E-Mail This Article to a Friend Ballpark figures: Oriole Park at Camden Yards BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

"This is Baltimore, isn’t it?"

unidentified Orioles fan in concession-stand line,

hearing another Red Sox hit lustily cheered

BALTIMORE — I have seen the future of the Boston Red Sox’ new home, and it looks strangely like Oriole Park at Camden Yards (as if anybody actually calls it "Oriole Park"). The stadium is pristine and sparkling, Red Sox fans stride through the massive concourses without bumping into and spilling onto each other, and lines for hot dogs, beer, and yes, even crab cakes, are short. The seats will be cozy and sightlines will be unmatched, and 48,000-plus fans will watch their favorite team in ergonomic bliss.

Indeed, I have seen what the future Fenway Park looks like, and this past weekend, I was there.

But I wasn’t in some Jetsons-esque ballpark on the Boston waterfront, with the Boston skyline in the background and a renovated 37-foot-high wall out in left field; I was in Baltimore, where Red Sox fans so outnumbered Orioles fans that oftentimes one had to regain their bearings and realize they were wicked fah from Hahvad Yahd.

Once an early-season rainout between the two teams was rescheduled for the final weekend — four games in three days to wrap up the regular season — multitudes of Sox fans decided to make the pilgrimage (440 miles, give or take) to Maryland to take advantage of a beautiful fall weekend and the opportunity to take over an opposing ballpark whose team had long ago been eliminated from the divisional race. Because the team’s ticket-management honchos apparently have little interest in tracking Orioles season-ticket-holder seats, a lot of ducats end up on eBay or other auction sites to be snatched up by eager New Yorkers or New Englanders. (Do that in Boston, and Sox or Patriots management is likely to pull your season-ticket contract altogether.)

Camden Yards opened in the spring of 1992, and it quickly became the prototype for all the subsequent baseball-only stadiums that have sprouted up in recent years in such outposts as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Denver. Not too big — capacity nearly 49,000 — and striking in its nostalgic themes, Camden Yards immediately drew huge crowds and built a consecutive-sellout streak that was unmatched until the Indians’ Jacobs Field did the trick (with 455).

The current ballpark replaced the aging Memorial Stadium, which was not in the best part of town, and whose memories included the great teams of the late-’60s/early ’70s but little in the way of stadium personality. Camden Yards stands where Babe Ruth’s father used to run a saloon; George Herman Ruth himself was born just a few blocks from the park (where a Babe Ruth Museum now exists). The stadium resides just a few football fields away from Ravens Stadium, where the city’s NFL franchise lives (although because of the parks’ proximity and parking restrictions, they rarely schedule games simultaneously). Parking, you say? The highest price I saw was $10, and if you’re willing to walk four or five blocks to the park, you might even find a dandy bargain in a parking garage for only $7. Tell that to the gougers operating around Fenway Park who charge $30 during the regular season, and will likely jack up those ungodly fees to 50 bucks for the playoffs.

Not surprisingly, most of the best seats in the house are owned by the aforementioned season-ticket holders, but if good tix aren’t available at the box office, you can always try the scalp-free zone, which allows patrons who have tickets they can’t use to sell them to the hungry masses — with the stipulation that face value or less be charged. (Reports say that Sox management will test out a similar zone during the team’s upcoming playoff series, and if it works, it may become a permanent fixture in 2005.) Of course, there are still scalpers around Camden Yards, but they’re not nearly as prolific nor as obnoxious as the omnipresent get-a-lifers who patrol the perimeter of Fenway.

Janet Marie Smith, who is now on the Sox’ payroll as vice-president of planning and development for the Sox, was part of the group that designed Camden Yards, and a lot of those ideas that went over so well in Baltimore are now starting to sprout up at the Red Sox’ home park. There’s little Smith can do about the claustrophobic concourse at Fenway, given the stadium’s age (92), but the Orioles’ home park has a concourse that’s probably 50 feet wide and four stories high, with enough concessionaires and rest rooms to please even the most spoiled out-of-towners. Philadelphia is known for its cheese steaks, but the popular sandwich is also a big seller in Baltimore, along with crab cakes and other regional fare. I couldn’t tell you much about the soda choices, but the beer choices were impressive, including a number of microbrew stands and the opportunity to buy 16-ounce plastic bottles of brew ($5.75; maximum four per customer) instead of the watery-tasting $5.50 10-ounce drafts that are offered at Fenway. Best of all — if you’re interested in this kind of thing — bottled beer is sold in the stands (as it is in every non–New England ballyard).

