Good morning. Today is the eighth Opening Day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. But this spring ritual is much more than a stat.

Meet Josh Barmer, a 12-year-old from Aberdeen, who breaks in a new glove every season. Larry Schulmeister, a hospital chaplain, lives close enough to Camden Yards to hear the crack of the bat. A bell captain at Harbor Court Hotel, Joe Kennick can literally smell Opening Day. And there's Vince Poist at Pickles Pub, where today is a national holiday. Camden Yards is their livelihood, their love, their passion and their pastime.

As its ritual, The Sun will write an estimated 648 stories about 162 Orioles games this season. But after today, there won't be another word written about Josh Barmer, Larry Schulmeister, Joe Kennick or Vince Poist. So, this is their Opening Day:

He bought a new glove. That was the first sign. Every year, before a fresh baseball season, 12-year-old Josh Barmer gets to buy a new baseball glove.

He bought the new glove, a Ken Griffey Jr. model, two weeks ago.

Josh knew what to do with it, too. He rubbed shaving cream in the middle, to make it supple, then placed a baseball in the pocket and wrapped the entire glove tight with a rubber band. He put the glove under his mattress and slept on it every night. You don't want a stiff glove on Opening Day. "It feels good," he says. "It's ready."

Josh lives in Aberdeen, the town where Cal Ripken Jr. grew up. He attends sixth grade at the Aberdeen Middle School, the same school Ripken attended. He cheers for the Baltimore Orioles, Ripken's team. "I met him once," he says. "Got his autograph. We went back to that fence where the players park and I asked him for his autograph and he gave it to me."

Josh told him he lived in Aberdeen. "He said it was a good place to live."

Like everyone else in town, Josh was sad to hear that Cal Ripken Sr. died recently. Josh knows what it's like to lose somebody, too. Last fall, his great-grandfather died.

They used to listen to Orioles games on the radio. Josh can imitate the way his great-grandfather used to whoop and holler when the O's made a good play or scored a run. He'll miss that this season.

Josh likes baseball. Unlike other sports, "you don't have to get hit a lot." He plays all positions on his team, but mostly centerfield. Practice already has started.

When he thinks of baseball, "I always think of that smell of the grass when it's just been cut. You know? That's what the first game is like to me."

He's looking forward to the O's season. "I think it's going to be good with Albert Belle," he says. Josh will be in Oriole Park on Opening Day. His uncle has tickets and the people in charge of his school had the good sense to schedule spring break during the start of baseball season.

To Josh, Opening Day means the end of winter and -- it won't be long -- the end of another school year. The great thing is, anything's possible. The O's could win the World Series. (Hey, it's possible.) Josh could hit a home run in his first at-bat.

When he gets older, maybe Josh will wear a big-league uniform and have a museum in his name in Aberdeen. Who knows -- maybe they'll put a statue of him next to Cal's.

When you sleep on your glove, it catches your dreams. Right, Josh?

"You never know what's going to happen."

-- Ken Fuson

Nice neighbors

Baseball hits close to home for Larry Schulmeister. In the afternoon shadows of Camden Yards, Schulmeister's rowhouse is in the ballpark of 100 yards from where Cal Ripken plays third.

Schulmeister, chaplain at the University of Maryland Medical Center, makes his home in the neighborhood of Ridgely, which makes its home in the neighborhood of Camden Yards. Only Russell Street separates Schulmeister from Orioles baseball 81 times a season. Before each Opening Day, Schulmeister watches the landscaping trucks and crews ritualistically spruce up The Yard.

"It marks spring for me," he says.

Let the box score show that Schulmeister ("Yes, people tell me I look like Steven Spielberg, but I don't really") is not a card-carrying baseball fan. He doesn't own a stitch of Orioles merchandise. Maybe once a season, he travels that long 100 yards to watch a game, where he gets bored and leaves early.

Why leave home? He certainly hears the game fine from his family room. In fact, he watches the Orioles on TV but keeps the sound turned down.

"I can hear the crack of the bat," he says. "You have a sense of whether the O's are doing well that night or not. If I hear long stretches of silence, I know it's a pitching duel or a bad night for the Orioles."

Let the box score show that Schulmeister moved to Ridgley in 1983 -- the last time the O's won a World Series. He doesn't remember when they opened Camden Yards (1992). He did start noticing many, many people trying to park on his street, Warner Street. In his lifetime here, Schulmeister will never pay to park to see the Orioles. This must be a blessing of sorts.

Maybe more than hearing the game itself, Schulmeister likes watching the show outside the park. "I see all these families passing by," he say. "You see kids with their mitts and their moms and dads. It's a pleasure."

