Ed Block

Dan Rooney, president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Frank Deford, editor-in-chief of The National sports daily, are among the guests of honor at the 13th annual Ed Block Courage Awards a week from tonight at Martin's West.The affair annually honors recipients from all 28 NFL teams who have best exemplified the traits of courage as shown by Block, now deceased, who was a beloved trainer for the Baltimore Colts for many years.Since the inception of the banquet, the Ed Block Courage Foundation has raised nearly $1.5 million in support of abused children.

It's almost as if Kevin Walker can't turn on the TV set these days without seeing the replay of Bo Jackson's last play as a football player.Jackson is trying to make a comeback as a baseball player with an artificial hip, so the injury he suffered in a 1990 playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals still makes all the highlight shows."

Brett Favre, the NFL Most Valuable Player the past two seasons, will be among the players honored at the 19th annual Ed Block Courage Awards on March 18 at Martin's West.Favre, quarterback of the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, is one of 30 recipients of the Block Awards, which are given to a member of each NFL team. Winners are chosen by their teammates for demonstrating qualities of courage originally set down by the late Ed Block, a longtime trainer for the Baltimore Colts.Other featured guests this year include two Hall of Famers: former Colts tight end John Mackey and former Cleveland Browns-Washington Redskins running back/wide receiver Bobby Mitchell.

The Ed Block Courage Award Dinner tonight will be a coming-out party for Art Modell in his new home.Modell will be making his first major public appearance in Baltimore since Nov. 6, when he announced he was moving the Cleveland Browns here.It's not his first appearance at the dinner, though. He said he attended years ago and knew the late Ed Block, the Baltimore Colts trainer for whom the dinner is named."He was considered the dean of trainers," Modell said.Modell said he is looking forward to the event.

For years Darlene Sanders Harris donated money to the Ed Block Courage Awards Foundation and looked forward to the annual ceremony in Baltimore where she could mingle with the NFL players who won the prestigious honor and hear their inspiring stories. But as the Ed Block organization formally announces its winners today, the Glen Burnie animal advocate, along with at least a thousand others, will be protesting, appalled that the Philadelphia Eagles' Michael Vick, just released from prison for his role in a brutal dog-fighting operation, was chosen to be on the winners list.

The sign that greets visitors is nothing more than an 8-by-10 piece of paper printed off a computer and taped to the office's front door. The chairs in the conference room don't match, the cardboard boxes still aren't unpacked from the recent move and the phone won't stop ringing. Less than three weeks to go. The next 10 days make up the busy period, as organizers round up athlete RSVPs and sell the last available tickets for the 29th annual Ed Block Courage Awards banquet. The night of the ceremony, it's all black ties, bright lights and cloth napkins.

It's more than a collection of football players in front of a huge banquet audience. This is about children, the kind that can't help themselves and have been abused physically, sexually and emotionally. For them it's despair and dejection, and there is attendant pain for responsible citizens even remotely conversant with their plight.But once more the Ed Block Courage Awards has held another gathering, its 17th in a series of annual fund-raising dinners at Martin's West where the man who conceived of the idea, one Sam Lamantia, has a sincerity and quiet drive that allows him to inspire others to contribute to one of the most critical of humane causes.

Pro football Carter a winner of Ed Block honor Cornerback Dale Carter was named the Ravens' winner of the Ed Block Courage Award, which goes to a representative from each team who has displayed courage or sportsmanship, often overcoming injuries or tragedies to return to competition. In an unprecedented move, the Saints' honor will go to the team's coaches, players and staff, who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. This year's banquet will be March 7 at Martin's West. The award is named for Ed Block, the longtime head athletic trainer of the Baltimore Colts.

FOR the last several months, men and women with excruciating pain in their knees have been calling Dr. Claude T. Moorman III with new-found resolve. "I've been putting this off for years," one of them said. "I see what you did for Mr. Schaefer. I want mine done now." At 78, Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer submitted to an operation that millions may need but fear. "People fall anywhere on a spectrum from scared to death to `I've had it, my life isn't worth living. Do anything you need to do,'" Dr. Moorman said.