the City Council president, the heads of city departments came to honor Tiffany Smith and name the spot where she fell in her honor. Tiffany Square still stands. So do the drug dealers the memorial was supposed to shame and push out, which I discovered when I visited to see if we had learned anything after another boy was killed this week and ran smack into an open-air drug market.

Food ***1/2 (3 1/2 stars) Service ***1/2 (3 1/2 stars) Atmosphere *** (3 stars) Before he left, chef/owner Sonny Sweetman had turned Abacrombie into one of Baltimore's premier restaurants. Although it wasn't for everyone (one friend of mine called it "precious") and you could end up spending a small fortune there, I always enjoyed it. So I wasn't happy when I heard the place was being sold and Sweetman was leaving for a cushy job in Austria. It turns out he didn't abandon us completely.

Rehka Thomas graduates today, four years of pharmacy school behind her and a great party ahead of her, with a cake shaped like a mortar and pestle, and prescription bottle favors with instructions to take two of the candy pills inside to treat a sweet tooth. Like other graduates who scatter once they get their degrees, she, too, plans to leave Baltimore - but in her case, she's leaving with, and because of, an unwanted souvenir: a bullet, embedded in her upper chest where her clavicle and sternum meet.

Calling the nation's capital "the center of the universe in which we work," the chairman of the NAACP said yesterday that he is pushing to relocate the headquarters of the nation's oldest civil rights organization from Northwest Baltimore to Washington. Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in an interview that although the organization has not bought property in Washington, a move is all but definite. When the 97-year-old organization came to Baltimore in 1986 from New York City, it was greeted with fanfare from local politicians and a city parade.

IF BALTIMORE keeps losing population at the current rate of nearly 16,000 people each year, this will be a ghost town by 2040. Of course, that kind of apocalyptic scenario is absurd. But even if the latest U.S. Census Bureau projections were slightly off, this trend is undeniable: Maryland's other jurisdictions are growing, while Baltimore is still shrinking. The continuing slide into oblivion should hit Mayor Martin O'Malley like a cold shower. He won election two years ago pledging the city's turnaround, and laying out plans to make that happen.

UNTIL WE heard Martin O'Malley deliver his State of the City address Monday afternoon, we knew something was missing from the last 12 years at City Hall, but maybe we couldn't say exactly what. Now we know. It is called a voice, and on Monday the new mayor used his with conviction, and with passion, and it was nice to hear it if you could. (Those who tried to hear it on the city's cable television channel unfortunately could not. The sound was not connected. This was believed to be one more sign of lingering municipal incompetence, or else it was O'Malley deciding to join the Silent Majority.

Calling it "one of the greatest days of my life," former Orioles second baseman Roberto Alomar signed a four-year contract yesterday with the Cleveland Indians, giving the club a current or former All-Star at every position and pushing it further ahead of dTC the other teams in the American League Central.The deal is worth $32 million and reunites Alomar with his brother, Sandy, the Indians' catcher."It's real special because I have good family values," said Alomar, who spent three seasons with the Orioles.

As announcer Jon Miller signed a five-year deal yesterday with the San Francisco Giants, his former employer, Orioles owner Peter Angelos, took shots at Miller and his Baltimore-based agent, Ron Shapiro, centering on their stated preference for Miller to remain here.In a conference call from Los Angeles, Miller reiterated that he did not want to leave Baltimore, but decided to do so when he perceived that the Orioles no longer wanted him and that Angelos would require more advocacy for the team on the air."

Society's ills don't limit themselves to city lifeI do find quite moving Lalita Noronha-Blob's expression (July 23) of her sense of loss and insecurity resulting from the theft of her family's vehicle.But I cannot agree with the sentiment implied when she writes: ''Maybe it's time to leave Baltimore, move to the suburbs. Find a place where we are entitled to own a new car, walk through the neighborhood . . .'' etc.Of course, she is entitled to live where she pleases. But she is mistaken if she thinks that the suburbs will provide a haven of escape.

THE PLANE LEAVES for Phoenix in an hour. I am dressed in comfortable pants and a long, loose blouse, eager to attend my first national biology teacher's conference. My husband will drop me off at the airport on his way to work. I hear evidence of the morning's activities -- the shower, a hair dryer, the soft thud of the refrigerator door closing. The aroma of a pop tart wafts upstairs.''Where's the jeep?'' my husband asks, standing at the south window facing our driveway.''The jeep?''I open the east window overlooking our front yard.