New Ballpark

Oriole Park at Camden Yards has helped spawn many new businesses downtown, but it has also played a role in the closing of a more modest neighborhood gathering spot.The organizer of the Friday night coffeehouse at Old Otterbein United Methodist Church, Sharp and Conway streets, has decided to close the operation and move to Charles Village -- in part because of the new ballpark three blocks away.The Rev. Douglas Fox, church minister and coordinator of the weekly coffeehouse, said he is shutting it down largely because he fears that the roar of the crowd at the ballpark will drown out the folk music concerts at the coffeehouse.

Not South Florida's fault David Selig Baltimore Sun Why would baseball give up on South Florida? South Florida taxpayers paid $360 million to build a new ballpark and to improve the Marlins' chances of sustaining a competitive team. South Florida didn't hire a risky manager. South Florida didn't gut the roster. Jeffrey Loria did. If baseball could give up on Loria, that would be one thing. But it appears the owner didn't violate any rules with this fire sale, so there's not much that can be done.

Kenyan Copper is out.Cinnamon is out.Camden Green is in, for now.You've now been brought totally up to date on an aspect of the Camden Yards ballpark project that has received little notice -- the color scheme.Certain elements of the ballpark's coloring were decided months ago, and mostly in favor of shades traditional to baseball. Dark green seats. Black hand railings. Red brick detail work on the exterior of the new ballpark, for example.Now, the pigment police -- the Baltimore Orioles and the %J Maryland Stadium Authority -- have shifted attention to the main concourse, the level at which most fans will enter the new ballpark.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Jim Thome's 607 th home run ball has finally landed in the right hands. The 41-year-old Orioles DH, knowing that every homer he hits in his incredible big league career could be his last, has been collecting his home run balls since he hit No. 500 back in 2007. Last month, Thome hit his 607 th career homer at Target Field - where he played for the Twins in 2010 and most of 2011  - and it landed in the shrubbery just beyond the top of the outfield wall in right-center.

With great dignity and respect for the occasion, my friend Skip Ball, who has lived here roughly half a century and hasphotographed sporting events for several decades, wishes to announce formally that he has the perfect name for Baltimore's new baseball stadium."

On Day One, perhaps you will notice the concrete -- surprisingly abundant after all the talk of steel beams and brick walls -- still wearing the sharp-edged grittiness of the freshly troweled sidewalk.And, maybe, as you enter the outer corridors by the festive concession stands beneath artfully exposed pipes and ducts, you will feel an uneasy pang that says, "Please, not another Harborplace."But then you will walk up a ramp and into the sunlight, and ease down onto one of the slatted green seats with all that leg room.

It's April 1992. You've come to the new ballpark to see, well, the new ballpark. You're tingly inside, the preferred location for tingles.But, hey, you're thirsty, too. You wonder, in this $105.4 million ballpark into which millions of baseball fans with dry mouths will stroll, is there a place to get a draught beer? Not surprisingly, the answer is yes.Beer will be for sale at many of the 32 refreshment stands planned for the new ballpark. For the most part, the procedure will be the same as at Memorial Stadium: Plunk down your money, pick up your cup.But there will be a few subtle differences, including this one: Most of the Budweiser will be in the basement.

Bill Giles could have spent a quiet lunch hour. A sandwich at the hotel. Return a few phone calls. Click on the TV to catch a few exhilarating minutes of the Weather Channel.But yesterday, he chose something else. Before noon, Giles, president of the Philadelphia Phillies, boarded a trolley for a short ride from the Harbor Court Hotel to the site of the new baseball ballpark at Camden Yards. He put on a hard hat. For roughly the next two hours, he climbed steps with no handrails, walked through clouds of construction dust and attempted to avoid large mud puddles.

Can we talk truth here? Memorial Stadium was a mostly graceless hunk of concrete that would never make the cover of Architectural Digest. And yet, when the Orioles left the old stadium behind, strong men wept.That's because ballparks -- real ballparks -- aren't simply sight lines or green seats or sweeping arches or ivy creeping soulfully over center-field walls.A ballpark is only as good as its memories.At new-old Camden Yards, where they set about evoking the past, the Orioles still have to make their own history to make it real.

Imagine sitting in the new ballpark at Camden Yards o Opening Day, 1992. If you're lucky, sitting behind the Baltimore Orioles dugout (then on the first-base side). If you're hungry, snacking on a carved pastrami sandwich (then available at the nearest sliced-meat stand).You have questions.You wonder, what is Cal Ripken's batting average? What inning are they in up in Boston? How do you spell Orioles? What time is it? Did I leave the turkey pot pie in the microwave?At the new ballpark, customers will get most of the answers, according to the Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority, which last week put out to bid the final plans for the main scoreboard, auxiliary scoreboards and an out-of-town scoreboard -- a package costing about $2 million.

