Cheetah

Former state Sen. American Joe Miedusiewski's proposal to allow nude dancing in Baltimore has sent The Block into a frenzy of sorts, leaving adult nightclub owners wondering whether naked women will save the troubled strip or put it out of business.While nudity is a concept most Block owners welcome -- dancers are currently required by liquor regulations to cover their private parts -- the threat of outside competition is not. And the naked truth is that Mr. Miedusiewski's proposal would mean just that.

When carbon-based life forms and silicon-based machines meet, the potential for miscommunication is enormous.As Edward Stephens, former dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, recounted recently, when he went shopping for a computer, he thought he heard the salesman touting a "zis wheel on the bias that produces several maggots of surge amplification when snollicked to a seedy ram."The good news is that computers are beginning to have rudimentary speech and handwriting recognition skills.

The father recites the last months of his son's life in a numb voice. The school principal announces the death over the public address system. The juvenile officer sends condolences to the family of the deceased.Everybody says it shouldn't have happened, that Chester Wiczulis, 17 years old, shouldn't be dead today, only nobody knows how it could have been stopped.Some of the kids knew him as Chester the Cheetah. They said he could jump off a roof and land on his feet. He was quick, and he knew karate, and a lot of the kids said you didn't want to mess with Chester right up until the glue sniffing and the paint sniffing started getting the best of him."

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Billy Hatcher, a regulation major-leaguer after all, is just barely good enough to believe that what he is doing is somehow possible. You know, in the realm. You get in a groove, and pop, pop, the doubles and triples fly off the bat, and the ball looks like a grapefruit, and, heck, it happens, if just never before in the entire history of the World Series.He doesn't -- couldn't really -- understand that he is an instant legend, who now can look forward to a lifetime of guest appearances at card shows across America, not to mention a shot at Letterman, or at least Arsenio Hall.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Among other firsts, Billy Bates may be the first man to score the winning run in a World Series game within a month after winning a footrace with a cheetah.In the tradition of a Marge Schott-owned enterprise, this is a true story.Bates is the 5-foot-7 rookie who scored on Joe Oliver's single in the 10th inning Wednesday night to give the Cincinnati Reds a 5-4 victory over the Oakland Athletics.Besides helping the Reds take a two-games-to-none lead in the Series, Bates also hopes he dispelled the notion that all he can do is outrun animals.