Major League

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- In the wake of the latest revelations in baseball's performance-enhancement scandal comes the news that Sammy Sosa already has hit two home runs in his comeback bid with the Texas Rangers. Could that possibly be the same Swingin' Sammy who looked so old during his 2005 season with the Orioles that I had run out of AARP jokes by the All-Star break? The answer is, unfortunately, yes. Sosa took a year off and dropped largely out of sight, only to re-emerge looking re-energized during another major surge of steroid-related suspicion.

NEW YORK -- When he's been asked what historical figure he'd like to have a conversation with, Corey Patterson's answer has always been Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson. So the Orioles center fielder was honored when he was asked this week to wear Robinson's No. 42 on April 15, the day Major League Baseball will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Robinson's breaking baseball's color barrier. "It means a great deal to me because obviously, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be in this locker room right now," Patterson said.

When Boston Red Sox pitching phenomenon Daisuke Matsuzaka makes his first visit to Camden Yards today, he won't see any familiar faces from Japan on the other side of the field. In fact, Matsuzaka, who isn't scheduled to pitch in the two-game series, would have to burrow deep into the Orioles' farm system to find its lone Asian player: a Double-A pitcher who has yet to throw a ball in an affiliated game. In an ever-expanding global market, the Orioles are the only team in the American League East without a Far East presence on the 25-man big league roster.

The newest Orioles felt the love yesterday from an enthusiastic, if rather chilled, Camden Yards crowd. "The only time I've seen a packed house at home was in Houston and here," said an appreciative Aubrey Huff, who spent his first 6 1/2 major league seasons playing with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays before being traded to the Astros last July. Reliever Chad Bradford said: "You always want to have the fans in your city supporting you. Here, they're more behind you the whole season. That's what I've seen as a visitor."

For the past year, most of Cal Ripken Jr.'s activities were plotted on a calendar months ahead of time. The two books he released in 2007 were planned and written months earlier. He was hardly a long shot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and all of the activities that led up to his July induction kept him plenty busy. And the diplomacy mission he completed last week on behalf of the U.S. State Department had been in the works for a long time. When Ripken returned home from China on Tuesday night, he found the next few weeks in his datebook pleasantly barren.

SAN DIEGO -- This apple -- not at all green, but somewhat sour -- did not fall far from the tree. Jerry Crawford, president of the Major League Umpires Association, their union, has been a National League umpire since 1977, two years after his father, Shag Crawford, ended his 20-year umpiring career.Mr. Crawford, unlike about two dozen colleagues, will keep his job, partly because it would be unseemly for Major League Baseball to accept the rescinded resignation of the union's head, but primarily because he is good.

Twenty-two major-league umpires are out of work today, left with only faint hope of getting their jobs back after the Major League Baseball Umpires Association reached a compromise with baseball owners last night that allows them to be replaced at least temporarily.The umpires union dropped an unfair labor practice charge against Major League Baseball and withdrew its request for an injunction that would have prevented management from accepting the resignations of the 22 umpires who gave notice in July in an ill-fated effort to force management to begin negotiations on a new labor contract.

Umpires union chief Richie Phillips is going to cling tenaciously to his job, even in the face of one of the greatest blunders in the history of sports labor relations.He just plain blew it. He got desperate when it appeared that the owners were going to take a hard-line stand in pending labor negotiations and organized a desperate gambit that had no chance to succeed.He's got to go the way of the 22 umpires that he -- and Major PhillipsLeague Baseball -- put out of work. The union needs to reorganize or, at the very least, hire a new director who knows when to fight and, maybe more importantly, when not to fight.

NEW YORK -- With its resignation strategy encountering opposition from within and a stonewalling response from without, the umpires' union went to court yesterday.The Major League Umpires Association filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia alleging that the commissioner's office had improperly usurped the authority of the National and American League offices and had created "internal political turmoil" in baseball.The union also asserted that the commissioner's office and the American League had tried to coerce umpires into ousting Richie Phillips, the union's chief negotiator.

Major League Baseball has steadily increased its emphasis on international outreach over the past several years, but the decision by the U.S. State Department to allow the Orioles to travel to Cuba may test that commitment.Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has given the go-ahead to begin work on the proposed goodwill exhibition series, but Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have withheld final approval until more of the details have been worked out.In the meantime, MLB and the players union will be trying to ascertain whether there is sufficient support among the owners and players for the trip.

CLEVELAND - -In the first two weeks of September, the Orioles promoted six relievers and acquired another, left-hander Sean Henn, in a minor league trade. The hope was that the additions would bolster a tired bullpen and give several pitchers an opportunity to show that they belong at the major league level. What it has done instead is reveal a lack of organizational depth in that area and likely made several necessary offseason roster decisions much easier to make. In the first 21 games this month, the Orioles bullpen has a 6.43 ERA, having allowed 50 earned runs in 70 innings.

