BAD

Quote: "I pitched sort of like the weather today. Cloudy, overcast, not too good, not too bad." -- Cardinals starter Kent Merker, who gave up five runs on six hits and struck out six in 5 2/3 inningsIt's a fact: The Astros and Marlins played nine innings yesterday in 2: 12 after taking 5: 44 to play 16 Friday night.Who's hot: The Mets bullpen has pitched 24 straight scoreless innings.Who's not: The Marlins' Dennis Springer is winless in six starts since July 21.On deck: Second baseman Quilvio Veras, eligible to come off the DL today, likely won't play until the Padres visit Philadelphia tomorrow.

NEW YORK -- This is the World Series From Hell for the Orioles.First pitch of Game 1 last night at Yankee Stadium? Thrown by former Oriole David Wells.First extra-base hit of the Series? A double by former Oriole Steve Finley, now starting in center field for the San Diego Padres.Possible Series-ending headlines? Either "Former Oriole President Larry Lucchino Builds Series Champion in San Diego," or "Yankees Rule!"Call it a nightmare, a worst-case scenario and a really bad case of indigestion all rolled into one for the Orioles.

Boys will be boys.Did you ever really think about that statement? What does it mean? Sure, boys will be boys, but does that mean that there's a certain WAY boys are supposed to act?Lately, a lot of people have been saying that although the women's movement has addressed the special problems girls have, boys have plenty of problems that should be talked about, too.These "boys' movement" advocates say there are a lot of signs that a growing number of boys are emotionally hurting, for a lot of reasons:Many boys think they should "act like a man" instead of showing their feelings.

PITTSBURGH -- If you didn't pop a tape into the VCR and record the Ravens' 37-0 loss to the Steelers last night, well, you blew it.You missed a chance to preserve the sight of the Ravens giving a performance for the ages, one that will never be topped.Or bottomed, if you will.A pro football team simply can't play any worse than the Ravens did last night.Remember Leonard Pinth Garnell, the "Saturday Night Live" devotee of really bad cinema and really bad theater?This one was for him.A classic, four-star performance of really bad football.

I hadn't been on a basketball court in a while, at least not with anyone old enough to shave. My knees barked to remind me the absence had been at least a few years, but it seemed even longer than that after one of the 30-something crowd with whom I was playing dribbled the ball off his foot and out of bounds."

LOU DEPAZZO'S quietness has been very loud lately, which, if you haven't actually seen him, might make you wonder if the 63-year-old Democratic councilman from Dundalk is all right.Lou DePazzo -- he of the hair-trigger temper, the ill-advised quote, the crude aside and the firebrand speech -- hasn't said or done anything controversial in months.Last spring the Lou we thought we knew showed up at that big community meeting about the ACLU's lawsuit on behalf of Baltimore public-housing families, but even there he was pretty restrained, offering no repeat of his embarrassing 1994 performance at meetings on the Moving to Opportunity program.

As soon as the two large cranes finished lifting Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich out of their seats in Claremont, N.H., last weekend, Good Roger and Bad Roger took the stage.Good Roger, the upright and decent side of me, had decided to try to find polite, common ground with Bad Roger, the evil and twisted side of me.Though C-SPAN broke away to cover a meeting of the New Zealand/Papua New Guinea Fisheries Commission, a transcript of the historic meeting follows:Good Roger: First, I'd like to say what a pleasure it is to be here in the Granite State.

Good Roger sat at his desk writing a letter to Parris Glendening telling him not to feel bad about the new poll figures but to keep acting upon his own conscience.Good Roger is like that. A total dork.Bad Roger, meanwhile, was practicing his new walk. He would lurch a few steps forward, slide a few steps to the left, then lurch forward again."If you are practicing walking to the loony bin," Good Roger said, "don't worry: I'll drive you.""I am practicing my Kato walk," Bad Roger said. "Have you seen him walk into the courtroom?

On the surface, it seems as if the stewards at Laurel Park received an unmistakably harsh message from their employer -- the Maryland Racing Commission -- last week:Wake up, and stop making bad calls.No one spoke those words publicly, but it seemed the board gave a pretty strong indication of how it felt about some of the stewards' recent decisions when it overturned three of their judgement calls.But that's not so, said Allan Levey, a member of the commission, who added that the other board members also felt that what happened was "an anomaly.

