Colts

One of the colts entered in Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness Stakes can lay claim to a distinction not shared by seven others:  He's actually finished ahead of the expected favorite Orb in a race. Titletown Five, one of three Preakness entries trained by Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, and Orb were both entered in a seven-furlong, maiden special weight race for 2-year-olds at Saratoga last Aug. 18. Maiden special weights are for horses that have never won a race in their career.

The colt was a knucklehead, really. He had speed and endurance in his pedigree, but if you had polled his owners and his trainer a year ago, none would have predicted that he'd gallop in the same steps as his great-grandsire, 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew. When the gates dropped on his first race, Orb did not even break. Second race? Same thing. He did not win until the fourth and final race of his two-year-old campaign. But where other colts might level off or become erratic, Orb seemed to get better every day. “I've never seen anything like it,” said his trainer, Claude “Shug” McGaughey, who has been in the thoroughbred game more than 40 years.

In NFL circles, Marvin Demoff is the power broker you never see and only occasionally hear about, often after the fact, like some sort of twister that levels the local trailer park.Oh, you mean he was the attorney who backed Bob Irsay into a dark corner in 1983 and forced the Baltimore Colts' infamous trade of No. 1 draft pick John Elway to the Denver Broncos?Yes, he is that attorney -- a man so esteemed in those NFL circles he sometimes is referred to as the "Monsignor"; a man so trustworthy it is said he is a confidant of Al Davis, the inscrutable owner of the Oakland Raiders; a man so powerful he is the contractual voice for Dan Marino and Jeff Hostetler, Rick Mirer and Jim Everett, Rod Woodson and Leslie O'Neal, to name a few of the league's elite.

One of the colts entered in Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness Stakes can lay claim to a distinction not shared by seven others:  He's actually finished ahead of the expected favorite Orb in a race. Titletown Five, one of three Preakness entries trained by Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, and Orb were both entered in a seven-furlong, maiden special weight race for 2-year-olds at Saratoga last Aug. 18. Maiden special weights are for horses that have never won a race in their career.

For the record: Julie Shanklin did not, as a 16-year-old girl in the 1970s, take up the hem of her Gino's uniform to make it a mini-dress. She was 5 foot 11, OK? And because she was so tall, the red-and-white dress was short on her, even by 1970s standards. "My mom was like, 'Is there any hem we could let out?'" There was not, so Shanklin paired her uniform with the ruffled bloomers her mother wore square dancing. "It would have been obscene. " Even with obscenity averted, Shanklin caught the eye of Harold Autry, also 16 and working as a cook at the same Gino's in Montgomery County.

Date Opponent Result Week 1 JAGUARS W, 14-12 Week 2 AT DOLPHINS W, 27-23 Week 3 AT CARDINALS W, 31-10 Week 4 SEAHAWKS W, 34-17 Week 5 AT TITANS W, 31-9 Week 6 BYE WEEK Week 7 AT RAMS W, 42-6 Week 8 ...

No. Name Pos. 1 Pat McAfee P 3 Matt Stover K 4 Adam Vinatieri K 7 Curtis Painter QB 14 Sam Giguere WR 17 Austin Collie WR 18 Peyton Manning QB 20 T.J. Rushing DB 23 Tim Jennings DB 25 ...

Kevin Cowherd Ravens 24, Colts 21 Ravens are on a roll; Colts are rusty. I'll take the team with momentum every time. Jamison Hensley Colts 27, Ravens 13 The Ravens should be applauded for their dominating performance in New England. But Peyton Manning isn't banged up like Tom Brady. Edward Lee Colts 20, Ravens 17 Maybe the Ravens overachieved getting to this stage, but I see a tight game. Former Raven Matt Stover hammers final nail in the coffin.

Kevin Cowherd Ravens 27, Colts 6 Are the Colts still playing? Or flipping Colts to decide: Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck in 2012? Edward Lee Ravens 29, Colts 14 The Colts put up a good fight against the Patriots last Sunday, but the Ravens defense won't be as accommodating in garbage time. Mike Preston Ravens 27, Colts 10 Ravens history will no repeat itself. The Ravens may have lost to winless Miami a few years ago, but the will handle the Colts easily..

Ravens 24, Colts 10 Fourth quarter: 0:00 Indianapolis Touchdown - 13-yard pass from Dan Orlovsky to Jacob Tamme. (Adam Vinatieri extra point is good). Ravens 24, Colts 3 Third quarter: 3:41 Baltimore Touchdown - 7-yard pass from Joe Flacco to Dennis Pitta. (Billy Cundiff extra point is good). Ravens 17, Colts 3 Second quarter: 3:06 Indianapolis Field Goal - 22-yarder by Adam Vinatieri. Ravens 17, Colts 0 Second quarter: 10:07 Baltimore Touchdown - 6-yard run by Ray Rice.

