For a dress rehearsal, it was a pretty good show: the traffic flowed easier than expected, the crowd was less rowdy than feared and the Ravens even won.

A total of 65,938 fans christened the new stadium at Camden Yards in what the team billed as a pre-opener opener. The real thing will take place Sept. 6, when the Steelers come to town for the first regular season game.

But last night's game was the first glimpse of the much-anticipated stadium under game-like conditions. Other than overcrowding problems with light rail, there were few complaints. Some felt the food lacked pizazz and others found the crowd too quiet and the music too loud. But most seemed glad to finally be watching football in the $220 million, brick-and-glass downtown stadium. The Ravens beat the Chicago Bears 19-14, to boot.

"This is just a great atmosphere to party," said Mike Stidham, 30, of Timonium.

Stidham, wearing an autographed Peter Boulware jersey, began the game at a "tailgater" in the parking lot, next to a red Jeep flying a Ravens flag. "We're all just having so much fun now that football is back in Baltimore," Stidham said.

The building itself performed with barely a glitch, said Maryland Stadium Authority project manager Alice Hoffman, who spent an anxious night listening to radio chatter and watching for trouble.

As of the start of the fourth quarter, the biggest problems had been a set of lights that failed to illuminate outside the southeast corner and a smoky grill in a kitchen that attracted the attention of on-site fire personnel.

"We are doing great," Hoffman said.

Even the much feared traffic jams failed to materialize as fans overwhelmed light rail instead.

"I think the fans listened. They took mass transit. They car-pooled. And they parked north of Pratt Street," said David Wallace, chairman of the stadium transportation task force and a partner with the Baltimore engineering firm of Rummel, Klepper & Kahl.

Baltimore police Sgt. Michael P. Dunn, a 25-year-veteran with plenty of experience at Memorial Stadium's famously raucous Colts games, said the Camden crowd was much calmer. He attributed it, in part, to the cost of attending the game.

"People have paid a lot of money to come here," Dunn said.

One fan, Steve Shoup of Dundalk, said he hoped the fans' intensity would pick up as the regular season begins. "When the fans get into it it's going to be great. I don't think a lot of people understood what football is -- it's been a long time," Shoup said.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening, clearly hoping that the stadium's reception will blunt lingering resentment over its public funding, as was the case with Oriole Park in 1992, said he was excited.

"This was a historical moment," Glendening said.

Watching the game from the sideline, Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas pronounced the new digs "gorgeous."

"Everything is first class," Unitas said.

"They've come a long way from oil-soaked fields," he said, referring to his early semipro days on grassless fields in Pittsburgh.

'I love it up here'

From his seat, Lutherville resident Neil Mengel squinted as he looked down onto the field. The Ravens looked small and unidentifiable without the binoculars he had brought.

His family's seats are 26 rows up in the upper deck of the end zone and his was the last one in the southeast corner. Yet to Mengel, the seats were marvelous.

"I love it up here," said Mengel, 39, who sat in the lower level last year at Memorial Stadium. "I actually like it better up here because you get a great view of the entire field. For the price you pay for these seats, you can't beat it."

Mengel's tickets are among the cheapest in the stadium -- $250 for a permanent seat license and $20 per game ticket.

Not only does Mengel, a real estate appraiser, get an unobstructed view of the field, but he likes the view of downtown.

"Everywhere you look it's a nice view. Initially we had plans to maybe purchase up and get some lower section seats later on, but now that I've seen them, I think I want to stay here," Mengel said.

Sound from nearby speakers was crystal clear. Scoreboards were easy to read and pictures easy to follow, even from the opposite side of the stadium.

The main complaint from fans in the upper deck involved 5-foot railings at the top of the staircases that obstructed the view of several fans in the first five rows.

"They need to just dump these railings," said Jerry Martin, 53 of Baltimore. "All they need to do is cut it off a couple of inches."

