A League

Paul Kitson, whom Blast fans may recall not only for his scoring prowess over three seasons in the 1980s, but also for the snake he sometimes draped around his neck, returns to Baltimore today as the Maryland Mania's new coach.Kitson succeeds Darryl Gee, who was fired Monday by the new, Columbia-based A-League team. Kitson will meet Mania players at practice this evening and be on the sidelines for the team's home-opener at 4 p.m. Sunday at UMBC Stadium against the Charleston (S.C.) Battery.

The Carolina Dynamo will stay in High Point, N.C., but the Baltimore area will be home to a new A-League pro soccer team next spring, operating in conjunction with the indoor Baltimore Spirit of the National Professional Soccer League."

Darryl Gee, the first Columbia-produced player to be successful in pro soccer, was fired yesterday as coach of the Maryland Mania, four days after the new A-League team lost its first game.A. J. Ali, the Columbia-based Mania president, described Gee's departure as "amicable probably best for both sides." The cause, he said, "boiled down to administrative differences."Ali declined to elaborate, other than to acknowledge the dismissal was for a combination of factors on and off the field, among them lack of preparation of the team to play at the A-League level in preseason scrimmages.

Vagabond D.C. United returns to RFK Stadium at 7: 30 tonight (HTS) for only the second time in July, facing Major League Soccer Eastern Conference rival Columbus.United has lost two straight on the road -- one of league's worst refereeing messes in Los Angeles when it finished with nine players, and to Kansas City last Saturday.Coach Bruce Arena predicted a midsummer slump once United's Latin American "Magic Triangle" attack returned from Copa America and World Cup qualifying. Coming back after six games that the trio missed would require an adjustment period, Arena said.

WASHINGTON - A group led by Baltimore-Washington soccer stalwart Lincoln Phillips has been granted a franchise in the under-23 Premier Development League, American soccer's equivalent of Single-A baseball. Chesapeake United, with a roster of unpaid, college-age players, will compete out of Landover in Prince George's County in the 46-team PDL's Northeast Division. Opponents are to include two New York City teams, two in New Jersey, and others in Westchester County, N.Y., and Vermont, and on Cape Cod, Mass.

Cinderella's alive and kicking.The new order of American professional soccer is helping breathe fresh life into this country's oldest continuous soccer competition, the U.S. Open Cup.With clear definition among four levels of play -- three professional and the other amateur -- for the first time, upsets in this knockout tournament are easier to fathom, if not explain away.And upsets there have been in quest of a refurbished Dewar Cup, until recently a misplaced, tarnished silver trophy that in every way symbolizes this 84-year-old tournament.

After six rocky years, which included a multi-million-dollar signing bonus, several position changes and a drug suspension, the Orioles will be cutting ties with former first-round pick Billy Rowell. Rowell, the ninth overall selection in the 2006 draft, can become a minor league free agent as soon as the World Series ends, and the Orioles will not make him an offer to return, according to an industry source. It will put the final exclamation point on what is arguably the biggest draft bust in franchise history.

Brian Roberts, who played in just 115 games the previous three seasons because of various injuries, was placed on the 15-day disabled list Friday, three games into 2013, with what the Orioles are calling a strained right hamstring. The second baseman is expected to miss three to four weeks - an encouraging development considering the 35-year-old Roberts had to be carried off the field in the ninth inning Thursday when he grabbed his leg after stealing second base at Tropicana Field.

The Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team's move to the Big Ten as the conference's first affiliate member in any sport was assisted by the program's biggest rival. Maryland, which has battled the Blue Jays 110 times, proposed to the Big Ten that the conference reach out to Johns Hopkins shortly after the Terps and Rutgers announced that they were joining the league after leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East, respectively. “The people at Maryland were the ones that suggested this to us, and immediately, the light went off because of the academic standing of Johns Hopkins and because of the standing of their lacrosse program and the location of the university and the fact that we're going to be in this region for decades,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said at a Monday morning news conference at the Blue Jays' Cordish Lacrosse Center.

The power? That blunt-force ability to lay wood to a baseball and propel it 400, 420, 450 feet? He had it even when he was a boy. Came from God, as far as he's concerned. Harnessing it? Well, that's the work of Chris Davis' life. There's a paradoxical quality to the Orioles' first baseman, who has emerged this season as one of baseball's most fearsome sluggers, a likely All-Star starter who leads the majors with 22 home runs. Growing up in East Texas, Davis was like a puppy with big paws, bowling over everything.