Ushers are friendly and helpful, and armed with squeegees and towels to wipe down your seat upon arrival. That is, of course, assuming that you have the ticket that goes with that particular seat, as the ushers are adamant about not allowing anyone into the lower infield boxes unless they’re properly ticketed. On the Saturday night I attended, despite the game being dubbed a sellout, there were at least 20 prime empty seats right in front of me, but the Oriole ambassadors would not allow anyone to upgrade to those seats despite the constant efforts of eager (mostly Sox) fans anxious to improve their view. And this policy, I was told, extended all the way from section 16 to 58 (first base to third base), and made no exceptions. The park has two upper decks, with the middle one extending out from luxury-box suites, while the top one extends from left-center field all the way around to the right-field foul post. There are four small bleacher sections in right-center field, flanked by a couple of standing-room areas and concourses. Out below the right-field area, one can see an omnipresent spiraling column of smoke, which emanates from Boog Powell’s BBQ stand out on Eutaw Street beyond the left-field wall, and the burly former first O’s baseman can often be found there signing autographs and interacting with patrons.

Eutaw Street is closed off prior to Orioles games (similar to what has been done with Yawkey Way in the past couple of years) and turned into an open-air eat- and drinkfest. Towering over Eutaw is the refurbished B&O Warehouse (built in 1898), reportedly one of the longest such structures on the East Coast, which houses among others the Orioles’ team offices. The building has never been hit on the fly by a home-run ball during a regular-season game, although there is a plaque that notes where Ken Griffey Jr. hit a BP ball prior to the Home Run Derby during Baltimore’s All-Star game festivities back in 1993.

It was a bit surprising to see the scoreboard operators go to such great lengths to stir up the crowd, with applause meters and other cheer-provoking sound effects. In Boston, we’re accustomed to such pleadings from the FleetCenter scoreboard, but it seemed a bit out of place in such a traditional baseball city as Baltimore (though perhaps a seven-year playoff drought necessitates reviving Birds fans from their complacency on a regular basis). Still, "If You’re Happy and You Know It" can’t be the best way to get fans involved, is it?

There are a number of local traditions that are part of the Camden Yards baseball experience, including fans raising their voices significantly for the second "O" part of the Star-Spangled Banner ("O, say does that Star-spangled banner yet wave ... "); the playing of John Denver’s "Thank God I’m a Country Boy" immediately upon the completion of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch; and having the Oriole mascot come out onto the field during a between-inning break and catapult T-shirts into the stands. Blooper reels, Orioles World Series archival footage, and of course, Cal Ripken video highlights are also frequent scoreboard features. In addition, not only does the right-field scoreboard regularly update out-of-town scores, but it will also inform spectators of pitching changes and how runs were scored (as the scores change).

Frankly, the overall fan experience was difficult to top. The joint was obviously built with a lot of forethought and ingenuity, and the people who work there are knowledgeable and eager to assist the hordes of carpetbaggers from the North. While visiting Fenway can be a headache for any number of reasons — and that’s no fault of the current Sox management — Camden Yards in every way exudes class, and we Bostonians would be lucky to call a place like that their home ballpark.

So it wasn’t surprising that given the difficulty of securing tickets at forever-sold-out Fenway Park, legions of Red Sox Nationals migrated south and commandeered the home of the Orioles, where for a weekend they got the chance to see what the new Sox’ home will someday resemble.

And hearing the "Youk-Youk-Youk" chant when Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis came up; the lusty boos for Bucky Dent when the "On This Date" highlights of 10/2/78 were shown on the scoreboard; and the familiar anti-Yankees chant from the far-from-bipartisan fandom — it really did feel like a Red Sox home game.

This was where the 2004 regular season began, it’s where it ended, and blocks away the spirit of Babe Ruth likely cracked a smile and a cold one as the Red Sox took wing en route to Anaheim, where the next chapter of this memorable season is sure to unfold.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com