Each day seemingly brings more attrition to the Orioles' roster, with the latest setback coming Friday afternoon, when the club shut down rookie outfielder Nolan Reimold for the rest of the season so he can undergo surgery on his left Achilles tendon. The loss of Reimold robbed an offense, which is already without the injured Adam Jones and the traded Aubrey Huff, of one of its most consistent performers at a time when the Orioles are trying desperately just to stay in games, a task that is getting more difficult as the season wears on. Right-hander Clay Buchholz held the home team to one run over six innings, and the Boston Red Sox continued their dominance over the punchless Orioles with a 3-1 victory in front of an announced 26,812 on Friday night at Camden Yards.

BUDDY BLATTNER, 89 Baseball player and broadcaster Buddy Blattner, a former Major League Baseball player whose career as a broadcaster included seven years on "Baseball's Game of the Week" with co-host Dizzy Dean, died Friday of complications from lung cancer at his home in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield. Mr. Blattner was the dependable straight man of the broadcast duo. The colorful Mr. Dean, a Hall of Fame pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930s, could be depended upon to mangle the English language, resort to such country colloquialisms as "he slud into second base" and break into a rendition of "The Wabash Cannonball" during on-the-field lulls.

It's time for the Orioles' annual September swoon, and a bunch of the biggest baseball planets are lined up to make them look like the worst baseball team in the universe. The New York Yankees come to town next, followed by the wild card-worthy Texas Rangers, and that's just a warm-up for the road trip that begins a 12-game divisional death march against the Boston Red Sox, Yanks and Tampa Bay Rays. In other words, this is the point where this transitional season has a chance to become terrifying.

Soccer Crystal Palace FC calls up Harada from Baltimore club Crystal Palace Baltimore's Shintaro Harada has been called up to train with sister club Crystal Palace FC in London. Harada, a center back and central midfielder, was named to the All-League first team of the United Soccer League's Second Division. "He's probably been our most consistent performer since our inception three years ago," CP Baltimore president Pete Medd said. D.C. United:: The Major League Soccer club has acquired midfielder Tiyiselani Shipalane on loan from the Harrisburg City Islanders of USL-2.

DETROIT - - In this, the Orioles' decade of darkness, the 2009 season has been brightened intermittently with the belief that hope is on the horizon. In that regard, perhaps no night this year has signaled that potentially promising future more than Tuesday's 8-2 beating of the Detroit Tigers in which the Orioles' top draft pick from 2008 threw unhittable changeups and sliders to the club's 2007 top pick. "This is one that everybody should take a great deal of pride in for a long time," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said.

Drew Charles Pfarr, an outstanding Towson University lacrosse midfielder who went on to play the sport professionally, took his life July 24 in Belize. The Towson resident was 27. Mr. Pfarr was in Belize being treated for substance abuse at the time of his death, family members said. Mr. Pfarr was born in Lancaster, Pa., and raised in Severna Park. He was a 2000 graduate of St. Mary's High School in Annapolis, where he excelled as a lacrosse player. "Drew began playing lacrosse when he was 4," said his sister, Anastasia Khoo of Washington.

Chris Tillman's night began with a torrential downpour that delayed his first major league pitch, and it ended with a standing ovation from the Camden Yards crowd. The reason for the reception was more about what Tillman might bring to the Orioles in the future and not what he was able to deliver Wednesday night. Tillman, the 21-year-old right-hander, got a rocky introduction to the major leagues, alllowing three solo homers and lasting just 4 2/3 innings against the Kansas City Royals.

BOSTON - -The wait for Chris Tillman is all but over. Tillman, the 21-year-old right-hander who is the Orioles' top pitching prospect, will be called up to make his major league debut Wednesday against the Kansas City Royals at Camden Yards. Orioles manager Dave Trembley didn't officially announce Tillman as Wednesday's pitcher, but he said the club will call up somebody from the minors to make that start and who it is won't come as a surprise. It has been speculated for weeks that the major league debut of Tillman, who is 8-6 with a 2.70 ERA for Triple-A Norfolk, is imminent.

The All-Star break beckons, and the Orioles remain a study in contrast. It's as if they have been playing tug of war with themselves for the past three months. If you want proof, you need only look at the past couple of weeks, during which they have staged a series of unlikely comebacks that would seem to signal some inner reservoir of character and resilience, only to lapse quickly back into cellar ball just when their fans start to feel like the franchise might actually be making progress.