Twins hitters are becoming more unhappy about the dimensions and winds of Target Field. They had hoped balls would sail farther as temperatures climbed, but it remains a pitcher's park. Joe Mauer (above) looked stunned Thursday when a blast to center went off the wall, not over it, in the ninth inning of a 9-8 loss to the Royals. … Bobby Valentine has a better chance of being hired by the Orioles than interim manager Juan Samuel has of making his stint permanent. No one wants the job more than Rick Dempsey, the former Orioles catcher who has worked in a plethora of capacities in Baltimore.

1 Opening: in New York: The Yankees play their first regular-season game in their new ballpark (12:30 p.m., MLB), and Bob Costas will be on hand to wax elegiac. 2 Get the signal?: The PGA Tour's Verizon Heritage event (3 p.m., Golf) is quite distracting with that guy walking the course asking, "Can you hear me now?" 3 Wild, wild West: Versus carries three games from the NHL Western Conference playoffs, starting at 7 p.m. 4 Speedy night: Up late? The Speed channel has coverage of practice for Formula One's Chinese Grand Prix at 2 a.m. But an hour later, they feel like driving again.

NEW YORK - As players were beseeched by countless members of the media to eulogize Yankee Stadium as it hosts its last All-Star Game, those sufficiently provoked Monday were willing to discuss what they would not miss about the old - very old - ballpark in the Bronx. Players from the past had no problem saying goodbye to the Astrodome's rats and Candlestick Park's hurricane-force winds. Today's All-Stars have their own reasons to dry their eyes at Yankee Stadium's funeral. "The smell," the Texas Rangers' Michael Young said.

WASHINGTON -- With the sellout crowd, crisp night air and a dramatic walk-off home run, last night's 3-2 victory by the Washington Nationals over the Atlanta Braves looked and felt like the postseason. It was, in fact, the domestic opener for a new major league baseball season and the first regular-season game at 41,888-seat Nationals Park. But forgive the Nationals for dreaming. When Ryan Zimmerman belted a 1-0 pitch into the left-center-field stands with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the ensuing celebration at home plate looked as if Washington had won the pennant.

WASHINGTON -- Washington opened a sleek, new riverfront stadium yesterday that will at long last provide a permanent home for the team - and its fans - that the city lured from Montreal in 2005 after 33 seasons without baseball. It was the first time the nation's capital had celebrated a new baseball stadium since 1962, when President Kennedy threw out the first pitch. The absence of baseball for so many years made the occasion that much sweeter. Braves @Nationals Season opener, tonight, 8:05, ESPN, 1500 AM, 107.7 FM Starters: Tim Hudson vs. Odalis Perez

Baltimore developer The Cordish Co. will play a key role in transforming a gritty riverbank in southeast Washington into a hub of shops, restaurants, condos, offices and hotels surrounding the new Washington Nationals ballpark to be built by 2008, the Anacostia Waterfront Corp. announced yesterday. A group led by Cordish, in partnership with Monument Realty LLC, was one of two development teams Washington officials chose for the estimated $2 billion project to redevelop nearly 15 acres of publicly and privately controlled land north and east of the 21-acre ballpark site on the Anacostia River, about a mile south of the Capitol.

Not everything about the new downtown baseball park, despite the shill-like puffery, makes it the most spectacular creation since the Taj Mahal. There are imperfections.Even constructing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952, offering the first vehicular crossing after the retirement of the ferry boats, didn't occasion such trumpeting for something as simple as a ballpark. Things, indeed, are out of perspective. And this comes from a reporter who for 16 long years, before Edward Bennett Williams and Eli Jacobs arrived, was criticized for advocating a new stadium for Baltimore.

People still don't get it. The state faces a $450 million deficit, and it's building a $105.4 million ballpark? Don't need it, people say. Don't want it. Don't like it.Now the state is ready to fire 1,766 employees as Memorial Stadium prepares its final bow. People insist on putting two and two together, ignoring the fact they come up with five.Forget the facts, cling to the past.Stop it. Once and for all, stop it.Not only was the new park necessary for the Orioles to remain iBaltimore, it was financed at virtually no expense to taxpayers.

The St. Louis Cardinals chose the Baltimore-based Cordish Co. yesterday to build a mixed-use development behind the outfield of the baseball team's new stadium, a project the developer expects will lay groundwork for additional partnerships with professional teams to create entertainment districts around sports complexes. Ballpark Village, to open by 2007, will feature condominiums with views into the new ballpark, shops, restaurants, nightclubs and offices clustered on 8 acres adjacent to the stadium, which is under construction and scheduled to open next year.