Oriole Park

CUMBERLAND -- A special train will take Oriole fans from Cumberland to the Camden Yards stadium four times this summer, a happy Gov. William Donald Schaefer announced yesterday.Mr. Schaefer, a railroad buff and Oriole fan himself, announced the special arrangement outside the Cumberland station of the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, which runs from Cumberland Frostburg.A Maryland Rail Commuter train will haul up to 500 passengers to Oriole Park at Camden Yards June 28, July 26, Aug. 23 and Sept.

Tommy Fortman and his Digital Harbor teammates have been here before. Yesterday, Fortman made sure they were all there again. Digital Harbor won the Baltimore City Division I baseball championship by defeating Poly, 11-1, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Saturday afternoon. The game was stopped in the fifth inning by the 10-run rule. Fortman allowed one run and five hits in five innings. "It feels great to win it again," Fortman said. "We have a great group of seniors, and our coaches make us work hard.

If you're heading to Camden Yards for today's opener and you want to smoke during the game, you're going to have to leave the stadium to light up. Orioles fans will be able to smoke only in a designated area just outside of Gate E1 on the third base side of the ballpark. On March 4, the Maryland Stadium Authority's smoking ban went into effect at the Camden Yards sports complex, which includes Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium. The new code “prohibits smoking or carrying lit tobacco products (cigarettes, cigars and pipes)

Charlie Zill, the popular long-time usher at Camden Yards who entertained Orioles fans with his “Zillbilly” dance during the seventh-inning stretch, died late Saturday night of lung cancer. He was 56. Zill, who had been diagnosed with cancer three and a half years ago, attended his final Orioles game April 17 as a guest of the club.  Wearing an Orioles cap and jersey over his trademark “Zillbilly” overalls, he threw out the first pitch from his wheelchair before the Orioles took the field against the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Orioles are searching for the voice of a new generation, and Oriole Park vibrated Saturday with the sounds of the 25 semifinalists who are hoping to become the full-time public address announcer for the team's 20th anniversary season at Camden Yards. The competition began with 670 hopefuls - some of whom produced their audition recordings at FanFest in the hope of replacing Dave McGowan, who stepped down in December after 14 seasons. The candidates who showed up on this wintry afternoon included a surprisingly diverse cross-section of the Orioles fan base and the local media.

They came here from out of town, but come Opening Day, they'll be serving Baltimore fans Old Bay wings, Polock Johnny's sausage and soft-shell crabs battered in Natty Boh. Oriole Park's new concessionaire, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North Companies Sportservice, unveiled a new stadium menu Wednesday with a decidedly local flair. They brought the traditional (a tastefully done crab cake), the outrageous (an Esskay hot dog topped with smoked pit beef, pepperoni hash stewed tomatoes and crispy onions)

If state officials and the Baltimore Orioles cannot agree on a name for the new baseball stadium at Camden Yards, they should call in an arbitrator. Or an arbiter. Or an umpire. Baseball is a game of arbitrary judgments. All who play it live with disputed calls.A panel of opinionated people consulted by this department had a clear consensus that Oriole Park is the best name. It is informative and consistent with municipal and baseball history.Be that as it may, other means could be found to settle this trivial pursuit:1.

As soon as the gates opened at noon Friday, Peter Hudak raced up the stairs to the new rooftop deck behind the center-field wall of Oriole Park at Camden Yards . The Columbia resident held a standing-room-only ticket, and his plan all along was to secure one of the precious stools that offer a fresh, stunning view of the 20-year-old park. He brought to his perch a bag of Doritos, a bottle of Dr Pepper and an absolute determination to hold his seat, which appeared to be coveted by hundreds of other patrons.

Whoever replaces Aramark as the concessionaire at Oriole Park at Camden Yards — and the Orioles are keeping that announcement under their caps — they will have a tough act to follow. While the baseball team has had its ups and downs, the ballpark fare under Aramark's 19-year tenure has been consistently good and widely imitated. Concepts such as selling food on a promenade like Eutaw Street, having a former ballplayer such as Boog Powell cook barbecue at the park, and serving regional favorites like crab soup and coddies were mostly hatched at Camden Yards and have now popped up at ballparks around the country.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards , which will mark its 20th anniversary season next spring, may soon be getting a makeover — one that will make the area overlooking center field into a year-round attraction. The street-level picnic area behind the center-field wall would be reconfigured into a park where fans can stroll in and gaze out on the diamond, even in December, according to a Maryland Stadium Authority plan. The area would have expanded space for concessions and a rooftop viewing area.

