Baltimore Club

John Appling yelled out, signaling a takeoff. Seconds later, he extended his arm upward, activated a winch to propel his model glider and watched the craft quickly ascend into the sky. Appling toggled his remote control, trying to smoothly guide his plane to a higher altitude, then had it drifting up and down through the muggy air. The 53-year-old Hampstead resident was a contestant in yesterday's Baltimore Area Soaring Society's August contest at...

For most of its existence, the North Baltimore Aquatic Club was associated with female swimmers driven to Olympic gold by a taskmaster coach. The NBAC's deepest roots, however, involve boys, one who nearly drowned in the stream that bisects Baltimore and another playing alongside it at Meadowbrook, one of the city's favorite summer haunts. Now another has grown into a young man reaching for history at the 2004 Olympics. No swimmer has had as long an uninterrupted run with the NBAC as Michael Phelps.

One man died and four people were injured after a fire swept through an apartment building above a West Baltimore bar and nightclub yesterday, fire officials said. The fire started about 1 a.m. in a second-floor apartment above Club Paradise in the 1300 block of Laurens St., fire officials said, and soon heavy smoke was billowing out of the building. Firefighters pulled five people from the apartments, including a 40-year-old man who was in cardiac arrest. He was taken to Maryland General Hospital, where he died.

A McDaniel College dean is promising that the school's judicial system will consider disciplinary action for a "disturbing incident" that began with racial slurs and ended with one student hospitalized. Campus officials and Westminster police are investigating a fight that broke out at the Westminster school after a chartered bus trip to a Baltimore nightclub. Westminster police say they are investigating the matter as a hate crime. "I don't think any student should be subjected to verbal abuse," Philip Sayre, the college's dean of student affairs, said yesterday.

A McDaniel College dean is promising that the school's judicial system will consider disciplinary action for a "disturbing incident" that began with racial slurs and ended with one student hospitalized. Campus officials and Westminster police are investigating a fight that broke out at the Westminster school after a charter bus trip to a Baltimore nightclub. Westminster police say they are investigating the matter as a hate crime. "I don't think any student should be subjected to verbal abuse," Philip Sayre, the college's dean of student affairs, said yesterday.

A joint bid by two private schools to acquire a prime piece of Roland Park real estate has been turned down by the Baltimore Country Club, which owns the land and has been approached several times by interested buyers, school officials said. Friends School of Baltimore and the Roland Park Country School expressed interest this year in buying the 18-acre parcel from the club. But school officials say that they have been unable to reach an agreement with the club on a purchase price and other details.

The Friends School and Roland Park Country School have confidentially approached the Baltimore Country Club, proposing to buy some of its Roland Park land to construct four playing fields, said community leaders familiar with the discussions. Neither the country club nor the schools would comment yesterday on the joint letter of interest, which the schools sent last week after months of exploratory talks. No precise sum was disclosed for the proposed purchase of about a dozen acres on the lower grounds of the club facing Falls Road at Hillside Road.

IT'S POSSIBLE that a Washington baseball team would only slightly hinder the Orioles' ability to stay competitive. Or it could become a devastating obstacle to the Baltimore franchise's success. The truth is that no one really knows which eventuality would come to pass. But here's one thing that's indisputable: Adding a second major-league franchise so close to this area couldn't help Baltimore's beloved Orioles. Not in a market this small; not when so much of baseball's revenue comes from television and radio rights and sponsorships; and not when the difference between big-market and small-market clubs plays out so dramatically on the field each year.

DO YOU need a good laugh? We mean a big laugh. Not a mild chuckle or a little tee-hee, but a full-out, gut-busting, knee-slapping, side-splitting, tears-in-your-eyes, complete-loss-of-all-bodily-functions laugh. If that's what you really need, then check out the new Improv Comedy Club that opened its doors at the Power Plant Live! in Baltimore just two weeks ago. It joins four other comedy clubs in the Baltimore area and a sister club in Washington. What sets the Improv apart from the other clubs in town is the level of talent of the comics.

Cribbage players aren't trying to keep the card game a secret, but they aren't exactly a visible bunch. The Baltimore Cribbage Club, for example, plays on Wednesday nights in the back room of a Chinese restaurant. Even yesterday's national tournament sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Area Cribbage Club was held in relative obscurity. Although competitors traveled from as far as Massachusetts and Georgia and some were nationally ranked, the tournament at an American Legion Post in Bowie could easily have been overlooked.