Orioles notes, games against Cuban team and Davis' highway heroics

The Orioles are expected to announce their minor league coaching staffs this week, much later than in previous winters.

Most of the holdup was attributed to the hiring of Keith Bodie as hitting coach at Double-A Bowie. Bodie spent the past three seasons as manager at Double-A Corpus Christi in the Astros organization.

One more coach could be added at the lower level of the system. Otherwise, the Orioles finally are done.

Executive vice president Dan Duquette said he's still working on the possible signings of another reliever and utility infielder to minor league deals, which explains why the Orioles haven't released their camp roster.

It's got to happen soon, considering that pitchers and catchers report to spring training on Feb. 19.

The Orioles have the 25th and 36th picks in the First-Year Player Draft. Get ready.

The news yesterday that the Orioles have discussed playing another exhibition game in Cuba reminded me of the 1999 home-and-home series, one of the most bizarre in baseball history. If it's not at the top, it's pretty darn close.

No major league team had gone to Cuba in 40 years, and there were a few awkward moments prior to the Orioles' game in March 1999, including manager Ray Miller's handshake with Fidel Castro. Miller was less than enthused by it. In fact, it seemed as though he'd rather bite the head off a live rattlesnake. But he did his best to hide it.

I was covering the Orioles for The Sun, but I didn't make the trip. Two of the reporters on the beat went to Cuba ahead of the team - those cigars weren't going to get back to Fort Lauderdale on their own - and I stayed in south Florida to cover a game against the Mets in Port St. Lucie. I felt so alone in the press box.

On the day of the Cuba game, my editors assigned me to do a color piece in Little Havana. Unfortunately, there wasn't much color. No one in the establishment that I visited paid any attention to the game. It was being shown on televisions mounted behind a counter, but they may as well have tuned into PBS.

I did enjoy an amazing lunch at a Cuban restaurant. The owner took great pleasure in introducing me to the sampler platter. I took great pleasure in demolishing it as though it were my last meal.

My memories of the Camden Yards game are mostly confined to the Orioles' lackluster effort caused by their annoyance at being subjected to an in-season exhibition - the bat barely left Albert Belle's shoulder and he was booed after failing to run out a ground ball - the three anti-Castro protesters who sprinted onto the field, Cuban-born second base umpire Cesar Valdez delivering a vicious tackle to one protester in shallow center field, and an atmosphere that made me feel as though I had returned to Little Havana.

This was a home game?

I totally forgot that first baseman Calvin Pickering, just up from Triple-A Rochester, committed three errors until I researched it. Or that Delino DeShields hit a three-run homer in the ninth to make the score a little more respectable. Or that Scott Kamieniecki started the game.

(Props to me for remembering how to spell Kamieniecki without looking it up.)

The Orioles' roster for that game included Doug Linton, Gabe Molina, Mike Fetters and Ricky Bones. Mike Mussina, Scott Erickson, Sidney Ponson and Juan Guzman were declared ineligible.

First baseman Chris Davis phoned into last night's "Hot Stove Show" on 105.7 The Fan, and I asked him about being the first on the scene of an accident on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in September. Davis was headed to the airport to pick up a relative when a vehicle in front of him flipped onto its roof after the rear tire blew out.

I didn't get the chance to broach the subject with Davis at FanFest.

"I thought you guys had forgotten about it," he said.

I mentioned how Davis assisted in rolling over the SUV, and he replied, "Let's get the facts straight. It was a truck, so ..."

Good one.

"It was obviously right after the suspension, so I wasn't playing at the time and wasn't going to the field, so my cousin actually flew into Baltimore to help me pack some stuff up and I was going to drive home in the next couple days and kind of get some things squared away," Davis said.

"It was just at a point where I was just really down. The guys had clinched the division and obviously I wasn't a part of that celebration. Everything had kind of really sank in and I was just really down. And I happened to be going to the airport on 295 and there was a Ford F-150 long bed, kind of a work truck in front of me, and the back driver side tire blew out and the guy swerves over and hits the wall, and he flips over and comes to a rest in the middle of the road. And I was right behind him, so I pull over on the side and got out and just ran over to the truck.

"It was turned upside down still running and there was gas coming from it and I was thinking, I don't know what the heck is going to happen. I didn't know if it was going to blow up or what. I didn't do anything that I wouldn't expect anybody else to do for me. There are a lot of stories going around, what all happened and who all was there, but the fact of the matter is I just tried to help those guys out and do what I could.

"Unfortunately, I was not able to flip the truck over by myself. It did take about six other people. But the real heroes are the people that got there, the paramedics, off-duty police officers, firemen. It was actually pretty incredible to see how quickly everybody got there and may have saved those guys' lives."