Friday, July 14 The Sopran-O's By Tim Kurkjian ESPN The Magazine

The true snapshot of the 1999 Orioles comes only with the negative. Same nightly picture: Albert Belle sits alone at the postgame spread, bothering no one but acknowledging no one, his body language screaming, "Stay away, and no one will get hurt." His furious eyes focus on his usual meal: four yogurts, placed roughly four inches apart. What is he thinking? Perhaps about what's most important to him -- his four at-bats that night.

	Albert Belle's bat needs to be lethal this season for the Orioles to contend.

It's a sad team portrait. The Orioles were once baseball's finest family, a perennial 90-win machine, the essence of stability. They were assembled from within. They were run frugally, yet wisely. People smiled when they passed you in the halls of Memorial Stadium. People were proud to work there.

Mostly, the Orioles were fun. They were Frank Robinson in a ridiculous wig, presiding over the team's kangaroo court. They were Earl Weaver, all 5'7" of him, cap on backward, stretching on tiptoes to get in the face of an umpire, then using his tiny feet to cover home plate with dirt during one of his signature beefs over a missed call. They were Rick Dempsey slipping and sliding around the tarp-covered infield in his slapstick rain-delay routine, finishing his inside-the-parker with a great belly flop at home.

Now the Orioles are baseball's answer to The Sopranos: a dysfunctional family of 78-win underachievers. Granted, Cal Ripken Jr. isn't exactly boss Tony. Although they're both decent men at heart, at least Tony is still trying to control his disintegrating family; Cal has no chance to control his. And, no, Peter Angelos isn't quite Uncle Junior, an ineffectual paranoid with delusions of grandeur; the O's majority owner has been more than effective in micromanaging his team into mediocrity. As for Belle -- well, he's no Big Pussy, secretly betraying his family over years of perceived slights; Albert doesn't hide his me-against-the world philosophy. And while The Sopranos is must-see cable, when was the last time you rearranged your weekend to watch an O's game? But for all these differences, only a fine chalk line separates New Jersey's last crime family and baseball's lost team.

The Orioles play in the best ballpark in America. (Okay, one of the best.) They have a tremendous fan base. They have a rich tradition. And they have seemingly unlimited funds. And yet, over the last five years, Oriole employees, from general managers to press box attendants, have been departing faster than Al Bumbry running out a triple. How can this be?

Where's the pride? Why isn't Brooks Robinson working for this team? Why did the ceaselessly upbeat Roland Hemond, who loves the game so much, want to quit as GM in 1993? Why did Frank Robinson's tearful farewell speech to friends in 1995 include a lecture on morale, on how people turn their shoulders when they pass in the halls?

"The last two years we've had some rocky roads," says Ripken, who also played during the best of times in Baltimore. "But I've gone through a total dismantling and rebuilding that was much harder than where we are now. With our talent, we have a chance to win every night. We can go to Yankee Stadium and win two out of three, or sweep. That arms you every day."

Maybe so, but over the last two seasons, the Orioles are 10 games under .500 and have finished 55 games behind the Yankees. And when the Yankees come to Baltimore, there seem to be as many Yankee fans as Oriole fans at Camden Yards, now as much tourist attraction as advantageous home field.

Angelos gets the lion's share of blame for the Orioles' morose metamorphosis, as though he were some evil force hell-bent on destroying the rich tradition of a great franchise. He's not. He's a Baltimore guy, from Greektown. He's trying to bring a champion back home. But he's trying too hard. He doesn't trust others to do their jobs. He's also proving that being brilliant and wealthy doesn't guarantee success.

The Orioles in the 1970s and 1980s were a reporter's dream -- funny, insightful and open. Occasionally, Weaver would provide "if" quotes to beat writers before the final game of a road trip so they could file in time to catch the team charter: "If we win, I'll say, 'We've won six out of eight, we're rolling.' "

These days, the Orioles don't communicate well even with one another. Several times in recent years, minor league teams in the organization lost or gained players without notice from the parent club. Now when something goes wrong, the Orioles brass run and hide. Ray Miller, always accessible as a pitching coach, became sullen and withdrawn as manager. Angelos is constantly angry at the local media. The Orioles seem to operate in response to what columnist Ken Rosenthal writes -- or doesn't write -- in The (Baltimore) Sun.

The Orioles have a collection of players who seem to think someone is out to screw them: You want to find someone better than me? Go ahead and try. Too many don't-blame-me guys. Too many who are set in their ways because they've outlasted four managers. Too many second-half players who run up numbers when the pressure is off. And then there is Albert Belle.