M. Faysal Thameen, a retired structural engineer who headed the city's role in the 1980s construction of the Fort McHenry Tunnel, died of cancer April 9 at his home in Millbury, Mass. The former Parkville resident was 75. "He was a quiet force in the Interstate Division," said former Maryland Transportation Secretary William K. Hellmann, who was recently appointed to the state's Transportation Authority board. "He was soft-spoken, knew his business and was the key coordinator with the designers of the Fort McHenry Tunnel, which was then the largest single contract in the history of the Interstate Highway System.

Let's be honest. It isn't really that hard to tug at the heartstrings of a Baltimore sports fan. This is a town where nostalgia lives full-time, so Saturday's Oriole Park tribute to Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver couldn't help but strike the right note. Weaver probably took a break from arguing with the Big Umpire in the Sky to listen in while Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken, Rick Dempsey, Buck Showalter, National Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson and Earl's son, Mike Weaver, remembered the greatest manager in the history of the Orioles franchise.

Saint Agnes Hospital and the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation said Friday that they have raised $1.4 million to renovate the baseball field of the former Cardinal Gibbons School, preserving a site where Babe Ruth once played. The hospital, meanwhile, is firming up plans to add homes and offices around the field, on the campus of the Catholic school that closed in 2010. Saint Agnes plans to break ground on the baseball field within the next year, launching what officials have envisioned as Gibbons Commons, a mixed-use development on Caton Avenue, across the street from the hospital.

Before reading this, just know that there will be no mention of the Orioles' designated hitter slump in this blog post, no talk of any blown bubbles by Adam Jones or when Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman are coming to the big league club. So excuse me for digressing. I was just walking down Boylston Street this past Wednesday, less than a block away from the exact spot where a city sidewalk turned into the site of tragedy during Monday's Boston Marathon, one of this country's premier sporting events.

Maryland is hosting the fifth annual Drink Local Wine conference, the main annual event of Drink Local Wine, an organization dedicated to increasing awareness and appreciation of American wine. The Drink Local Wine Confererce is Saturday at the Tremont Suites Hotel & Grand Historic Venue. Conference activities include seminars, tastings and guest speakers like Jerry Pellegrino, executive chef at Waterfront Kitchen, and Al Spoler, host of WYPR's Cellar Notes. The conference's grand fiinale is the Grand Tasting & Twitter Taste-Off at Oriole Park at Camden Yards . The brainchild of Washington Post wine columnist Dave McIntyre and wine blogger Jeff Siegel (the Wine Curmudgeon)

The only thing the Orioles have proven at this very early point in the new baseball season is how many ways a team can toy with your emotions in a single week. Orioles fans were mentally printing World Series tickets after the season-opening road series against the Tampa Bay Rays and the electric victory over the Minnesota Twins in the home opener at Camden Yards. Now, they're going to have to sweat out the rest of the current road trip through Boston and New York to see which O's team returns next week to Baltimore.

Amnesty for fans who jump on the field and run around like maniacs at Oriole Park at Camden Yards appears to be over.  Like a Caped Crusader vanishing into the night, Mark Harvey - the guy who ran onto the field on Opening Day in a cape and Batman underwear - escaped criminal charges for his stunt due to a "miscommunication" by prosecutors. And while the State's Attorney's Office still had the ability to charge him after the fact, they opted not to while simultaneously vowing to prosecute others in the future.  So was it an empty threat?

For his 60th Orioles home opener, Justin Vitrano didn't dress in orange. He didn't paint his face, pull on a team cap or arrive hours early to guzzle beer. He didn't jump to his feet, scream or even clap as players jogged, one by one, onto the field. But when the announcer told everyone that after a long baseball-less winter, it was time to play ball, the 84-year-old — who might have enjoyed more consecutive Orioles openings than anyone else in town — allowed himself a little fist pump.

Rain was expected to clear early Friday morning, with partly cloudy skies and highs around 60 degrees for Opening Day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. While showers could linger into the morning commute, with clouds clearing out over the afternoon and evening, according to the National Weather Service. Strong winds are expected to kick up after about noon, with breezes of 10-15 mph and gusts of 20-30 mph. Overnight lows are expected around 40 degrees. Clear skies are expected to remain through Saturday afternoon.