Sellout

Navy's rivalry game Saturday against Air Force is sold out. The game, set for noon at Navy Marine-Corps Memorial Stadium, will be televised nationally on CBS. Tickets still remain for the following Navy home games: Southern Miss (Oct. 8), East Carolina (Oct. 22) and Troy (Nov. 5). To purchase tickets, call 1-800-US4-NAVY or go to NavySports.com .

The brick wall that the Orioles' offense has hit over the past eight games can be somewhat attributed to the quality of pitching it has faced. But as the missed opportunities - and goose eggs on the Camden Yards scoreboard - continue to mount, frustration is creeping in. Playing in front of their fifth home sellout crowd of the season Saturday, the Orioles bats went quiet again, their offense able to scrap only a solitary run in a 3-1 loss to...

AS I pulled into the parking lot Saturday night next to the Heritage Cineplex on Taylor Avenue, I could tell it was not going to be business as usual for the only African-American-owned independent theater in the Baltimore area. The lot was nearly full. Customers queued up to the admission window to buy tickets. The larger of Heritage's two theaters was about one-third full when I took my seat, about 25 minutes before the scheduled 7 p.m. showtime. Patrons poured in after that. When the sneak preview of The Fighting Temptations was about to start, every seat -- all 472 of them -- was taken.

It's good to be Gotye . The Australian singer/songwriter played his first show in Washington, D.C.last night - an electrifying performance for a sellout crowd at the 9:30 Club . One thing's for sure: The next time he comes to D.C., it will be at a much larger venue, like DAR Constitution Hall . Gotye (pronounced go-tee-ay) owes much of his seemingly overnight success here to " Somebody That I Used to Know ," an infectious breakup song that plants itself in your brain and refuses to leave for a few days.

The Orioles announced a sellout for yesterday's home opener, but not before they sold roughly 1,000 tickets in the 18 hours before the game.Orioles officials had been calling the game a sellout for weeks. But by last weekend, that appeared premature.The team had held back 7,500 tickets. Those seats were put into a lottery for Orioles mini-plan holders, with winners offered the chance to buy two tickets.When some of the winners turned down their seats, the Orioles found themselves with tickets to a previously sold-out game.

It has been four decades since the game was played, but the 40th reunion of the Baltimore Colts -- the city's first championship pro football team -- scheduled for Nov. 19 at Martin's West is a sellout.Committee chairman Richard E. McCready said the banquet has a waiting list that will be filled if vacancies occur. Tickets are $150, and all places have been committed.Tickets for a luncheon the next day at the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the corporate community, which includes admission to the banquet, are $5,000 for a table of 10.All proceeds from both gatherings go to the Johns Hopkins University research program for finding a cure for ALS, known as Lou Gehrig's disease, the ailment that led to the death last year of Janice Braase, wife of former Colts defensive end Ordell Braase, whose idea it was to stage the benefit reunion.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said yesterday that a quick sellout today of an exhibition game will have "some impact" on Baltimore's chances for an NFL expansion franchise, but suggested that the city's past support of pro football and projected future support are more important.At his annual Super Bowl news conference, Tagliabue was asked whether a 90-minute sellout of the exhibition game scheduled for next August at Memorial Stadium between the New Orleans Saints and the Miami Dolphins would have an impact on the city's bid for an expansion team.

LANDOVER -- Has the Washington Redskins' 31-year string of sellouts come to an end? That depends on whom you ask.The Redskins reported 78,270 tickets sold for the home opener of their new stadium yesterday, an impressive figure for any team. The team considers the game a sellout, despite having a stadium capacity of 80,116."This is a sellout," said Redskins spokesman Mike McCall.Because the only seats unsold were in the premium categories that carry an annual rental fee, they were technically not on sale for this game alone, and the team's record of selling every single-game ticket since 1966 stands, he said.

*It's a cloudless day in Tallahassee, Fla. The locals are saying it feels brisk, although the game-time temperature is expected to rise to the low 70s. You come to Tallahassee, you realize how different it is to be in a region dominated by college football. I heard war chants from my hotel well into the night. Having said that, they're not anticipating anything near a sellout crowd at Doak Campbell Stadium (capacity 82,300). *You can bet Florida State scouted Maryland tight end Matt Furstenburg, who had two touchdown catches and 104 receiving yards against Clemson.

With 160 games remaining, the Orioles already have topped the Toronto Blue Jays in one race: consecutive sellouts.Last night's sellout crowd of 46,447 -- the largest to see a game at Oriole Park -- marked the 61st straight time the ballpark has been sold out, setting a major-league record.The Orioles have sold out every game since May 23, 1992, and have topped single-game attendance marks in their first two games of this season.Orioles president Larry Lucchino said: "It's a great tribute to the fans, to the players and to the ballpark.