The intelligent, the irrational, the irascible, the irritable Albert Belle. The best player on the team. The most negative force on the team.

The signing of Belle to a five-year, $65M contract two years ago capped a decade of mistakes: trading Pete Harnisch, Curt Schilling and Steve Finley for Glenn Davis. Rejecting a Jeromy Burnitz-for-Bobby Bonilla offer. Signing Delino DeShields for three years and Mike Timlin for four. Not re-signing Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro, Davey Johnson or Pat Gillick. Ask who made the more recent gaffes and you get, "I didn't do it. He did." But it was Angelos, who has had five managers and four general managers in seven years, who made the call on Belle.

Now, hope for resurrecting the Orioles this season rests with new manager Mike Hargrove. Indians GM John Hart had been looking for an excuse to dump him for three years. Hargrove is one of the game's good guys, and his Indians played .595 ball over the last six years. But he has a reputation for not being a good handler of pitchers, especially the bullpen, and that's the Orioles' most glaring weakness. And yes, Hargrove managed Belle in Cleveland and he had hoped never to have to endure that again.

Responsibility for rebuilding the Orioles falls on new vice president for baseball operations Syd Thrift. (Angelos abolished the GM title last fall after booting Frank Wren.) Thrift, 71, wrote a book in 1990 called The Game According to Syd, and no more apt title exists in all literature. Thrift's a good baseball man, but he did not, contrary to the impression he likes to leave, invent the farm system, the double switch or the seventh-inning stretch.

Hargrove and Thrift must decide what to do at second base (DeShields or young, enthusiastic Jerry Hairston?), in centerfield (is Brady Anderson still an asset defensively?), with the bullpen (can Timlin close games that count?), about the rotation (add a lefthander to the all-righty rotation? re-sign ace Mike Mussina?) -- and with Ripken, who's 39 and coming off back surgery.

Hargrove initially said he'd consider playing Ripken four days a week, but Cal wants to play every day. Hargrove also might have to confront the fact that Ripken (and occasionally Anderson) stays in a separate hotel from the team on the road. But that's a minor issue compared to Hargrove figuring out how to keep Belle from sucking energy out of the clubhouse.

No team needs a fast start more than the Orioles. Last year, no team got off to a worse one. By their first road trip -- to Yankee Stadium -- they'd already stopped running out ground balls. Their season effectively ended on April 25, when their record dropped to 4-14 after Timlin spit out a lead in a brutal 11-10 loss to the A's. In the clubhouse afterward, Miller flipped, telling the press to go talk to the players: "They're the ones making all the money." Whatever players the manager hadn't already lost -- Miller was one of the reasons Alomar didn't re-sign with the O's -- were lost right then.

Not long after, Wren recommended to Angelos that Miller be fired. Angelos refused. He liked Miller. In retrospect, he wasn't doing his manager any favors.

Miller stayed on to watch the Orioles go through the motions in a loss to the Cuban National team at Camden Yards on May 3. Eleven days later in Texas, Miller gave the bunt sign to Anderson in an obvious non-bunt situation. Anderson's unsuccessful attempt was halfhearted. In the dugout, he glared at Miller. Another negative snapshot for the O's 1999 album.

The worst was yet to come. In late June-early July, the Orioles lost 10 in a row, including three straight in Toronto in which the relievers reinforced their claim on the worst three-month stretch by any bullpen since the save rule became official in 1969. On July 4, the unofficial halfway point of the season, the Orioles were done: 32-47, in last place, 17 and 1/2 games out.

Once again Wren recommended that Miller be fired. Once again Angelos refused. The GM, now no better than fifth on the depth chart of Angelos advisers, confided to a friend, "It doesn't matter what I think anymore." At least he had one consolation -- the two years remaining on his contract.

Some consolation. In September, shortly before a team charter was to take off for Oakland, Ripken, caught in traffic, phoned to say he was going to be a few minutes late. Wren ordered the plane to leave without him. Ripken took a later flight and didn't miss a workout. When Angelos learned of the incident, he was incensed at his GM. On Oct. 7, he finally acceded to Wren's wishes and fired Miller. A few hours later, he fired Wren.

The biggest short-term challenge Hargrove and Thrift face is how to reach Belle -- something only his twin brother, Terry, and his parents seem able to do. In the Orioles clubhouse, Belle's a loner who can go a month without talking to a teammate, then politely invite one to share a cab to the ballpark. Most of the time his demeanor delivers a crystal-clear message: Stay away.

