Spring

What the Orioles did yesterday: Playing their second night game at Fort Lauderdale Stadium, they batted around in the second inning, waited out a rain delay that lasted about 25 minutes, and defeated the New York Mets, 11-4. The game was halted by rain in the bottom of the sixth.What the Orioles will do today: Make their first visit to Port St. Lucie to play the Mets. Right-hander Mike Mussina will start.You know it's spring training when: The Orioles wind up playing a home-and-home series against the Mets.

SARASOTA, Fla -- Orioles rightfielder Nick Markakis wasn't able to truly test his recovery from offseason abdominal surgery in his Grapefruit League debut against the Pirates Wednesday afternoon at Ed Smith Stadium. But Markakis' return to the lineup was a step forward. "I was just happy to get out there and get some at bats and start this thing off right and get it going in the right direction," Markakis said.   Markakis batted third as the Orioles' designated hitter, and a truer test will come next Tuesday when he's slated to make his first start in rightfield.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Orioles top prospect Dylan Bundy made his professional spring debut Tuesday afternoon against the Red Sox at JetBlue Park. Bundy threw a scoreless fifth inning, overcoming an early four-pitch walk to retire the top of Boston's order. "Obviously, every pitcher wants to face the best,” Bundy said. “That's how any pitcher gets better, facing the best. I felt that those three hitters in that lineup were pretty dang good. I came in the game, thought I was going to throw in the eighth or ninth.

The clocks have sprung ahead, and it would be light in the early evening if it weren't for the grayness of the rain. Spring -- tantalizing, seductive -- showed its face last week, but only for a few days. A few gloriously, unseasonably hot days, wonderful days of T-shirts and shorts that hadn't been worn since the Labor Day barbecue. Days spent sweeping out the back porch and cleaning out the garage and folding up the comforters, which seemed suddenly so extraordinarily heavy, only to find 48 hours later that the thin sheets we had flung across the bed were bare and hardly comforting in the cold nighttime drizzle.

Maryland football Defensive end Vellano out for spring practice Maryland's pre-spring depth chart listed Joe Vellano and Keith Bowers as the Terps ' starting defensive ends. Bowers, however, was ruled out of practice last month with heart palpitations. Now Vellano will join him on the sideline. "Joe Vellano is going to be out for the spring with a foot injury," Maryland coach Randy Edsall said in a YouTube video posted Saturday. "So that was disappointing.

It is spring glorious spring (da do ron ron ron da do ron ron), and our gallant president has rallied his fractious forces against wacko demagoguery, the crocuses are up, and birds are returning from the South, preferring to raise their children here in Minnesota where we pull our pants on one leg at a time and not all at once. Some people in Washington haven't managed to get their pants on in years. Slowly, slowly, the simple fact dawns on the electorate that the Democrats have passed a moderate Republican health care reform.