Yankees Fans

At some point tonight, a verbal tug of war between baseball fans will echo throughout Oriole Park. It won't be unique, nor will it be particularly clever, but it will perfectly illustrate the obvious reality: When baseball's 800-pound gorilla, the New York Yankees, come to town, home-field advantage ain't what it used to be. "Let's go, Yank-ees!" "Yank-ees suck!" It would be one thing if the Yankees' fans were simply a loud, vocal minority, and if their cheers and taunts were constantly drowned out by an enthusiastic, sometimes angry response from thousands of Orioles fans.

Everything about the scene at Yankee Stadium reinforces the idea that the resident team is supposed to win - not just most of the time, but every night and, especially, every night in October. It's more than the 27 World Series flags on the facing of the second deck or the monuments to Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio in center field. The assumption lies in the fiber of every conversation between fans, every pre-game question posed to Yankees manager Joe Girardi. So when the Orioles, in their first postseason since 1997, arrived for the third game of the American League Division Series on Wednesday, they seemed to delight in playing the role of unexpected houseguests.

Oh, you hate them. You hate their swagger. You hate what they wear, those Yankees caps and pinstriped Yankees jerseys and satin Yankees jackets that look like something from a bad bowling league. You hate the way they talk, which is megaphone-loud and New Yawk-y, and then they get a few beers in them and it sounds like Amphetamine Night at Yankee Stadium, everyone yapping about "Derek" and "Bernie" and "da Yanks, da mos' wunnerful team in da woild." But most of all, you hate their arrogance, their sense of entitlement, how they expect to win every year and when they don't, it's treated like a statistical anomaly, a blip in the natural order of life, a puzzler that even has God scratching his head.

On Sunday, we told you about The Horsebox , a bar in New York's East Village that Orioles fans have adopted. Josh Adams was among the displaced Marylanders who found their way to Avenue A to watch the Orioles take on the Yankees in ALDS Game 3. Here's Josh's report: The Horsebox was packed with Orioles fans, making it feel like a little slice of Fells Point in the East Village. The familiar Oriole Bird hat was in full display among the patrons and when Ryan Flaherty went deep in the third inning, an ear-splitting "Let's go O's!"

They've taken Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, and now Yankees fans appear on the verge of claiming the little patch of green yard by the Inner Harbor known as Camden Yards. Thousands of the spiritual kin of DiMaggio, Mantle and Torre streamed into the ballpark on Opening Day yesterday, intent on making the Yankees feel right at home. And why not? Ruth may not have built Baltimore's stadium, but center field was his neighborhood as a child. They came in pairs, in small groups and even accompanied by Orioles fans.

If the Orioles are looking forward to a respite from New York-style abuse as the American League playoffs move to Baltimore today, they're likely to be disappointed.That giant sucking sound you've been hearing lately is coming from hordes of Yankees fans vacuuming up every Camden Yards playoff ticket that hasn't been nailed down.Free-spending Yankees fans are using ticket brokers, tour operators, hotel concierges and the Internet to invade the Orioles' nest for games three though five of the American League Championship Series.

Don't get me wrong. I love New York. I love everything about New York, including the town's unmatched IQ (Incivility Quotient).That's me. When the waiter throws the menu down on the table as if he were Michael Irvin spiking a football, I double the tip.New York is an attitude town. I'm an attitude guy.To sum up: I love New York; I just don't like seeing New York in Baltimore, where I actually live.I especially don't like it when New Yorkers try to take over Camden Yards. Yesterday the paper said to expect an invasion of pinstripes and Yankee caps for the weekend series.

Good morning--Alex Rodriguez--Could you possibly do anything more to reconstruct your relationship with Yankees fans?

Good morning --Alex Rodriguez -- You hit two doubles yesterday, but Yankees fans will focus on your 20th error

NEXT QUESTION Did you sell your Orioles tickets to Yankees fans this weekend? Selected responses to today's question will be printed Monday on The Kickoff page. Please e-mail your answer (about 25 words) to sports@baltsun.com by 3 p.m. tomorrow. Include your name, address and a daytime telephone number for verification purposes.

After 15 years of waiting for playoff baseball at Camden Yards, Orioles fans had to endure an extra 21/2 hours as chilly rain pushed back the start of Sunday's division series opener against the hated New York Yankees. A mighty roar shook the stadium when the grounds crew peeled away the protective tarp at 8 p.m., conveying just how badly Baltimore fans wanted their October moment. The crowd didn't grow quiet until the Yankees scored five runs in the ninth inning on their way to a 7-2 victory.