For him, there's no down side to living next door to Camden Yards. The stadium's outdoor speakers do travel well over Russell Street, but Schulmeister doesn't lose any sleep over the noise. "It's happy noise."

This man is like a saint. Well, he is a priest. So, does he think God is a baseball fan?

"God," Larry Schulmeister says, "likes people to have a good time."

-- Rob Hiaasen

Welcome signs

From his post outside Harbor Court Hotel in the Inner Harbor, bell captain Joe Kennick can smell Opening Day coming toward him -- literally.

"The air is full of food smells all summer long," he says, taking a break from his bell captain's job, which means he can remove his white gloves and gray suit jacket. "The winds blow it right to us."

Working at Harbor Court, and at the nearby Marriott Hotel before that, Kennick may see only four or five games a year, but he feels like an integral part of every homestand, playing host to the ballplayers and the fans drawn to Baltimore by Camden Yards.

Discretion requires that he tell us only so much, and all of it is positive. The Milwaukee Brewers like to shop, particularly at Dan Bros. in Federal Hill. Back at the Marriott, he once was part of a phalanx that needed 10 minutes to move Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter through all the fans from front door to the team bus. He has shoved many a famous player back into a taxi, trying to keep fans at bay.

He also sees plenty of the Orioles, as some live in the condominiums behind the hotel, and others pass through the hotel en route to the restaurant.

Roberto Alomar? "Very cordial, very nice man, who gave me an autographed ball that I cherish." Tony Tarasco was a class act, who always waved when Kennick saw him on the street. Cal Ripken Jr. is always "Mr. Ripken" to the hotel staff.

Baseball players are, in many ways, the ideal guests. "They're strict about their sleep and their diet and their lifestyles. They're all gentlemen," Kennick says. "I don't act like a fan, because then they seize up."

The fans, however, act like fans, and that's where problems arise. "There was a guy one time, he had a baseball bat," Kennick remembers. "Well, I don't care what you intend to do, it's a problem coming into a place with a baseball bat. That's why my job is a little bit security, a little bit bodyguard, peacemaker and bouncer."

A Pittsburgh Pirates fan growing up, an Orioles fan by marriage, Kennick doesn't hesitate when asked if he's ever had a star-struck moment.

That would have been back at the Marriot, when the old Negro League players were in town. He was thrilled to get an autograph from Josh Gibson Jr., son of Hall of Famer Josh Gibson.

"I haven't had a really bad encounter with a ballplayer yet," he says.

And if he had, he wouldn't tell us.

-- Laura Lippman

A toast to the O's

The crack of the bat is hours away, the crack of dawn at hand. Then, the crack of the door at Pickles Pub and the sound of a man, alone, pulling the tarp off his own field. Opening Day has various beginnings.

Vince Poist, who co-owns the bar across the street from Camden Yards, figures he'll be in by 6 a.m. Somebody has to get the pizza oven going, begin heating the soups, checking stock and equipment.

The bar will open at 8 a.m., two hours earlier than usual. The game starts at 3: 05 p.m.

"We'll be crowded by 10," says Poist. "Even if they don't have tickets, they just want to be part of the action."

It begins early and builds for hours, the crowd filling the bar and massing out on Washington Boulevard. Hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand by game time, one bartender says. Beers going as fast as human hands can pour. Business people, students, people taking the day off to linger in the buzz of anticipation.

Thirty-one pages have been torn off the Opening Day countdown calendar on the wall behind the bar; this is it. A "national holiday," is what it is, says bartender Mark Bachman. Baltimore's Mardi Gras, he says.

Poist will put in his 18 hours, beginning a season of workdays that will run 10, 12 hours. No complaints, it's just the territory.

"It's a one-of-a-kind business," says Poist. "You either do it or you don't."

They do it in a big way on Opening Day, the bar's busiest of all. Count the ways: 40 kegs of beer will probably be consumed. Add a few thousand cans and bottles. Add 10 staff members to make a crew of 25 for the baseball season, the better to cover this week's expansion of Pickles Pub into a new wing, a space that was once a garage next door.

Baseball arrived in the neighborhood in 1992, four years after Poist and his brother, Chris, bought the bar. Since then, they've learned what to expect, what to order and who to call when supplies run low.

And so the need to catch the day of days as it creaks open in the half dark, before the ballpark even casts a shadow. Poist will be up before dawn. He means to be ready.

"I don't like surprises," he says.

-- Arthur Hirsch

Pub Date: 4/05/99