O's are done with slumming it.(Baseball)(Baltimore Orioles)

It wasn't all that long ago the Orioles were the virtual equals of the Yankees. The rivals, two of the biggest revenue producers and biggest spenders in the game, met in the 1996 ALCS, a series essentially decided by a 12-year-old boy's glove. Both made the playoffs again in 1997, the Orioles as wire-to-wire division champs.

But then their trajectories diverged sharply and quickly, the Yankees spending more and winning more (even if they eventually lost sight of which one was the ultimate goal), the aging Orioles sinking to fourth place in 1998 and remaining there ever since.

In the time since the Orioles last finished a season with a winning record, the Albert Belle era in Baltimore came and went. Cal Ripken's streak ended, then so did the Iron Man's playing days. Attendance at Camden Yards plummeted. The Ravens won a Super Bowl and disproved the notion that Baltimore was and always would be a baseball town. Former club vice president Syd Thrift's "Confederate money" went unclaimed by free agents.

The Orioles eventually lost the will to compete in baseball's richest division, ceding the role of the Yankees' chief foil to the Red Sox and fielding a series of young, cheap, marginally talented teams that avoided the division cellar only through the graciousness of the perpetually awful Devil Rays.

Now, all of a sudden, six years after their last taste of success, the Orioles are like Paris Hilton at the end of The Simple Life, sick and tired of slumming it with the common folk and ready to return to a high-rent lifestyle.

Full of wild ambition, newly acquired talent and cash freed up by the expiration of several ill-fated contracts, the Orioles are ready to compete again. The only question is whether that still is possible in this age of $200 million payrolls in the Bronx and reckless resolve in Beantown.

The reality of the American League East in 2004 is shortstop (Miguel Tejada), an All-Star catcher (Javy Lopez) and a solid setup reliever (Mike DeJean) but still have not gained ground on the Yankees or Red Sox--or, for that matter, on the fortified Blue Jays. Vladimir Guerrero, the Hall of Fame-caliber right fielder of whom the Orioles are in hot pursuit, could close the gap considerably, of course.