World Series

This year's Ripken World Series has been pretty standard, from my perspective at least, meaning my week has been equal parts grueling and exciting. Covering four or five games a day is certainly taxing on the brain and spirit, but watching the top 12-year-old teams in the country and world battle it out makes it worthwhile. It's the 20-0 blowouts that tend to make those souls in the press booth a bit restless. Thankfully, the majority of the contests I've covered have been evenly contested, with the pinnacle being Monday night's Mexico and Dominican Republic showdown, which featured some of the best pitching I've seen at any tournament.

The Cal Ripken World Series opened for the 12th time Friday night, the ninth time in Aberdeen, with a ceremony in front of hundreds of fans from the United States and other countries at the Ripken Academy in Aberdeen. Players, coaches, ambassadors and bat boys from all 16 teams paraded around the complex into Ripken Stadium, before returning to Cal Sr.'s Yard, where each team was introduced and each manager was awarded a participation plaque. While parading was going on, students from Chung's Martial Arts displayed board breaking moves and other forms from Tae Kwon Do. Fourteen-year-old Melanie Smith performed the national anthem.

Phillies over Yankees Phil Rogers Chicago Tribune Normally I don't break out The System until late September, but there's nothing wrong with taking it for a test spin. The formula that picked the Giants to win a year ago lines up with conventional wisdom this time around. Make it Phillies over Yankees in a very tight World Series. The Phillies are an easy choice to win the NL (over the Braves in the LCS), but the AL isn't so clear-cut. I give the (right now)

Duke names building for Easton resident Pascal Duke is naming an 80,000-square-foot building featuring a 120-yard football playing surface after Easton resident Bob Pascal , a Maryland state senator from 1970 to 1974 and Anne Arundel county executive from 1974 to 1982. Pascal, owner of the Pascal Group, provided a lead gift of $6 million for the project. A 1956 Duke graduate, he was an All-America running back who helped the Blue Devils to a three-year record of 20-8-3, including three Atlantic Coast Conference championships and a 34-7 win over Nebraska in the 1955 Orange Bowl.

Vanderbilt primed Dom Amore Hartford Courant For several years, Vanderbilt has had the reputation of being "the best team never to make the College World Series. " Those ghosts are gone now, after Vanderbilt swept Oregon State to reach Omaha for the first time. And now that they're there, the Commodores are primed to win. Vanderbilt was ranked No. 1 for long parts of the season, but, of course, the length of the season and the top-to-bottom quality of the SEC makes running the table impossible.

When Earl Weaver cleans out his garage, he doesn't hold a yard sale. He has a headline-grabbing event sure to make collectors drool. The bidding on his baseball memorabilia could net the Orioles' Hall of Fame manager as much as $150,000, said David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions, who is peddling a number of Weaver's keepsakes Saturday in Chicago. A 1966 Orioles World Series championship ring and Weaver's Baseball Hall of Fame induction ring are on the block, along with 45 other items bestowed on Weaver during his 17 years as the Orioles' winningest manager, between 1968 and 1986.

Eddie Watt lives in peaceful anonymity, in a speck of a town in Nebraska, where the talk is of crops and cows and Cornhusker football. The Orioles? Not a word. Many in North Bend (pop. 1,200) don't know there's a celebrant in their midst. Mention that Watt, 70, a longtime resident, owns two World Series rings and they'd scratch their heads and say, "Eddie What ?" Watt likes it there. After 42 years in baseball — including eight with the Orioles (1966-73) as a bullpen ace — he retired in 2003 and left the game behind.

In the past two days, I've made five bold Orioles predictions for the upcoming season, asked you to predict how many games the Orioles will win and got some of your World Series picks . The guys over on the Orioles Insider blog have been at it, too, giving quick-fire Orioles predictions in this post and this other post (and there's more to come). Talk about prognostication overload. But if you're not sick of predictions, I've got some more. Here are my predictions for the 2011 MLB season: playoff teams, award winners, the World Series champ, the Orioles' record, and more.

After a month of meaningless exhibitions, the 2011 Major League Baseball season begins this afternoon as a dozen teams take the field. The Orioles will be watching on TV today, presumably in a hotel or a sports bar down in Florida as they await their season opener against the Rays tomorrow night. Now that the season is finally here, it's prediction time. About 100 people from ESPN made their predictions , and there was a lot of love for the Red Sox and Phillies. Fanhouse foresees a Boston-Philadelphia World Series , too. A couple of guys from Sports Illustrated think the Reds are going to win it all . And all three of Yahoo's predictors have AL East teams winning the World Series , though none of those teams are from Baltimore.