Countdown

The Orioles' Cal Ripken has a chance to reach a career milestone of 3,000 hits.Career hits: 2,991Hits needed: 9Last night: 1-for-4Season: 113 hitsGames remaining: 13

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach a career milestone of 3,000 hits this season.Career hits: 2,980Hits needed: 20Season: 102 hitsGames remaining: 20

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach career milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs this season.Career hits: 2,947Yesterday: 0-for-4, no home runsCareer home runs: 396Season: 69 hits, 12 home runs

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach career milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs this season.Career hits: 2,968Career home runs: 399Yesterday: Did not playSeason: 90- hits (needs 32), 15 home runs (needs one)

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach career milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs this season.Career hits2,910Career home runs389Yesterday: 3-for-51 home runSeason: 32 hits,5 home runs

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach a career milestone of 3,000 hits this season.Career hits: 2,978Hits needed: 22Last night: 4-for-4Season: 100 hitsGames remaining: 21

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach career milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs this season.Career hits2,881Yesterday: 1-for-4, no home runsCareer home runs384Season: 3 hits, 0 home runs

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach career milestones of 3,000 hits and 400 home runs this season.Career hits: 2,937Career home runs: 394Last night: 1-for-5, no home runsSeason: 58 hits, 10 home runs

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach a career milestone of 3,000 hits this season.Career hits -- 2,971Hits needed: 29Yesterday: 0-for-4Season: 93 hitsGames remainng: 26

Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken has a chance to reach a career milestone of 3,000 hits this season.Career hits: 2,971Hits needed: 29Yesterday: Did not playSeason: 93 hitsGames remaining: 27

Kurt Angle participated in three world title matches overall at WrestleMania, including one against Brock Lesnar that went on last at WM 19. (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ ringposts)

One more time Will Ferrell will make his Broadway debut in January, Variety reports. He'll appear in the new solo comedy You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush, directed by Adam McKay, the writer-director of such Ferrell flicks as Step Brothers, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The plot of the show remains sketchy, but the title and timing suggest a Bush caricature and plenty of topical humor. Production begins previews on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, ahead of a Feb. 1 opening at the Cort Theater.

When MSNBC moved a couple of months ago from its longtime home in New Jersey to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, Keith Olbermann got his pick of offices. It was a nice perk for the anchor whose bracing mix of irony and stridency made him the first big star the 11-year-old cable channel can call its own. Olbermann chose a room looking directly into the street-front studios of MSNBC's rival, Fox News. If you're walking up Sixth Avenue, look for the huge cardboard cutout of Bill O'Reilly's head gazing out of a third-floor window in the world headquarters of NBC. Rare is the night when Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's highest-rated program, doesn't take aim at something said on "Fox Noise" or "Fixed News," Olbermann's pet names for the channel.

Presenting this week's sports media notes while wondering whether anyone else is getting a little tired of seeing highlights of practically every one of Tyler Hansbrough's two-handed dunks: I had to call a repair guy this week because when I watched the NHL game Tuesday, there was a bunch of snow on my screen. (Pause for rim shot.) Though the Pittsburgh Penguins-Buffalo Sabres game from Ralph Wilson Stadium was compelling enough to keep me from flipping over to one of the bowl games on other channels, it suffered from the stoppages to fix the ice surface.

Too many candidates. Too few calendars. If you were hoping to chart the coming year with a wall calendar spotlighting your favorite presidential candidate, and that candidate isn't Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, you're out of luck. Only those four aspirants (out of 16 Democrats and Republicans in the field) are featured in "Countdown to Victory" calendars, offered for the first time at Borders, Waldenbooks and Day by Day Calendar kiosks in malls. So much for democracy.

ATLANTA -- A black-oriented cable channel, BET, plans to air a new unscripted show celebrating Kimberly Jones - aka Lil' Kim - for her crimes. Promotional ads for the show, Countdown to Lockdown, declare that Ms. Jones entered prison with her "mouth shut, head held high, as she refuses to snitch." Ms. Jones, a rap star, recently began serving a year and a day for lying to a grand jury investigating a 2001 shootout between her entourage and a rival rap crew. BET is playing her lawlessness for all the money it can make.

WHO'S HOT Victor Martinez of the Indians is hitting .464 (13-for-28) with nine RBIs during an eight-game hitting streak. WHO'S NOT Aaron Harang of the Reds lost his fifth straight start to fall to 0-5 with a 6.67 ERA in June. BATTING LINE OF THE DAY Damian Jackson, Padres 2B AB R H RBI HR 4 3 4 3 2 PITCHING LINE OF THE DAY A.J. Burnett, Marlins IP H R BB SO 9 2 0 2 7 "I don't miss ballparks. I can't wait until the new one is built. I like new." Bob Gibson, Cardinals Hall of Famer, after performing the daily stadium countdown in St. Louis

IN BALTIMORE CITY Unidentified man killed by gunshot on north side An unidentified man was shot and killed early yesterday in North Baltimore, police said. The homicide was the city's 275th this year, police said. Police who responded to a report of a shooting about 12:15 a.m. in the 3100 block of Ellerslie Ave. and found the man lying in the street with a gunshot wound to his upper chest, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman. The man was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:39 a.m., Monroe said.

LOST IN the swirl around the Soccer Association of Columbia/Howard County's Covenant Park field complex has been an altering of leadership in the county's largest amateur sports organization. David Procida, a key SAC/HC leader in Covenant Park's acquisition, was voted to a two-year term as the group's president during last month's annual meeting. This doesn't mean that Jim Carlan, who had been SAC/HC president for six years and is in his 29th year with the 6,000-player organization, is going away.

Total games remaining (all at home):1 Highlight: In 26 postseason games. Ripken's batting average is .327