In past years when the feared yet despised Yankees came to Baltimore in September, Orioles fans' only concern was whether they would be sitting next to a boisterous Yanks fan ("Who expected this?" Sept. 5). The only real hope was that the Orioles fans would be able to muster a higher decibel level than the Yankees fans when the chants began. We have all seen them; they would enter our beloved Camden Yards with their pinstriped jerseys, bold blue hats with the iconic lettering, and their pompous "Got Rings"?

These weren't the same Boston Red Sox who used to regularly come to Camden Yards and bully the Orioles in their own ballpark. And the crowd at Tuesday night's series opener didn't seem to be the same crowd we're used to seeing in these parts for this kind of series. There was a lot more orange among the announced 26,204 at Camden Yards for the Orioles' 7-1 win over the Red Sox than even during Boston's first trip here in May. The moment I took notice was when reliever Darren O'Day escaped a bases-loaded jam in the seventh by striking out Cody Ross swinging and Ryan Lavarnway looking, prompting a loud standing ovation going into the seventh-inning stretch.

For many years my wife Fran and I were subscribers to the Baltimore Pops series at the Meyerhoff. We especially enjoyed the years during Marvin Hamlisch's tenure as principal pops conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Little did we know that he was also a big time baseball fan. My wife Fran, known throughout Camden Yards for many years as one of the Orioles' best fans, was delighted when we were invited to a Yankees-Oriole game at Yankee Stadium to see Mike Messina, after leaving Baltimore, pitch for the Yankees against the Orioles.

After some games, past midnight, sometimes at 1 a.m., Buck Showalter drives away from Camden Yards and surveys the people still lingering around the streets. The Orioles manager wants to take the pulse of the city. He wants to know what they're wearing, or more accurately, what color they're wearing. Is that orange? Is that an Orioles cap? After a night like Saturday's game against the Washington Nationals, with another sellout crowd at the ballpark, he can be content. “I [can]

If you're one of those gloom-and-doomers who wondered whether you'd ever feel baseball fever in this town again, I hope you were at Camden Yards on Sunday. What a great scene this was. You had an announced sellout crowd of 45,267 in the house. You had a game against a National League team, the Philadelphia Phillies, that would be a great Interstate95 rival for the Orioles if they weren't now playing the Washington Nationals twice a year. (Baltimore versus Washington - that's still the Hatfields versus the McCoys for Orioles fans)

Joe Foss, the Orioles' vice chairman of business and finance, yesterday urged season-ticket holders not using their tickets to sell the unused tickets to local Orioles fans.Foss said the large number of Yankees fans that helped fill Camden Yards during the four-game series with New York did not buy their tickets in large blocks from the Orioles."Based on the location of so many of the Yankees fans, [the tickets] are obviously coming from Orioles season-ticket holders who resold those tickets to Yankees fans, which is certainly their prerogative," Foss said.

Dean Prager has been sitting directly behind the left-field wall at Orioles games ever since Camden Yards opened four years ago. He has always respected where his space ends and the field of play begins.Never, Prager said, has he even considered reaching over the wall and pulling in a ball to help his beloved Orioles.Last night, though, Prager was out for revenge."I'll take the guy's glove out of his hands," the Annapolis insurance salesman said before the game. "I'd be escorted out of here, and I'd say thank you [to the usher]

A little more than nine years ago, I moved to Mount Vernon. It was great, although at first I'd occasionally want to go to Rite Aid --- the one in the island near State Center complex, at the north end of Martin Luther King Blvd. --- and drive around and around in circles and never find it. Other times, I would try to go home, take a wrong turn and find myself at the Rite Aid, which I knew was not going to help me navigate to my apartment. I nicknamed it the Bermuda Triangle.

NEW YORK - Fifty years later, Sal Durante admitted he was so short, he needed to stand on his seat to catch that ball - the one hit by Roger Maris, a man whose stature just keeps growing. There was only admiration Saturday at Yankee Stadium for the reluctant and possibly under-appreciated star whose 61st home run on Oct. 1, 1961, broke what had been the most revered record in sports. The Yankees brought back Maris' family. They brought back two sons of Mickey Mantle, who had been the people's choice in a two-way race to break Babe Ruth's venerated single-season home run mark.