*It's a cloudless day in Tallahassee, Fla. The locals are saying it feels brisk, although the game-time temperature is expected to rise to the low 70s. You come to Tallahassee, you realize how different it is to be in a region dominated by college football. I heard war chants from my hotel well into the night. Having said that, they're not anticipating anything near a sellout crowd at Doak Campbell Stadium (capacity 82,300). *You can bet Florida State scouted Maryland tight end Matt Furstenburg, who had two touchdown catches and 104 receiving yards against Clemson.

Navy's rivalry game Saturday against Air Force is sold out. The game, set for noon at Navy Marine-Corps Memorial Stadium, will be televised nationally on CBS. Tickets still remain for the following Navy home games: Southern Miss (Oct. 8), East Carolina (Oct. 22) and Troy (Nov. 5). To purchase tickets, call 1-800-US4-NAVY or go to NavySports.com .

The outcome wasn't what fans had hoped for, but Baltimore rocked the red Tuesday night. On the night when professional ice hockey returned to Baltimore for the first time since 1997, a sellout crowd of an announced 11,082 fans packed 1st Mariner Arena and watched the Nashville Predators beat the Washington Capitals, 2-0, in the inaugural Baltimore Hockey Classic. There were a number of empty seats, but both curious Charm City sports fans and die-hard puck lovers crowded the concourse before the event.

More than three hours before game time, Stevenson alumnus Scott Murray stood amid a growing contingent of tailgaters in a parking lot overlooking the school's new $9 million stadium. He couldn't help but smile. "We started as just a small girls school," said Murray, a 2001 graduate of the one-time commuter school known until three years ago as Villa Julie College. "Football kind of puts us on the map. " The feeling was shared by many among the sellout crowd of an announced 3,500 on Saturday night, as the Owings Mills school played its first Division III home game and came away with a 46-43 win in double overtime over nonconference foe Christopher Newport.

Wale, the DMV's most recognizable rapper, officially aligned himself with Rick Ross' Maybach Music last month, and the move had his core-fanbase wondering how it would impact his music. Wale and Rick Ross isn't a natural combination: Ross constructed a (likely) false persona on cocaine sales and mansions; Wale balances backpack, Okayplayer rhymes (read: "conscious") with exclusive-sneaker name-dropping. Or so I thought. Once Wale jumped on Waka Flocka Flame's mega-hit "No Hands" — with talks of "sweating out weaves" — he proved he could sound at home on swagged-out strip-club hits.

Charlie Sheen is not winning in the nation's capital. After selling out within a matter of minutes in both Chicago and Detroit, tickets for the controversial actor's "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" show are still available in 17 other cities, including Washington. Sheen's show is mostly an approximately 80-minute spoken-word performance. The tour begins in Detroit on April 2 and wraps in Seattle on May 3. Sheen will appear April 19 at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington.

Hoping to flush old Blast fans out of retirement, the Spirit is working toward a sellout in its final regular-season home game March 28 against the Toronto Shooting Stars.After staging the NPSL All-Star Game here last month, the Spirit established a sellout in the finale as a second-half goal, the better to create momentum going into the playoffs.The Blast used to sell out regularly, but the Spirit never has in its five years. With extensive advertising and the group sales force focusing on the only remaining home game, the Spirit says it can put a capacity 11,300 in the seats.

The bad news, for local sports viewers, is that because Friday afternoon's Ravens-New York Giants exhibition game is not a sellout, it will not be seen live. But the good news, for local soap opera fans, is that "The Young and The Restless" won't be pre-empted after all.Team officials announced yesterday that 2,000 tickets remained unsold for Friday's game, which starts at noon. Under NFL rules, any game that fails to sell out at least 72 hours before kickoff cannot be shown live in that market.

A year after more than 72,000 soccer fans packed M&T Bank Stadium to watch Chelsea play AC Milan, ticket sales for a July 31 "friendly" between two other high-profile European teams have been slow, officials said. Baker Koppelman, vice president for ticket sales and operations for the Ravens, the event's host, said Tuesday that only around 30,000 tickets have been sold so far for the match between Inter Milan and Manchester City, and Koppelman doesn't expect a crowd of more than 35,000 unless there's a huge walk-up.

Rob Jones was selling Orioles hats and T-shirts on the sidewalk along Conway Street again, lured back after a four-year absence by the thought that the team just might make a game of it this season. Melody Higgins was back in line Tuesday at the stadium's main entrance, early as always, having beaten back winter's modest urge to cancel her season tickets. Even inside Oriole Park, scene of 12 straight losing campaigns, the mood was hopeful. Kids cutting school, ushers in new jackets hugging longtime fans, smiling police officers in starched shirts and neckties, fireworks, a fighter-jet flyover — all of it conspired in a symphony of optimism that only a home opener could deliver.