Bad Blood

The Maryland Racing Commission meeting on Tuesday at Laurel Park was quite a spectacle. Trainers and horsemen were mad about having to move from Pimlico or having their stalls cut or eliminated at Laurel and Bowie. The horsemen's leadership was mad at Tom McDonough, the new, governor-appointed chairman of the commission, for his reluctance to let the horsemen speak. McDonough accused fellow commissioner John Franzone, a constant critic of the Maryland Jockey Club, of grandstanding. And when Alvin Akman, a new commissioner also appointed by the governor, delivered his obscenity-filled diatribe seemingly attacking the horsemen for their accusations of discrimination, the world stopped.

MIAMI -- The biggest surprise of the Super Bowl has already occurred this year, long before the opening kickoff.Somehow, the truth got out.Head coaches Dan Reeves of Atlanta and Mike Shanahan of Denver honestly and genuinely dislike each other.That you know is, well, quite an upset.Such bald truths usually get buried at the Super Bowl beneath heaping mounds of nonsense and happy hype, but this one somehow made it through all the checkpoints of the NFL's highly orchestrated spectacle and loosed itself on the public.

It seems that NASCAR can have an unapologetic feud without the contentious crossfire (see Richard Childress/Kyle Busch ). Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers did a little bumping and grinding at Sonoma last weekend, and while it probably wasn't a very good idea from a practical standpoint — Stewart is precariously on the bubble trying to qualify for the Chase; Vickers needs a ride for next season — you have to admire their unabashed style...

A former chief of Howard County General Hospital's medical staff is suing the hospital and three doctors for at least $80 million, alleging that "bad blood" and racism -- rather than questionable medical decisions -- led to the suspension last year of his privileges at the facility.In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Dr. Kline A. Price Jr. -- a black gynecologist who claims to be Columbia's first private doctor and is the brother of National Urban League President Hugh B. Price -- lists a host of alleged medical miscues performed at the Columbia hospital by white physicians that were not punished.

WIMBLEDON, England -- There's nothing wrong with men's tennis that can't be changed by a little marketing or a little hatred.At least that's the view of Pete Sampras, who easily beat Sebastien Grosjean, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, yesterday to advance to today's Wimbledon quarterfinals.Sampras and the other men at Wimbledon have been taking some knocks over the past few days for the depressed state of the men's game, which is seen by many as a serving contest among players without personality.So, how to fix the sport?

Anne Rice, quite famously, has written 22 novels, the most recent reaching shops this week. I had never read one. Often, I puzzle about what brings millions of readers to books I think of as commodity fiction -- work that is virtually universally ignored by book reviewers. That curiosity brought me to Ms. Rice's "Merrick" (Knopf, 307 pages, $26.95). I wish I could report its secret, with anything like confidence. It seemed to me to have all the literary artfulness, but not as much imagination, as a supermarket Halloween-special advertisement.

HOLLYWOOD -- Silence. It's what made Hollywood. But these days, it's all but disappeared from the town it helped build.For six years, Lawrence Austin operated the Silent Movie theater, probably the last motion-picture house in the nation devoted exclusively to silent films. Local film fans loved it, and tourists who wanted a taste of Hollywood history had to look no further than the unassuming stucco structure on Fairfax Avenue. It was as though the calendar had stopped in 1927, "The Jazz Singer" had never been released and Mary Pickford was still America's sweetheart.

A former chief of Howard County General Hospital's medical staff is suing the hospital and three doctors for at least $80 million, alleging that "bad blood" and racism -- rather than questionable medical decisions -- led to the suspension last year of his privileges at the facility.In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Dr. Kline A. Price Jr. -- a black gynecologist who claims to be Columbia's first private doctor and is the brother of National Urban League President Hugh B. Price -- lists a host of alleged medical miscues performed at the Columbia hospital by white physicians that were not punished.

ST. LOUIS - It didn't take long for the National League Championship Series to get nasty. New York Mets general manager Steve Phillips sparked an angry response from St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa when he accused reliever Mike James of hitting shortstop Mike Bordick in the ninth inning of Game 1. Bordick was hit on the right thumb by a pitch after Mets outfielder Jay Payton hit the second home run of the inning off James. Bordick was removed from the game and was not in the starting lineup for Game 2 last night.

WASHINGTON -- Fairness, like beauty, says Sen. Richard C. Shelby, the burly Alabama Republican who presided over Anthony Lake's contentious confirmation hearings last week, "is in the eye of the beholder."In Shelby's case, it is the zealous, aggressive eye of the convert, a Democrat-turned-Republican who has become more conservative, more partisan, more fervent than many of his dyed-in-the-wool Republican colleagues.He is an imposing, self-assured figure, so popular at home that his re-election next year, say Alabama pols, is a given; so criticized here that pundits have called him everything from a "yahoo" to a "political hack."