Upper Deck

The 1854 warship Constellation is set to go back in the water today, with food and festivities marking the end of 19 months in dry dock at Fort McHenry Shipyard.Sporting a tight new hull and a dapper new black, white and green paint job, the Civil War relic is expected to float off its blocks at 9: 15 a.m., three hours after pumps start moving Patapsco River water into the graving dock.It will float nearby while reconstruction is completed and will return to the Inner Harbor next summer."She is structurally sound.

It is, perhaps, the most nettlesome issue in designing a stadium: what to do about the railings that must encircle the seating areas.Safety requires railings that help prevent fans from falling off the upper deck. But the pursuit of unobstructed sightlines, and the implications that holds for prices fans will pay for tickets, suggests the fewer railings the better.What's a stadium builder to do?"It's a fact of stadium life, unfortunately. Obviously, safety is the No. 1 issue," Ravens director of ticket operations Roy Sommerhof said.

Let's call it The Big Orchid for now because the Ravens' new stadium doesn't have an official name yet and that's a lot of purple coming out of the ground.It's a splendid place, no doubt, as well it should be for what it cost. The lower bowl, club level and luxury boxes are almost on top of the field. The scoreboards and sound system are terrific. There's an industrial feel that seems right for football. All that purple? Cool.But the upper deck? Well, not to tell you how to live your life or anything, but if your seats are up there, you'd better bring a Sherpa.

Several hundred Ravens fans, seeing their seats at the new stadium for the first time at Thursday's open house, have asked the team to move them to a new location.The team is processing these complaints on a case-by-case basis and has provided new seats to some customers and told others that there is nothing that can be done. Top priority is being given to people who found railings blocking their view, followed by fans with medical disabilities for whom the trek to the upper deck is too arduous.

Your new upper-deck seats at the Ravens' stadium don't just seem close to the stratosphere. They really are.Although stadium designers boast that the park will have sightlines as good as any in football, a number of compromises had to be made to accommodate all the elements the team wanted. The result is an upper deck that is among the highest in sports and tilted at an angle some patrons may find a bit steep.The reason is chiefly luxury seating. The team wanted to have 108 skyboxes and 7,900 club seats.

For all the conveniences it will offer fans, the new Ravens stadium downtown will lack something even ancient Memorial Stadium had: escalators serving the upper deck.Team and state officials say the costly devices are dangerous and unreliable at the heights that would be required at the stadium.Several of the new football stadiums opened in recent years have left them out, both because of cost and questions about their safety and reliability. Also, the prominence of premium club levels being built between the upper and lower decks make pass-through escalators difficult to design into the building.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When the people designing Baltimore's new football stadium first gathered around the black marble conference table in the architect's offices here two years ago, each brought a specific, and sometimes contradictory, vision of what the building should be.For representatives of the Maryland Stadium Authority, the stadium had to mesh with Camden Yards' turn-of-the-century brick and mortar. For the Ravens, skyboxes and other money-making accouterments had to justify the move from Cleveland and to keep fans coming to games in an age when free broadcasts are as plentiful as beer commercials.

Hitting Mark Grace, Cubs: 4-for-5, 3 runs, 3 RBIs.Sammy Sosa, Cubs: 2-for-2, 2 runs, 2 RBIs.Vinny Castilla, Rockies: 5-for-6, 3 runs, 3 RBIs.Dante Bichette, Rockies: 4-for-6, 1 RBI.Barry Bonds, Giants: 2-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBIs, home run five rows deep in upper deck.Eddie Taubensee, Reds: 4-for-4, 2 runs, 3 RBIs.PitchingDanny Darwin, Giants: 8 innings, 4 hits, 0 runs.Andy Ashby, Padres: 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 run.Pub Date: 5/15/98

Say this for Memorial Stadium: It was a bargain.Opened in phases between 1949 and 1954, the stadium was never built so much as it evolved. City officials advanced the project in fits and starts, as money could be coaxed from the voters or found in the treasury. There never seemed to be enough.At the time of its final grand opening in 1954, the stadium had cost a minuscule $6.1 million -- the state will spend that much on the light rail station at the Ravens stadium -- and it achieved its primary purpose: It had lured major-league baseball to town.

NEW YORK -- The verbal white flag spilled from the right-field bleachers one out into the seventh inning. Eventually it crawled into the upper deck, giving the early departures one last piece of abuse to hurl at their heroes."