European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 11, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 22 the stars and stripes saturday april 11,1992 baseball 92old feel fills o s new nest by Dan Fesperman the Baltimore Sun Baltimore a on Day one you noticed the con Rete a surprisingly abundant after All this talk of steel beams and Brick Walls a still wearing the Sharp edged grittiness of the freshly Tro weled sidewalk. But then you walked up a ramp and into the sunlight and eased Down in one of the slatted Green seats with All that leg room. You looked around for a moment a cowed by the View and the feeling washed Oyer you of a thousand warm evenings in july with night bugs swarming Low on a crouched Batter runners edging from the bases and fans leaning Forward for a pitch deep in the count in the late innings of a close one. It is immediate baseball Comfort and familiarity this place sort of like getting a Brand new baseball Glove that has already been oiled and broken in one that All you have to do is whiff the leather to conjure up the Rass stains and dust from some Long past slide into ome. N this easy Comfort is no mean feat considering that a new Ballpark has none of the usual Hooks of familiarity such As Section numbers that quickly Call to mind their location. Section 34? if you re talking memorial stadium that a Down in right Field of course where the Beer bellies and the Blue collars used to cheer hell for leather on into september. The Only Blue collars you la find in the new 34 Are Likely to be Button Down ensnared in silk ties. Its in the High rent District of the lower deck behind the Chicken wire foul screen. But relax there Are plenty of worthy successors to the old 34, and practically every Vantage Point in the new place comes equipped will its pre Tab Aura of baseball a past present and future. Why does it work maybe its All that Green or the Quirky angles or the foul ground that Sas snug As a Little league Field. Maybe its the Way the left Field grandstand curls James Smith hangs Bunting in Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore before opening Day on monday. Around the foul pole with the front rows flush up to the Wall like in the old Parks. Or maybe its the promenade beyond the right Field scoreboard where you can stroll to the Buzz of the crowd and peek in Over the bleachers. Or maybe its the Short roof that angles out Over the upper deck. Yes its already an ornamental Joy looking As if it fell straight out of the 1930s, awaiting Only Roy Hobbs to Bounce one off the facing in deep left. But wait until the first muggy sunday afternoon when it will become a utilitarian Joy of Shade and breezes. Or the first rain delay when there at last will be some shelter for the upper deck crowd. Another Odd Little touch that somehow works Are the bullpen. The bullpen dugouts can even look downright surreal from some Vantage Points. They re sandwiched Between equal sized billboards so that they too can look like billboards with the seated pitchers part of the  Happy by the associated press the Early word out of Baltimore from the players is that the Ball does no to Cany at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the infield is too soft. A no doubt about it. To get a base hit you be got to hit a line drive. Two bounces in the infield and you can forget about it a orioles third baseman Leo Gomez said of the soft grass in the infield. In the first three games at Camden Yards the indians and orioles combined for just 27 hits. The last time Baltimore had two Complete game shutouts in the same series was aug. 29-30, 1985, when Mike Boddicker and storm Davis blanked the Seattle  Park fulfils a rage to get it right by George will Baltimore a recreation As Bart Giamatti liked to say is re creation an attempt to renew ourselves according to some Standard to make a vision palpable. Thus paradoxically recreation implies both Leisure and what Giamatti called a a rage to get it  the people responsible for the orioles new Ballpark did. It was an architect who said god is in the details. Could have been a baseball person. A baseball people a Giamatti said a have the keenest eyes for details i have Ever known a this from a professor of poetry. Hear baseball people dissect a batters swing or Catalon minute variations in a pitchers release Point or deplore the Way a shortstop by leaning betrays the kind of pitch that is coming. It is therefore splendidly right that Oriole Park at Camden Yards sets a new Standard for detailed excellence. Three related reasons Why the Park is receiving standing ovations from critics Are its Urban setting its asymmetry and its intimacy. All these suit it to the ceremony of sport and especially to baseball. The Park Speaks