O's Fans Show Patience Amid Losing String BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - Why in the world would 42,704 people a near capacity crowd -- show up at Camden Yards on the Friday before Memorial Day? With the home team on a collision course with a 12th consecutive losing season, and with the decent yet non-descript Detroit Tigers as the opponents?

That all should be enough to keep fans away - and if not that, the hard economic times should seal the deal. Just don't tell that to Bethany Kleindinst.

"Oh, hell no, no, we're gonna come to the games, absolutely, absolutely. Everything is right here, everything - we just love it. I just love my boys.''

There WAS an X factor on this night - Matt Wieters, the ballyhooed Orioles prospect, was making his major-league debut. But even that only scratches the surface. The Orioles WERE still bringing up the rear in their division. The crowd that night was still was an exception rather than the rule - through mid-June, the O's were next to last in the American League in attendance averaging a little over 22-thousand. And they were down 11 percent from last season, when they fell below 2 million for the first time at Camden Yards.

In fact, just three days earlier, the team had posted the smallest attendance in the 17-year history of the park. And by the Orioles' next homestand, in the wake of yet another losing streak, the crowds were again in the teens.

But something else lit a fuse under Orioles fans that night and the rest of that weekend - the kind of fuse that simply won't get lit under Nationals fans any time soon. It was the franchise's 55-year legacy, the loyalty that creates, the hope that fosters even at the lowest points.

That won't stop even if the economy is in the tank, along with the team.

Kleindinst, her husband, their niece and nephew were all in town from Hanover, Pennsylvania. They come to a handful of games every season. The drive and the experience are worth the effort. Seeing the projected future star of the Orioles in his first game was a bonus - but, she said, she would have been there anyway.

"I came down in 1972 and I was a Red Sox fan."

That's Charles Schobow of Owings Mills, a Boston transplant who runs a theatre website. He said he WAS there to see Wieters.

"It took me until 1979, when I moved into a townhouse where I had neighbors like Mike Flanagan, Eddie Murray, Rich Dauer, Gary Roenicke, Al Bumbry. I quickly became a huge Orioles fan, and I haven't stopped, I haven't stopped.''

On the other hand, Schobow added, that's part of what you do if you're a 30-year fan of the Orioles. D.C. fans, devoid of baseball for 33 years until the Nationals' arrival in 2005, can't relate to that. Not even through more than a decade of losing. To many, like him, even bad baseball is a bargain.

"This is the best deal in town. Where else can you get entertainment for this amount of money? I mean, even if you're not a student, normally you can come for less than nine bucks, you know, and that's still less than a movie.''

Easy to say for a man on his own, right?

"It is expensive when you get here - you're sitting here for four minutes and already the ice cream man comes, the popcorn man comes, the hot dog man, so you've already spent 50 bucks the first five minutes.''

That was Angela Murphy of Timonium, and her two rambunctious young sons, Michael and John. Even with the 9-dollar seats, the average ticket price this season, while respectable by baseball standards, is 23 dollars and 42 cents, which can pile up for a family of four. Still, the Murphys weren't driven away.

"You know, we didn't really come all that often because they were just getting to the age now where they like it, so we probably will now more.''

It would be foolhardy to view the entire long-suffering fan base through the rose-colored glasses of the night Wieters arrived. But the difference between the despair in D.C. and the guarded optimism in Baltimore, is about a half-century, during which a team became a local institution. Fans like Bethany can pull stories like these from their shared history.

"Actually, my parents used to bring me down to Memorial Stadium, and my dad actually went down for a beer, and there was a foul ball hit, and he came up with a beer in one hand and a ball in the other hand.''

The Orioles MIGHT be able to count on that sort of cultural memory sustaining them through these harsh times, in ways the Nationals might not.

I'm David Steele, reporting from Camden Yards, for 88-1, WYPR.
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