It's not that "Waterworld" is bad, actually. But you sit there in the theater more curious than engaged, until the movie finally seems an afterthought rather than an event in itself, an anticlimax to the far more interesting drama of its own making. "That's it?" you think when it's over; "that's all there is?"That's all there is.The most expensive picture in history and one of the most storied -- the budget went ballistic, the set sunk, the director quit in the editing process, there never was a final script, the star completed the editing and then publicly bad-mouthed the director he had originally insisted upon, who had once been his best friend -- is finally upon us. And what do you get?

It's never too early to smother a really, really bad transportation project. These things take on a life of their own if they're allowed to progress too far, and before you know it you're being tossed out of your home so that folks who freely chose to live in outer suburbia can race home in congestion-free comfort to down their dinner a little earlier in the evening. That's apparently the plan for 251 families who live along the Interstate 270 corridor in Montgomery and Frederick counties.

It took a couple of years and he waited until he was safely on the opposite side of the country, but Erik Bedard -- that talented and tight-lipped left-hander -- finally said something interesting. Bedard's stoicism and peaceful demeanor always seemed to hint at an unappreciated intellect, so that's why it's worth noting that the first time he opened his mouth as a member of the Seattle Mariners, he was wrong. "With Baltimore, it seems like you were backwards," Bedard told Seattle reporters Friday.

What is the key to dealing with a pitcher who is in a horrific slump? The first thing you let them know is that they have your support. Then, you go to work on location or what their strengths are. You work at it down in the 'pen and always tell them, `When you are really good, it's not as good as you think you are and when you are really bad, it's not as bad as you think you are.' You try to do everything mentally and physically to get the guy squared...

Bad reactions to prescription drugs send 700,000 Americans to emergency rooms each year, according to a federal study providing the most detailed look yet at the problem. The report, appearing today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, said drug allergies were the most common bad reaction sending patients to emergency rooms, followed by unintended overdoses. The study excluded suicide attempts. People over 65 were more than twice as likely to have severe drug reactions as younger people.

Good morning --Seattle SuperSonics -- If you move to Oklahoma City, please change the name. Having the Utah Jazz is bad enough.

Bad news is hitting all sorts of workplaces lately, forcing employers and workers to deal with the lingering consequences. Pharmaceutical giant Merck announced this week that it would cut 7,000 jobs during the next three years and close five manufacturing plants. General Motors, struggling to turn around its ailing business, plans to close nine plants and cut 30,000 jobs over the next three years. Meanwhile, several airlines are operating in bankruptcy, while jobs and pensions have been cut. Everything from layoffs to disappointing earnings to company restructuring can disrupt routines and create anxiety and uncertainty among managers and employees.

IT SEEMS LIKE it took forever to get here - especially if you've followed the Orioles - but baseball is finally entering its stretch run. The pretenders are looking to next year, while the wild-card races in both leagues have achieved their purpose: infusing excitement into September. Expect the wild-card hunt to go down to the final weekend, when most of the divisional titles will be wrapped up. That's a prediction made with confidence. Handicapping the season's final month is trickier.

Alone in the Dark is so bad, in ways the people who coined the word never even thought of, that it's hard to imagine anyone over the age of 10 was involved with it. Actually, that's not fair. I know some 10-year-olds of average intelligence who, given the chance, could have made this a much better movie. This is the kind of film that could send the art form back decades, and even make one wonder if Thomas Edison did a good thing when he pioneered the motion picture. At the least, it should cause a re-evaluation of the work of legendarily bad filmmaker Ed Wood, whose reputation as the worst of the worst could be imperiled if Alone is emblematic of the work to be expected from director Uwe Boll.

AS everybody knows, Bud Selig is the worst commissioner in sports. This Expos-Orioles-Washington fiasco seals the deal. Typical of his stewardship that Major League Baseball had to take over operations of a dying franchise in order to straighten it out. Typical that he ran into a budding conflict and a potential lawsuit from another owner. Typical that the nation's capital and the country's seventh-largest market had to wait so long to get the team it deserved. Isn't this even more proof of Selig's ineptitude?

On deck Eric Milton of the Phillies goes for his league-leading 12th win tonight, facing the Braves. He said it "Why is it when I pitch bad, I'm a mental reject, [and] when everybody else pitches bad, they just pitched bad?" Derek Lowe, Red Sox pitcher, talking to reporters