Well of Maryland a governor William Donald Schaefer who again has provided proof that government can do things right. One of the primary shapers of the Park is orioles owner Eli Jacobs a Carrier of the Torch of baseball traditionalism. His tastes were shaped by Quirky Parks shoehorned into City neighbourhood so Brooklyn s ebbets Field and Bostons Fenway Park. Another shaper is orioles president Larry Lucchino a baseball Purist who hired a Kindred spirit Janet Marie Smith 34. Like will Clark Smith is one of Mississippi state University s great gifts to the National game. This Willowy Dynamo is an Urban design specialist she worked on development of new Yorkus Battery Park City and los Angeles Pershing Square who knit the new Park into the fabric of this old City. Baseball is As Giamatti said a strenuously nostalgic a but not for a pastoral past. Baseball a codification occurred not in Farmer Phinney a pasture near Cooperstown but in a Manhattan Meadow where in 1845 Alexander Cartwright baseball a James Madison its greatest constitutionalists Laid out a Diamond with the bases 90 feet apart. Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato and baseball a evolution has been but footnotes to Cartwright. Baltimore baseball history will henceforth be made where commentary much history has happened. Gen. Rochambeau in a French forces camped at Camden Yard in route to Yorktown in 1783. At 3 . Feb. 23, 1861, president elect Lincoln passed through Camden Railroad station which is just beyond Center Field on his Stealthy journey to Washington. Lincoln passed through Camden Yards in november 1863 travelling to Gettysburg and in april 1865 going Home to Springfield. The Center Field bleachers Are near where the first civil War fatalities occurred. Southern sympathizers fought with Massachusetts infantry that was passing through Camden station in route to Washington after the attack on fort Sumter where both sides together fired 4,000 shells and killed no one. Oriole Park is not the first built on sacred soil. Second base at Cincinnati a riverfront stadium is on the site of the Birthplace of Roy Rogers. The orioles Stew Center Field was once the site of a Saloon where George Herman Ruth sr., sold Nickel Beer and dime soup. The Barkeep a son had a warehouse Power. That new baseball term describes batters who can hit the old Brick a amp of warehouse 460 feet from Home plate Down the right Field line. The foul lines in Oriole Park Are different lengths the Outfield Wall is 25 feet High in one stretch seven feet elsewhere. Good. Baseball has Blithe disregard not Only for the dictates of clocks but also for numerical or spatial symmetries. Even baseball a numbers Are Odd a three strikes and you re out five Ball and strike Calls make a full count nine players to a Side nine innings to a game get 27 outs and you can go Home a unless there is then the impermissible symmetry of a tie. Bradd Shore an anthropologist notes baseball a social asymmetry one team never confronts the other. Nine defenders confront one Batter and at most three baserunners at a time. So Oriole Park with eight angles in its Outfield Wall is a suitable Frame for an asymmetrical game. It is the most observable games players Are dispersed on Green and should be seen up close. We make buildings then they make us and Oriole Park will make baseball fans by making the games elegance and nuances As observable As they now Are Only in Wrigley Field Tiger stadium and Fenway Park the Parks built before the world went mad world War i. Oriole Parks 48,000 seats Are enough. Last year the Cleveland indians playing in a stadium that seats 80,000, played at Home in front of 5,055,743 empty seats. Giamatti who Rose from Yale a presidency to the splendor of baseball commissioner said that we associate Leisure with happiness and Leisure at a sporting event with a shared absence of care. Giamatti hinted ballparks can be intimations or echoes or remnants of Paradise. A Ballpark can be an Active ingredient in transforming a crowd a a Mere aggregation a into a Community. A sporting event can be a moment of Harmony and a Ballpark can be a setting for sur cease from the competitive strivings of Urban life. In an age when religious ceremonies Are decreasingly Central to most lives and in a Republic in which civic rituals Are purposely few and spare sport can satisfy a yearning for ceremony. Baltimore a jewel of a Ballpark is worthy of such yearnings. It already has been the scene of one Small ceremony. Late one afternoon last August before the Sod was Down at the place where Home plate now is i proposed marriage to the orioles fan who now is mrs will. Hey Call me romantic but i wanted Mari to know that in my heart she ranks right up there with baseball