Kentucky Derby winner Orb continues getting accustomed to his temporary Maryland home, which involves mostly eating the grass on a small plot of land outside his stall at Pimlico Race Course. He did that for another 40 minutes -- as per a routine trainer Shug McGaughey keeps with almost all of his horses -- after walking the shed row Tuesday morning. The Malibu Moon colt was due a break after a fast breeze Monday morning at Belmont Park before shipping down I-95 into the home state of his co-owner, Butler resident Stuart Janney III. Orb does not appear bothered by anything at this point.

The kick knifed through the thick fog and split the uprights at Memorial Stadium, giving the Colts a 10-7 victory in sudden-death overtime. In a flash, fans swarmed the field. Down came the goal posts. Up went Toni Linhart, on someone's shoulders. Linhart's 31-yard field goal defeated the rival Miami Dolphins late in 1975 and all but clinched Baltimore's first of three straight AFC East titles. It was the kick of a lifetime for Linhart, who died Sunday morning of cancer, at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium . He was 70. One of only six Austrian-born NFL players, Anton Hans Jorg Linhart signed with the Colts in 1974 after one season with the New Orleans Saints and an 11-year soccer career in Europe.

By now you've surely seen the video, below, of Tom Brady getting super, duper excited about Orb winning the Kentucky Derby. In it, he runs over to congratulate Ogden Phipps II, son of co-owner Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps. I'm not sure how they know each other. Maybe Brady just really revels in the good fortune of other fantastically rich people. Also, he apparently bet $4,700 on the colt and won $25,000 . (In some versions of the video you can see the other co-owner, Maryland resident Stuart Janney, roam through the shot in a tan rain coat and Orb hat, looking for all the world like maybe he'd mistakenly arrived in that place at that time.

On Wednesday at Churchill Downs, a crowd clad mainly in Louisville basketball shirts gathered at Barn 45 to watch Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino as he visited a horse of which he owns five percent. Pitino, a month removed from becoming the first coach in NCAA history to win Division I basketball national championship tournaments with two different schools, appeared at trainer Doug O'Neill 's barn shortly after 8 a.m. and joined an entourage following Goldencents.

Among the likely Democratic candidates for Maryland governor in 2014 - Howard County executive Ken Ulman, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Attorney General Doug Gansler - Ulman comes closest to being the "Baltimore-area candidate. " But a genuine Baltimore-area candidate - someone who could pull votes from Baltimore County and the city, and enough in other key sectors of the state - would be a serious contender for the big-daddy chair in Annapolis. And who might that be? Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the six-term congressman and former Baltimore County executive, "is considering it," says his spokeswoman, Jaime Lennon.

Varsity baseball President's Cup film to premiere today "The President's Cup," a documentary film about an annual high school baseball tournament in Baltimore, will premiere at the University of Baltimore today at 6 p.m. The film, directed by Julie Simon , associate professor in the university's School of Communications Design, follows the progress of the second annual tournament, which took place in 2012, and makes its debut as this...

Time to clean slate Joseph Schwerdt Sun Sentinel Until Jim Caldwell gets another chance to coach, there will be questions about whether he won only because he inherited Tony Dungy's team or because he had Peyton Manning to run the offense. With Dungy gone three years and Manning injured, Caldwell couldn't keep the Colts (2-14) upright. The same questions were asked in the 1990s about George Seifert with the 49ers and Barry Switzer with the Cowboys. Questions aside, the Colts appear to be cleaning the slate as they did in 1997, and Caldwell had to go. Vice Chairman Bill Polian and general manager Chris Polian were the first to get fired.

Peter P. Belz Jr., a retired U.S. Treasury Department appeals officer, died March 14 of pancreatic cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. He was 71. The son of a die maker and a homemaker, Peter Paul Belz Jr. was born in Baltimore and raised on Keswick Road in Hampden. After graduating in 1959 from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting in 1963 from what is now Loyola University Maryland. Mr. Belz began his career in 1963 as an Internal Revenue Service agent in the audit office and later was promoted to a field agent.

The city of Baltimore is set to approve a $200,000 settlement with the family of a 14-year-old Randallstown girl who was electrocuted in 2006 while stretching during a church softball game in Druid Hill Park, ending a years-long legal battle. But for Anthony "Bubba" Green, a former Baltimore Colts lineman who is the girl's father, the end of the lawsuit is far from the end of the cause. "We don't want this to happen to anybody else," Green said Tuesday as he choked back tears.