Slow-moving lines

Eaters and drinkers were amazingly tolerant. The lines at concession stands were slow moving, but the fans standing in them didn't seem to mind.

Robert Yospa, 40, of Owings Mills and Dave Singer, 39, of Reisterstown stared at two burgers and two sodas, which cost them close to $20. Yospa had sent back his burger because it was too rare. When he got it back, it was extremely well done. None the less, he seemed pleased.

"I would like to see quality, but," he shrugged.

His buddy Singer ended his thought for him.

"Bad food, high prices, they're all part of the aura of football," he said.

The crab cakes, which earlier this week had been judged too spicy, met with Matt Weber's approval. Weber, a 30-year-old resident of Pasadena, sprinkled Old Bay on his crab cake and added a squirt of mustard.

"I add spice to my crab cakes," he said, before tasting his crab cake, which generally was judged mild with a crab presence on a lot of bun.

As for the $6.50 price, Weber said, "That's the price of football. You want a team, you've got to ante up."

The Smearmans of Dundalk lined up at the "Beers of the World" stand in a good mood. They had a strategy. "When you get in a beer line, you always buy two," said John Smearman, 40. "That way, you don't have to stand in line again."

His brother, Henry Smearman Jr., and nephew Henry Smearman III nodded in agreement. The Smearmans said that while the price of the brews -- $4.50 for a 12-ounce cup -- was high, the service was faster than at Memorial Stadium and that is what matters at football games.

The food service system was personal, if not coolly efficient. One person did everything, so you always knew where your order stood.

Two arrests, two ejections

The police blotter at the new Ravens stadium read like a small town last night: two arrests, two ejections and a few spilled beers.

A complement of 148 police and other security officials reported scant problems among the thousands of fans that came to the city's new ballpark.

"We have a good crowd and a good night, and we're winning," Jim Slusser, the director of security for the Maryland Stadium Authority, said at halftime. "What more could you want."

The sparkling new jail cells in the basement were empty until minutes before the start of the third quarter, when a man jumped onto the field to get to another section. He was promptly arrested. Another man was also arrested for jumping onto the field.

"We got him in the condo right now," said Sergeant Dunn. "But it's preseason. It doesn't count."

Even though people tend to drink more beer at football games than at baseball games, especially with tailgating, the fans' subdued behavior surprised some of the officers working the game.

Dunn recalls ejecting 100 rowdy New York police officers from an Orioles game last year. "By the eighth inning, I had tossed them all out," he said. Last night, he walked around the Ravens bowl and didn't encounter any problems in the first half.

One tense moment came at halftime when someone reported being doused with beer in Section 144. Lt. Ed Glacken, monitoring the crowd from the command post, quickly zoomed into the area with a surveillance camera and began taping.

It turned out that a fan had accidentally knocked a cup of beer off a railing and onto people sitting below. What could have turned into a fight was explained away by officers who went to the scene. "Nobody is going to dump a $5 beer on purpose," Glacken said.

'A place you can hang out'

The well-heeled and well-connected viewed the game from sky boxes and club-level seats, enjoying varying degrees of comfort and luxury.

Dave Geller, a 30-year-old concert promoter from Towson, dined on fresh tomatoes and homemade mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette. He proclaimed the luxury box at the Ravens stadium to be better than the ones he'd seen at Denver's Coors Field, Cleveland's Jacobs Field -- and at Oriole Park.

"Instead of a hotel feeling, it's a den, like something you might do in your own house," he said in the air-conditioned quiet of the suite as the Ravens marched toward a score. "They made it more of a place you can hang out."

Geller was in Suite 349, on the 10-yard line. To get there, you pass suites rented to Baltimore mover and shakers such as Legg Mason and the Greater Baltimore Committee. Then you find a suite with the brass plate "Executive Sports Club."

The club is the creation of Richard M. Sammis, aka "Mr. Nobody," president of the Town & Country car dealership in Perry Hall. Sammis formed a consortium of business executives to buy a luxury box with a $91,800 annual price tag.

