Back Seat

A 29-year-old Anne Arundel County man died yesterday morning after the car he was driving sideswiped a van that he was attempting to pass on Route 100 in Glen Burnie and struck a tree, state police said. The victim was not wearing a seat belt, but his 6-year-old son - wearing the restraint in the back seat - survived with minor injuries, police said. William Broseker of Shady Side in southern Anne Arundel was driving a 1998 Chevrolet Camaro east on Route 100 near Oakwood Road at a high speed about 10:35 a.m. when he lost control of the car, said Tfc. Sean Byrne of the Glen Burnie barracks.

CHICAGO - Could the television ratings wars be experiencing a changing of the guard? It would appear so. The two League Championship Series games were played at the same time last night, and Game 2 between the Chicago Cubs and Florida Marlins was broadcast to more homes than the game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox - two of the teams with the greatest national fan support. The networks clearly are infatuated with the Cubs, based on their repeated presence in prime time this postseason.

For an offensive lineman, football "is a war between you and the guy across from you," said Broadneck center Ben Gabbard. "Every play is a battle." Gabbard should know. "I've pretty much broken all of my fingers at least once, sprained my ankles a lot, got a concussion in 10th grade," said Gabbard. "You get real bad cuts on your hands, legs get scuffed up, ankles get beat up from people falling on them. You're going to take a lot of punishment, but you also get to deal it out to other people."

A 21-year-old woman died yesterday when her car collided head-on with a minivan in Middle River, but her infant daughter in the back seat was not injured, Baltimore County police reported. Janelle Marie Parks of the first block of Basilan Court in White Marsh was driving a 1997 Honda Accord on Ebenezer Road near Earls Road about 8:20 a.m. when the car drifted onto the shoulder, police said. Trying to get back in her lane, she went too far, crossing into the oncoming lane and colliding with a Dodge minivan, police said.

Investigators are speculating that there may have been multiple passengers in the Chrysler LeBaron that apparently went airborne before it landed in Lake Ashburton two months ago. Baltimore police say an examination of the body of the youth found in the back seat, Demetrius Alexander Georgy, 15, of Baltimore, suggests he was not the driver. "There was severe damage to the steering wheel and the steering column, which would indicate that the driver hit it pretty hard," said Officer Robert Leepa of the accident unit.

WASHINGTON - The Georgetown University gym was almost empty. Most of the media had gone or moved on to Hoyas men's basketball coach Craig Esherick, and former player Brendan Gaughan picked up a basketball, bounced it through his legs and then lofted a jump shot. The ball bounced on the rim and threatened to fall away before finally tumbling through the hoop. Gaughan took a quick look around and grinned. Basketball isn't what he does anymore. In fact, when the former Hoya played for coach John Thompson and then-assistant Esherick (1995-1997)

When terror rained down on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, a horse sale was under way in Kentucky. A Maryland-bred yearling colt from the first crop of Partner's Hero, a young Maryland sire, was one of the offerings. JoAnn and David Hayden, owners of Dark Hollow Farm in Upperco, and Bill Beatson, an Annapolis real-estate developer, made the mistake, which they freely admit, of trying to sell in Kentucky a Maryland-bred yearling by a first-year, non-Kentucky sire. There was "zero interest" in the colt, David Hayden said.

WASHINGTON - The lives of up to 2,000 children could be saved each year if parents buckled them up in the back seats of their cars instead of allowing them to ride in the front, road-safety experts said yesterday. The unnecessary fatalities persist despite a 10.7 percent decline in child fatalities from car crashes in the past six years and a 94 percent drop in child deaths related to air bags, said Chuck Hurley, executive director of the Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign, a unit of the National Safety Council.

More than a dozen years ago, John Thompson walked off the court before a Georgetown University basketball game in protest of NCAA guidelines that he viewed as biased against high school athletes who came from academically deprived backgrounds. The protest lasted two games, but Thompson's harangue against the use of standardized college entrance exams as a barometer for predicting the potential academic performance of those athletes continues even after his retirement from coaching in 1999.