Spring Training

Hard as it might be to believe with the snow and ice accumulating outside our windows, pitchers and catchers will begin their spring toils this week in Florida and Arizona. And that means it's no longer freakish to begin preparing for your fantasy baseball drafts at the end of next month. Spring training is a time of great intrigue for fantasy obsessives. Most of us already know how we'll value the top half of the player pool, but questions surround the bottom half. Will rookie X win that starting job he deserves?

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Ah, for the days of old, when Roland Hemond spent the entire spring wheeling and dealing. Remember 1988? Rockin' Roland made a trade a week, bringing the Orioles such phenoms as Mark Thurmond, Rick Schu, Keith Hughes, Jeff Stone and Wade Rowdon.Now, that was excitement.Spring training '88 amounted to the building of the Titanic, with the Orioles' leaky ship sinking to 0-21 faster than you could say "Mike Morgan." Spring training '93 won't be nearly as fascinating. In fact, it will be duller than C-Span.

There will be 37 pitchers in the cramped clubhouse of Fort Lauderdale Stadium on Saturday, and only 15 of them made an appearance for the Orioles in a Grapefruit League game last spring. Ten of the 24 pitchers on the team's 40-man roster heading into last year's spring training aren't in the organization anymore. Four of the five members of last year's Opening Day rotation are now former Orioles, as are three of the seven members of the bullpen. Nowhere is team president Andy MacPhail's rebuilding project more obvious than in the reconstruction of the Orioles' pitching staff, one of the major leagues' worst during the past several seasons.

It's easy to stereotype the South Florida sports fan, especially when all you seem to hear about this time of year is the Daytona 500 and spring training, but there is something for everyone down here - even the bluebloods who would not be caught dead at an event as base as an automobile race or an Orioles exhibition game. For them, there is the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club, where 2004 Olympian McLain Ward won the $75,000 Bainbridge Idle Dice Classic on Sunday. The crowd of about 10,000 included the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, so it obviously was a classy affair.

The Orioles open their exhibition schedule today against the Florida Marlins at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., which - incidentally - is the only spring training city in Florida or Arizona named after another member of our solar system. This has not always been so. The Milwaukee Brewers used to train in Sun City, Ariz., before moving to a new site in nearby Chandler during the 1980s. The Washington Nationals train on Florida's Space Coast, not far from Cape Canaveral, though I don't believe there is a celestial body named Viera, unless you count the host of the Today show.

Things are starting to calm down around the Fort Lauderdale spring training complex, which means it's almost time to break out my giant collection of aloha shirts and start sampling some of the great tourist attractions in South Florida. My first stop may be the Sawgrass Recreation Park, where you can take a tour of the Everglades in an airboat that glides through the sawgrass (hence the name of the park) and occasionally brains one of the alligators that's minding its business and waiting for the odd man overboard.

The weather took a turn for the worse here yesterday. Several times during the afternoon, dark clouds passed over Fort Lauderdale Stadium, blocking out the sun and pushing temperatures down into the mid-70s. It got so bad at one point that I didn't even bother to put on sunblock. Hope all is well in Baltimore.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- When the Orioles opened spring training three weeks ago, Sherman Obando was the biggest curiosity in camp.Now, with one week of exhibition play completed, he is a strong candidate to make it to Baltimore. Each day, even each at-bat, the big (6 feet 4, 215 pounds) outfielder seems to make an impression.And the one who has been impressed the most is the one who counts the most -- manager Johnny Oates. "He's shown me everything our scouts said he would," said Oates.Obando, 23, was a Rule V acquisition from the Yankees in last winter's minor-league draft.

Brad Penny pitched three perfect innings, and the Florida Marlins avenged Thursday's loss to the Orioles with a 6-0 victory at Roger Dean Stadium. Omar Daal allowed run-scoring doubles to Luis Castillo and Miguel Cabrera in the first inning, and a sacrifice fly by Jeff Conine increased the lead to 3-0. Castillo added a run-scoring single in the second. Daal was charged with four runs and seven hits in two innings. "The feeling with all my pitches, I know I am going to get it and I know it has to be soon, because I want to be in the starting rotation," Daal said.

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- It was, for the most part, a relatively meaningless exhibition game that started the final week of spring training.But, to the Ripken brothers, it was a first, and to Nolan Ryan, it was a last -- and almost a first.While Ryan was making the final Florida appearance of his remarkable 26-year career, Cal and Bill Ripken were playing against each other for the first time as professionals. And, for the 5,899 fans in attendance, there was no question who carried the day.Ryan, 46, who holds the all-time record with seven regular-season no-hitters, came within one pitch of participating in his first during a preseason game.