Divided 30 ways, the price works out to about $300 a seat -- about the same as some club level seats, but without the PSL fee. "You can't beat that deal," Sammis said.

But he said he oversold the shares -- and lost his seat in the box. But with nearly three decades of connections to pro football in Baltimore, he roamed the sidelines last night with a Ravens bench pass.

Sammis said those holding shares include auto dealers, television and advertising executives, a restaurateur and Ravens coach Ted Marchibroda.

"The only thing that concerns me a little bit was the cost of the food," he said. In his skybox was a spread that included chicken fingers, Swedish meatballs, the fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, plenty of beer and two bottles of Beaujolais -- with a tab of $1,400.

"It will be like a tailgate party every week, but in air conditioning," said Tom Thompson, president of Thompson Automotive. In the tradition of modern sports, it's also a place for business executives to "network."

Dale Christensen, president of a Westminster marketing company, said, "You meet people who can help you out in business. If you need a car, you go to Mr. Nobody."

The skyboxes are bigger than the ones at Camden Yards -- and in fact are some of the biggest in sports. They open to rows of seats equipped with counters to hold food.

Windows muffle the crowd noise in the skyboxes. The Executive Sports Club's box is sparsely decorated. "It's a little sterile," said Barbara Flower, a district manager from Parkton.

On the club level, waiters and waitresses armed with hand-held computers took orders for $7 sandwiches. Jason Molesworth, a 16-year-old from Hampstead using his father's ticket, was happy with the service. He said his $4 soft pretzel arrived within 10 minutes.

Some fans on the club level fled their seats for the comfort of the club lounge.

Randy Jones, a 43-year-old plumber from Annapolis, was watching the game on television. Jones, who said he is a season ticket holder at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, said, "There's no comparison. This is 10 times better."

Three governors

The picture took 20 years to make.

Glendening stood arm-in-arm above the 50-yard-line with former Govs. William Donald Schaefer and Harry R. Hughes. The men wore grins showing their satisfaction over finally being able deliver a new team and stadium to Baltimore.

The opening of Ravens Stadium particularly satisfied Glendening, who has taken much political heat during his re-election bid this year.

Opponents contend that the $220 million in tax money spent on the facility could be better used by the state's troubled schools.

But gazing around at the 69,000 fans in head-to-toe purple packed into the glimmering new stadium, Glendening had no regrets.

"I talked to some of the band members, who were part of the old Colts band, and they actually had tears in their eyes as they marched out," Glendening said.

Hughes is credited with forming the Maryland Stadium Authority and pushing the legislation that allowed the stadium to be built.

For Schaefer, the stadium opening was vindication. Schaefer was Baltimore's mayor on the snowy night in March 1984 when he heard over the radio that the Mayflower vans at Memorial Stadium -- filled with Baltimore Colts equipment -- were secretly xTC pulling out of town.

Schaefer then vowed to bring another NFL team to Baltimore and delivered, putting the financial package together that wooed the Browns from Cleveland. Schaefer recalls fighting to keep the stadium legislation alive when hopes dimmed.

"We did it because we believed that some day we would have a team," Schaefer said, crediting state Democratic legislative leaders. "It's an amazing thing because we actually believed, even though it was hard sometimes."

One top elected official missing from the game was Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke. Schmoke is out of town attending a political convention in Colorado, a spokesman said. Schmoke is also backing Glendening's Democratic primary opponent, Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann.

Despite a chance to pick up thousands of votes at the stadium, neither Rehrmann nor Republican candidate Ellen R. Sauerbrey attended the game.

"I was standing out front with tens of thousands of fans pouring in," Glendening said. "There were a lot of people coming through that were old-timers with the Colts and you could see the excitement and the almost vindication saying, 'They're back.' It's their team."

Pub Date: 8/09/98