Belle is a neatness-and-order freak who likes his routines just so. In batting practice, for instance, he doesn't like people staring at him when he's hitting. Before a spring training game last year, Belle decided one man was watching him too closely. So he left the cage and screamed at the poor guy, who was still trembling in the press box a few minutes later. That guy was former Big Red Machine shortstop Dave Concepcion.

Belle requires every pitch in batting practice to be thrown exactly where he wants it, and midway through the season he decided the Orioles BP pitchers weren't up to the task. So he met with Miller and Wren, who agreed to let him hit alone in an indoor cage the rest of the year.

Then there was the Cuba game in May. Several Orioles didn't want to play. They needed a day off. But at least they tried. Did Belle? Here's a guy whose greatest asset is that he never, ever gives away an at-bat. But in that game, he went 0-for-3, striking out in his last two plate appearances without taking the bat off his shoulder. So much for national pride.

And it was Belle who posted a petition in the clubhouse urging teammates to boycott the annual exhibition game against the O's Triple-A Rochester team. (Only Scott Erickson signed it before a club official tore it down.) But Belle eventually got his way: The Orioles won't play Rochester this season.

Miller tolerated Belle for the first two months of last season, then jumped him when he didn't run out a ground ball against the Marlins in June. It wasn't the first time Belle had loafed, but previously Miller had covered for him publicly. This time, the manager let him have it. Belle never looked at him. Benched for a day, he hit well the rest of the season.

On great teams, the best players are usually team leaders. But the Orioles have no leaders, and their best hitter -- one the game's most destructive sluggers -- is walking alone in the opposite direction. "There's no figuring Albert," says a teammate, "except to know that he's crazy. Once you get that, he's easier to deal with."

The Ripken "problem," on the other hand, exists largely in the minds of outsiders who think that somehow there must be one. Miller wanted Ripken to be a vocal leader, but that's not his nature -- never has been, never will be. He just plays the game hard and correctly every day. All managers should have such a problem. As to the separate hotel, a couple of dozen other major leaguers sometimes do the same thing, including Alex Rodriguez and Frank Thomas. "It's never been an issue," says Ripken. "It has no impact on the team. I've explained it a thousand times -- it's just a privacy issue."

Angelos runs the Orioles like a family restaurant. He says he's not as involved as people think, but he still slices the olives, greets the customers, questions the chef's preparation and constantly wonders if anyone is stealing behind his back. Itís his nature; he can't help himself. How many baseball owners get involved in media credentials and parking passes?

But Angelos isn't a baseball man. He's a lawyer who has represented thousands of victims of asbestos poisoning, in a practice sufficiently lucrative to allow him to buy the Orioles in 1993. He is amazingly thorough, so much so that he doesn't always act with the speed that baseball demands. If there's a free agent out there, you sign him now or he'll be gone. Angelos sleeps only four or five hours a night, but there doesn't seem to be time to respond to competing demands from his legal practice and his ballclub.

Growing up, Angelos didn't play baseball; he boxed. Perhaps that explains the fearlessness that shows in everything he does. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Baltimore with a black running mate in 1967, campaigning in places where whites weren't welcome. Angelos is 5'6", but he's quick to point to out that he wears a size-42 coat and weighs 180 pounds.

A philanthropist who quietly supports various Baltimore-area charities, Angelos can be quite charming -- but these days, he's often angry. When he bought the club, he gave many members of the local media his home phone number and urged them to call, which they did. But when the team faltered and people got fired or quit, the press bashed him, and he became very defensive about any criticism. And he's especially angry about the heat that his sons have taken about their roles in the organization.

John and Louis Angelos are bright guys. Both have law degrees. They're not malevolent. And they don't call the manager during a game to tell him what to do. John, who oversees daily operations, is a quick study, a highly inquisitive person who picks the brain of everyone from GM to trainer. But he and Louis grew up in baseball with a Rotisserie League mentality, looking only at stats in evaluating players. Judging baseball requires feel and instinct honed by experience and observation. Neither son has those credentials.

This year's Orioles are better than last season's team, which should have won 85 games. Hargrove is a bullheaded guy from the Texas panhandle who won't let the press drive him crazy the way Miller did -- and won't let Belle push him around. The starting pitching is decent. The farm system is in pretty good shape, better than it was when Angelos took over. Ripken's back feels fine; he hit .340 last year, so maybe he has another big year left. Belle should fit in better, not because he knows the Orioles, but because they know him. Belle's people say he's poised for a huge season.

Maybe it will all come together for the O's. And maybe Tony S. won't lose his family to that shtrutz Richie Aprile. But as these tragicomic sagas play out their respective seasons, you can make book that some innocent bystanders are gonna get hurt.