LOVERRO: Orioles’ tinkering with Camden Yards is like rewriting Poe, repainting Picasso

OPINION:

These are tough days for the press. There was a change of access for the media in the White House. Restrictions on reporters at the Pentagon.

But now things have gone too far — the Baltimore Orioles are moving the best press box in baseball.

In a press release last week, the team announced the press box will be replaced by a “premium club located behind home plate in the current press box footprint.”

As if Orioles fans really want a better view of this team.

“The immersive indoor-outdoor experience will feature the best views in Oriole Park and include VIP parking, a private entrance, and a rotating upscale menu and beverage program,” the release stated.

Just change the name of the ballpark now to “The Atrium at Camden Yards.”

At least they had the decency not to announce this move until the great Baltimore baseball writer Jim Henneman — who they named the press box after last year — died last month.

This wasn’t included in the announcement, but I’m hearing that a special feature of the premium club will be the option of retractable viewing screens that cover the windows that are connected to the YES Network, so you’ll get the full Yankee Stadium effect.

There was no comment in the release from Orioles owner David Rubenstein, who seems to like asking questions much more than answering them. Maybe they’ll give away copies of his book, “The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency.”

The Rubenstein Reading Room.

Camden Yards is one of the most historic and iconic places in all of baseball, separated only by years from the classic two — Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, the offspring of both historic cathedrals.

When people thoughtlessly claim steroids saved baseball, they are wrong. It was bricks and mortar that saved the game — 18 new ballparks in the 20 years after Camden Yards opened in 1992, many patterned after the style of the Baltimore ballpark.

“Camden Yards may be one of the two or three most powerful events in baseball history,” former Commissioner Bud Selig said. “It changed everything. It really did. I’m not sure people grasp the significance of it.”

The new regime that resembles the old regime more every day on the field certainly doesn’t grasp it. They both have chosen to tinker with greatness, to change the “footprint,” as the money-grubbing Orioles administration referred to the press box change.

Three years ago, they moved the right field fence farther out and built it up to further divide the fans from the field. Intimacy had been one of the features that made Camden Yards special from the generation of soulless multi-use stadiums that preceded it.

Last year, they moved the wall back closer to the original dimensions.

“The feedback consistently was that the extremity of the disparity in the park was a little bit more of a topic of conversation than we had bargained for,” general manager Mike Elias said, showing a lack of appreciation for the attraction of the ballpark. He may be learning it now.

Some of the 23,310 fans who are showing up these days — down by 5,000 per game from last year — are showing up for the ballpark. They certainly aren’t drawn there by the team.

The Orioles are far from the only team to downgrade the press box. The Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Angels have done so, but the White Sox play in the stadium that is the anti-Camden Yards — built a year before the Baltimore stadium, but the opposite in nearly every way, an abomination of a ballpark.

They’ve done this in football in a number of locations — moving the press from midfield to a corner of the stadium. The Ravens moved theirs from midfield to a corner — and higher – last year. But the game, unlike baseball, doesn’t center on a location like home plate and the impact of that view.

It’s not clear where the Orioles will move the new press box — I’m sure they would move it to Dundalk if they could get away with it. But a pending agreement with the Baseball Writers Association of America outlines that “clubs must provide a minimum of 15 press box seats in between the bases for all ballparks.” So it’s probably not going to be next to Boog’s BBQ.

But it will no longer be behind home plate on field level for the best view for those who chronicle the play, good and bad, for fans of this team. A place where the walls were dented from foul balls flying back and sportswriters ducked. A place where I made the sports pages of the Japanese newspapers when Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui – I had interviewed him before the game – smashed my computer with a foul ball.

The place where those with the vision to design this classic baseball palace decided the press should have a front row seat to record it. Those who have inherited the ballpark are blind to that vision.

Enjoy the Mozzarella sticks.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.