Ramírez's 500th Keeps O's Below .500

Baltimore Begins to Resemble Troubled Team of Last Year: Red Sox 6, Orioles 3

BALTIMORE, May 31 -- Arithmetic and history, for two nights, injected extra significance into each stroll Manny Ramírez made from the visitor's dugout at Camden Yards to the right-handed batter's box. He had walloped 499 home runs in his career, and one more would further validate his place among the game's all-time great sluggers, would place him among a constellation with only 23 others.

The final outcome Saturday night -- a 6-3 victory by a World Series favorite over a Baltimore Orioles club playing more and more like the also-ran so many predicted it would be -- soon will be forgotten. What Ramírez did in the seventh inning, in his fourth plate appearance of the evening and the 7,263rd at-bat of his career, will resonate in baseball's hallowed record books.

Ramírez, long dreadlocks flowing out the back of his batting helmet, clobbered the first pitch Chad Bradford submarined toward him over the right-center field fence. There was no doubt about No. 500 from the moment it exploded off Ramírez's bat. The eager and fortunate 48,281 fans rose immediately, and Ramírez stood and admired his work. A neat symmetry had been created: No. 24 became No. 24 into the 500-homer club.

"As soon as I hit it, I knew it was gone," Ramírez said. "It finally came, and I'm happy. I'm proud of myself, of all the things I've accomplished. Now I can go and have fun. I'm happy, you know, about everything I accomplished in life. Not everybody has the chance to go and get to 500."

Photo flashes flickered like so many fireflies during each pitch Ramírez saw this weekend. Umpires attendant Ernie Tyler switched specially marked baseballs before each Ramírez at-bat, which irked one manager. ("The pace of the game, I guess, doesn't mean anything when it comes to this," Dave Trembley said Friday.) Those snapping cameras, for two days, had captured fierce swings-and-misses or rockets falling just short. The wait -- all the fans at the team hotel asking, "Hey, when you gonna hit it?" -- began to weigh on Ramírez.

Camden Yards buzzed again when Ramírez strode toward the plate in the top of the seventh, Bradford having just been summoned from the Orioles' bullpen. Once Bradford released his first pitch, history unfolded in classic Ramírez style -- mastery, panache and joy stirred together.

The homer traveled with the trajectory of a laser to the opposite field, a piece of batting artistry few aside from Ramírez can match. "A filthy swing," former teammate Kevin Millar said. Ramírez stared at the ball from the batter's box for more than a few moments after he twirled his bat, then ambled several slo-o-ow paces toward first base. As he rounded first, he exchanged a double high-five with first base coach Luis Alicea.

His teammates emerged on the dugout steps as Ramírez trotted home and leapt on the plate. He found David Ortiz -- the man lore will link him with more than any other -- and embraced him. Julio Lugo joined them, and the three players hopped up and down. Ramírez received a curtain call from the Camden Yards crowd, chocked with far more Boston supporters than Orioles fans. Later, Ramírez posed for a picture with the kids who caught the ball.

"That's why they call it Red Sox Nation," Ramírez said. "They follow us everywhere."

Ramírez has developed his own following as his career arcs. His antics -- the Manny Being Manny act -- bothered observers, both in and out of baseball, for years. But what once was seen as boastfulness now is viewed as charm.

"He's got a uniqueness about him that makes him easy to like," Millar said. "He looks like a Brazilian rainforest guy. You take away the hair and the baggy uniform, he's just a guy that can hit."

While the Red Sox celebrated yet another milestone in their remarkable five-season stretch, the Orioles surveyed the fallout of another loss. The Orioles can -- and do -- feel better about themselves now than one year ago. The standings, though, in their detached black and white, offer only ambivalence: Through 54 games last year, they stood at 27-27. After Saturday night, the new-and-improved Orioles dropped their record to 26-28.

After the Orioles reached 27-27 last season, they lost 14 of their next 16 games; the final game of that stretch was Trembley's first as Orioles manager. That slump offers a grim lesson, one the Orioles can only hope they will not duplicate as their schedule portends a difficult test. Two more games with Boston await, followed by a nine-game road trip that concludes with three games at Fenway Park.

It is only May, but the Orioles seem headed for another forgotten season. At least, for one night, it included a brush with history.