Sculpture

Typical Brooks. Everybody who was anybody in Orioles history showed up to honor him when the Orioles unveiled his statue on the center field plaza Saturday at Camden Yards, and all he wanted to do was thank everybody else and turn his ceremony into a celebration of this year's amazing, surprising, contending team. “How 'bout them O's?" he said, to a huge ovation from the thousands of fans who crowded around the plaza and lined every terrace and exposed walkway with a view of the last bronze in the Legends Celebration Series.

Following is a transcript of Brooks Robinson's speech at his sculpture unveiling ceremony Saturday at Camden Yards. “Thank you, thank you, and I promise you, this will be the last 'thank you' of my career. I know Paul Blair, the last six or seven years we played together would always say, 'Well, when's your next Brooks Robinson day?' This is it Pauly, you don't have to do that anymore. Thank you very much. And I just want to say to all of you fans here, I don't like to call you fans, I like to call you friends.

You see the jerseys every time the Orioles play at Camden Yards, often on boys born 20 years after the man shelved his famous mitt - No. 5. Robinson. The combination of that name and that number will always stir the souls of those who watched Brooks Robinson make impossible play after impossible play along the third-base line at Memorial Stadium. But even their children and grandchildren, who never glimpsed his magician's act, have heard the stories of Robinson's kindness - the way anybody could run into him at the mall and receive not only an autograph but a few minutes of genial conversation with a Hall of Famer.

Cal Ripken Jr. just talked before first pitch about his newly unveiled sculpture (and other things). Here are a few quick quotes for you: On the ceremony: “It's a totally different experience (than the other unveilings). I missed Frank's, then I've come to every one since. They're a little bit nerve-wracking, a little bit emotional. Many of the ones have mentioned my dad; Jim mentioned him, Eddie mentioned him and it starts to get you thinking. So today I thought by preparing a speech and practicing it about 100 times I could get the emotion out of the speech, but sure enough at the moment of truth, it hits you, which I guess is a really good thing.” On the timing of the unveiling and the Orioles' current run: “I think it is really symbolic of the connection to Orioles' history and the Orioles' past.

The Orioles will unveil a bronze sculpture of Cal Ripken Jr. at Camden Yards on Thursday, the 17th anniversary of the day Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. There was probably a time early in the season when fans expected the Ripken unveiling - the fifth in a series of six honoring the club's greats - to be the only bright spot in another dreary September of Orioles baseball. But in a twist that has shocked the baseball world, the current team is an even better story than the nostalgia.

The Orioles released a little teaser of what the Cal Ripken Jr. sculpture is going to look like, but good luck guessing the pose. The O's posted the above photo on their Facebook page today, no doubt to help drum up anticipation for Thursday night's unveiling at Camden Yards. There's been plenty of speculation about what pose Cal has been bronzed in -- perhaps more so than any of the other legends. Will he be tipping his cap, as he did on the night he broke Lou Gehrig's streak?

The first of the 51/2-foot-tall fiberglass chickens roosts in a vacant lot beside an Annapolis restaurant, a tire's skid marks stretched across its belly and a set of X's for eyes. Apparently, the owners joke, it had trouble crossing the road. The next chicken might be a robot, a spectacle of glitter, the canvas for an underwater mural or, perhaps, a mosaic of crabs and sailboats for a twist on the classic Annapolis images the statues were designed to avoid. "If it was a boat or a fish, I wouldn't be into doing it. But a chicken is funny," artist Casey Johnson said as he surveyed Chicken Little and contemplated his own design.

The rain would not come for another hour, so Hall of Famer Eddie Murray had to settle for bathing in the affection of his close friends and the large gathering of fans who crowded into Legends Park to see his statue unveiled on Saturday. Maybe time does heal all wounds. There was no hint of the unhappiness that led to Murray asking out of Baltimore in the prime of his career. There was nothing during the either unveiling ceremony or the rain-delayed on-field presentation to indicate that there was any interruption in the honeymoon between "Ed-die!

When Eddie Murray's sculpture is unveiled at Camden Yards this afternoon, if the sun catches the bronze just so, onlookers might get a glimpse of themselves in the reflection. It's fitting for the Orioles' most prolific hitter ever. Writers, and even some fans who didn't like Murray's personality, projected their own bitterness onto him for his entire career. For the fans who didn't care what they read, only what they saw, they'll have their Eddie. They can cheer the man today, and later they can bring their kids to the statue, point and say, "There's one of the best switch hitters to ever play the game.

The pose was pure Jim Palmer. The ceremony to unveil his sculpture, as you might expect, was pitch perfect. Palmer became the third Orioles great to be immortalized in bronze and put on display in the Garden of Greats behind center field at Camden Yards on Saturday afternoon, joining Frank Robinson and Earl Weaver and awaiting the arrival of Eddie Murray , Cal Ripken and  Brooks Robinson later this season. It was a special day made even more special by the surprise appearance of Brooks, who has been in ill health and had to postpone his own statue unveiling until late September while he continues to regain his strength.