Classy

Finally, Baltimore gets a chance to look good on prime time TV - and it's on the most stylish and honored drama on television no less. It's the Baltimore of the 1960s, unfortunately, not Baltimore today. But nevertheless, Baltimore is featured prominently in the Aug. 16 premiere episode of Season 3 of AMC's Mad Men, last year's winner of the Emmy as the best drama on television. And what viewers will see of the city - from Haussner's restaurant to the Belvedere Hotel - makes Baltimore look like a first-rate East Coast urban center with good hotels, restaurants, night life and thriving businesses.

Give HBO four stars for its classy, spicy and very satisfying documentary about the once legendary New York eatery, Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven. The filmmakers have structured it as an operatic drama with a capital D. Viewers follow the four-star French restaurant as it flourishes in the 1970s and '80s under owner Sirio Maccioni - up through its closing in 2004, and reopening two years later. Watch as the owner, his wife and three sons engage in family combat worthy of Wagner as they struggle to find a new style for a new century.

Carolina owner Jerry Richardson (right), a former Baltimore Colt who is awaiting a heart transplant, attended yesterday's game between his Panthers and the Denver Broncos in Charlotte, N.C. The Panthers won, 30-10. The 72-year-old owner was told last week during a hospital stay that he needs a transplant. He was placed on a donor waiting list. In spite of his health, he was in a front-row seat yesterday in his open-air suite at Bank of America Stadium. He appeared to be covered in a black and blue Panthers blanket.

PEOPLE KEEP asking me if someone dies in the Sex and the City movie? The answer is No. No one's even sick, for that matter. This is an urban myth. All the characters remain alive and breathing ready for a sequel, or a sequin. Is there a happy ending? You better believe it. Warner Bros. is counting on at least two." So writes Fox maestro Roger Friedman, just in case you missed him on the Internet. He has seen the movie and doesn't want to tell us too much else about it. But since we recently printed a story from England speculating that someone does die, we want you to have it right from the horse's mouth.

Steve McNair played it right out of the Superstar Retirement Handbook. He said the right things. He did it the right way. He retired on his own terms and - best of all - walked off into the sunset without a noticeable limp. There certainly is room to wonder whether there is more to the story than McNair and Ravens officials let on during his farewell news conference yesterday at the Castle, but it didn't really matter because it was - regardless of any internecine intrigue - the right decision for all concerned.

With Joe Gibbs hanging up his whistle last week and Tony Dungy contemplating doing the same this week, let's pay tribute to the type of coach both men represent - the Classy, Quiet Coach. The Classy, Quiet Coach probably will never get the respect he deserves. Oh, we pay lip service to him. We write columns about him and say things, "I'd like my son to play for him," but then our attention wanes, and we fall in love all over again with a Bill Parcells or a Bill Belichick, someone who is ruthless and someone who screams, demoralizes his players and chews them up and throws them in a ditch when they're all used up. Sports are so closely associated with our expectations and perceptions of manhood in this country that we want the guys in headsets or with clipboards to be gruff, angry, cold men. Bob Knight keeps doing crazy things, and we keep embracing him. Belichick would kidnap the opposing quarterback's dog if it gave his team an advantage on Sunday, and we shrug our shoulders and say, "Whatever it takes."

SAN FRANCISCO -- For Hank Aaron, that's 755 home runs, and one save. Bless him. Baseball did not deserve his grace. On this night, Aaron saved the game he loved. Never has an athlete served as a better role model than Aaron did Tuesday, 31 years into retirement. He acted selflessly, with dignity and nobility, demonstrating to the commissioner and to all the world one can put aside personal feelings for the greater good. It might not rub off on Bud Selig, but it rubbed off on Barry Bonds.

It's easy to stereotype the South Florida sports fan, especially when all you seem to hear about this time of year is the Daytona 500 and spring training, but there is something for everyone down here - even the bluebloods who would not be caught dead at an event as base as an automobile race or an Orioles exhibition game. For them, there is the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club, where 2004 Olympian McLain Ward won the $75,000 Bainbridge Idle Dice Classic on Sunday. The crowd of about 10,000 included the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, so it obviously was a classy affair.

If you're having trouble finding CDs for the music lover on your holiday shopping list - or if you're just in the mood to reward yourself - three hefty boxed sets practically scream out "classy gift" this year. Only the most rabid collector can already own everything - everything, I said - that Bach and Mozart wrote. So you can't go wrong with one or both of the impossibly inexpensive, yet eminently respectable, collections devoted to those two composers and released by a small Dutch label called Brilliant Classics.

The wonder that is Leon Fleisher chalks up yet another remarkable achievement with yesterday's release of what is only his second recording of two-hand piano music in more than four decades. Leon Fleisher: The Journey, from Vanguard Classics, offers renewed evidence that, at 78, the Baltimore-based keyboard artist keeps pushing back the twilight of his career to enjoy another gratifying day in the sun. Denied the full use of his right hand in 1964 due to a neurological disorder called dystonia, Fleisher has in recent years returned to ambidexterity, thanks to injections of Botox.