Oriole Park

- If the Orioles were hoping that what went around might come around after the way they battled to the last dramatic moment of the 2011 regular season and propelled the Tampa Bay Raysinto the playoffs, they are probably going to be disappointed. The Rays were not in a position to show any gratitude when they faced the Orioles on Monday night in the first game of the final regular season series of 2012. They still had something to play for with the second wild-card playoff berth still in doubt for at least one more night, and they came into the series with three very good starting pitchers lined up against the Orioles.

It has been a long and interesting ride to the Orioles' first playoff berth since 1997, so it probably shouldn't surprise anybody that they spent a long and very interesting day nailing down their place in this year's postseason. They took care of the easy part early Sunday afternoon, when they completed a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox with a 6-3 victory before a raucous crowd in the final scheduled regular-season game at Oriole Park. Then it got strange. The Texas Rangers had the Los Angeles Angels down by three runs in the game that might have locked up at least a wild-card berth before the Orioles headed off to Tampa for a still-meaningful three-game series against the Rays, but it wasn't going to be that easy.

Former two-sport standout and current NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders, in town for Thursday night's Ravens home game against Cleveland, stopped by Oriole Park at Camden Yards to take batting practice with the Orioles. Some players got a kick out of it -- left-hander Troy Patton asked Sanders for his autograph -- and Orioles manager Buck Showalter, who was Sanders' manager with the Double-A Albany-Colonie Yankees in 1989, reminisced about Sanders' athletic ability, saying that watching Sanders leg out a triple is "still one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.

I was one of 25,000-plus "businessmen" playing hooky at the "Businessman's Special" Thursday at Oriole Park. Most of us spent the entire five hours and 14 minutes at the Yard, meetings, phone calls and emails waiting for another day. (Note to my partners: I did go in early to get a few things done before heading to the game. I need this job so I can buy more O's tickets.) We stayed though the nail biting and nerve racking 14 innings to the glorious end. To leave sooner would've been to jinx the home team and be the sorry cause of a lost opportunity.

It all seemed so right. The Orioles long ago chose Thursday night to unveil Cal Ripken's statue at Oriole Park because of the obvious connection to what happened here on the same date 17 years ago, but they could not have known it would be so perfectly timed to coincide with the re-emergence of the team as a late-season contender and the start of a huge four-game series against the Yankees. The significance certainly wasn't lost on Ripken, who used his edition of the Legends Celebration Series to forge a link between the Hall of Famers who will forever populate the plaza behind center field and the new generation of Orioles players who have responded so well to the leadership of Buck Showalter.

Starting in the 1960s, and for about the decades, I was an avid Orioles and Colts fan. My brother and I would listen to WBAL on Sunday mornings in an attempt to buy unused Colts tickets. As soon as the Orioles schedule came out, I would order tickets to at least six home games. I attended the last Orioles game played in Memorial Stadium, and left there with tears in my eyes knowing I would never see another major league game again. I still am a fan of both the Orioles and Ravens on TV, and in the newspaper, but I have never been to Oriole Park, or Ravens Stadium.

Around the Baltimore metropolitan area, something is happening. It hasn't happened in many years - almost a generation, in fact. It's the end of August, the Orioles are in a pennant race, and there's a sense of possibility in the air. People are turning to MASN to see if the Orioles are staging yet another dramatic, late-inning comeback. They're flipping on WBAL to hear Joe Angel proclaim - as he has already done more times this season than all of last year - that "The Orioles are in the win column!"

Chris Davis is a streaky hitter. We all know that. When he's seeing the ball well, he can take over a game with his bat. When he's slumping, he leaves you wondering how many holes he has in his bat. Then there are nights like Friday, when Davis made Camden Yards into his own personal launching pad, becoming the 19 th player in franchise history to hit three homers in a game. He peppered the Oriole Park stands with baseballs, one pulled to right onto Eutaw Street, his second into the right-center field stands and his last sliced the opposite way to left field.

In celebration of Oriole Park at Camden Yards' 20th year anniversary, the club debuted the above infographic that details the ballpark's impact on Baltimore and Major League Baseball.

BOWIE - Top Orioles pitching prospect Dylan Bundy looked slightly human in his Double-A debut for the Bowie Baysox on Tuesday night at Prince George's Stadium, but that doesn't change anything. He still has a chance to show up at Camden Yards in the next few weeks, and not just to pick up his Jim Palmer Award as the organization's minor league pitcher of the year. The pitching lines aren't as gaudy these days, because Bundy isn't pitching near the bottom of the minor league system any more.