Crutches

IRVING, Texas -- There was yet another set of crutches in the Dallas Cowboys' locker room after their trashing of the New York Giants Monday night. And with those crutches came an offering of perspective."

In Michael Olesker's column last Thursday on Leo Bretholz, i was stated incorrectly that Mr. Bretholz was arrested at the Swiss border by a German guard. In fact, it was a Swiss border guard who made the arrest and turned over Mr. Bretholz, then on the run from the Nazis, to the German guard.The Sun regrets the errors.He still sees the old woman on crutches inside his head. She will never go away. She is standing there in the cattle car, in the final hours of her existence, and she is pointing one crutch at Leo Bretholz like a weapon.

About the first week of May, if all goes well, 52-year-old Sheila Brashear of North Kansas City, Mo., will have trekked to the base camp on Mount Everest. On crutches.There, at 17,500 feet, Brashear will celebrate 32 years as a cancer survivor.She was just 20 when she lost a leg to bone cancer. Never comfortable with a prosthesis because of a high amputation, Brashear has walked on crutches ever since."I was very lucky. The odds were against me," said Brashear, about her cancer, a tumor on the upper thigh.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's proposal to raise the piggyback income tax city residents pay from 50 to 55 percent has caused a predictable hue and cry in the City Council. "We're taxing ourselves out of business here," Councilman Anthony J. Ambridge, D-2nd, harrumphed. "It's going to be a hard sell."The council members who echoed that sentiment have a point. With Baltimore City already taxing its property owners twice as much as the suburban counties, an increased piggyback tax would seem to be a ticket to disaster.

When Baltimore challenges the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for first place in the CFL's Eastern Division Saturday, it will shuffle its defensive deck.Free safety Michael Brooks, who played the second half of Saturday's 48-31 win over the B.C. Lions with a broken right hand, is out.Nose tackle Jearld Baylis, who left the Memorial Stadium on crutches, is doubtful this week with a partial tear of his right calf.And linebacker Ken Benson, who had a sack against B.C., was to have the metal plate removed from his previously broken right ankle because three screws came loose.

HERNDON, Va. -- The Washington Redskins, "in as much trouble as we've ever been in," are hoping Mark Rypien is ready to play quarterback again this week. They are hoping desperately."We may have to win with just our defense for a while," coach Joe Gibbs said after checking the multiple damages suffered in Monday night's debacle at Philadelphia."Or with just our special teams," Gibbs added. "We've got serious problems, major problems."Quarterback Stan Humphries, kick returner Walter Stanley and running back Gerald Riggs all came out of the 28-14 defeat with "four-week injuries," Gibbs said.

CHIMAYO, N.M. -- Casey Stevens made his annual pilgrimage Friday to a humble adobe sanctuary, its walls lined with candles, statues of saints and castaway crutches.As he emerged beneath the low doorway, he winced, as much from the pain that forced him to lean heavily on a cane as from the brilliance of the sun. The fingernails of his sunburned hands were encrusted with remnants of earth he had scooped from a small pit inside El Santuario de Chimayo, its soil reputed to have curative powers.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day in 1978 when the accident happened.Sykesville resident John Erwin was mowing a neighbor's five-acre lot with his Ford tractor when he hit a soft patch of soil hidden by weeds. The tractor sank, threw Mr. Erwin forward, then rolled over his right leg. One of the machine's 22-inch blades cut through his heel.Mr. Erwin managed to hop 50 feet down River Road using his left foot until he collapsed. Four youngsters discovered him by the roadside.Eventually, part of his leg was amputated.

For Dick Edell, one of the most successful coaches in the history of men's college lacrosse, the statistics only tell part of the story. In nearly two decades at the University of Maryland, he led teams to three Atlantic Coast Conference titles, 13 NCAA tournament appearances and three championship finals. To appreciate the impact he had on the lives of his players and fans, though, you would have had to have been at Byrd Stadium in College Park yesterday, where nearly 500 people showed up to help a man who has meant a lot to them.

Sometimes, love is a war best viewed from the sidelines. The mind games, the cutting words, the deceit - people can't really enjoy this stuff, can they? But hey, at least in Two Can Play That Game, the story of a woman trying to teach her man a lesson, and her man's refusal to learn without a fight, the carnage is leavened with a few laughs. Shante Smith (Vivica A. Fox) is a woman with her act together: She's smart, she's beautiful, she's got a big-time position with a big-time company, and she's got herself one fine specimen of man. She's so all-that, in fact, that she's the idol of her friends, who come to her for relationship advice.