Enthusiasm

They're half a world away, but the enthusiasm greeting the start of the LPGA's 63rd season appears as high as any time in recent memory. The season opener comes Thursday at the Women's Australian Open, one of five new events for 2012 — though "new" might be a relative term. Four of the five, including Australia, are a return to old territory that went without the LPGA for a while. Also back on the schedule: Hawaii, Toledo and Kingsmill Resort in Virginia. "We have loyal fan bases in these places that we've been," player Morgan Pressel said.

For years, they've gathered every weekend on a grassy field in Dundalk to play tackle football. A gang of spirited, blue-collar twentysomethings, they shake hands, choose sides and, for three hours, wale the tar out of each other. So, when they heard about the first Baltimore Flag Football Festival on Saturday — an all-day, round-robin tournament at Pimlico Race Course promising $1,200 to the winner — the crew from Dundalk signed on. After all, how hard could the flag game be, once you're used to playing tackle?

One week Joe Flacco is an elite quarterback, and the next week he is a bum. On Monday, Flacco was right there with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning because he led the Ravens on a 92-yard scoring drive in the last two minutes as the Ravens upset the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday night, 23-20. And if he plays poorly against Seattle, he'll be a bum again. Fans either hate or love Flacco in this town, and that makes no sense because he really isn't elite or a bum, just a pretty good quarterback.

Both running back Ray Rice and strong safety Bernard Pollard expressed puzzlement about the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for taunting they absorbed during the Ravens' 30-27 win against the Arizona Cardinals Sunday. Count coach John Harbaugh as another who is interested in the NFL illuminating the issue. “I'm going to have to save that for the league, to be honest with you,” Harbaugh said when asked for his perspective on the calls. “I don't understand them. So we'll look forward to seeing how the league explains them to us.” A little later, Harbaugh staunchly defended Rice and Pollard.

At a time when increasing numbers of Baltimore City high school graduates are choosing to attend community colleges instead of traditional four-year institutions, Gov. Martin O'Malley was right to try to shake up the leadership of the faltering Baltimore City Community College. BCCC desperately needs an infusion of new ideas and leadership if it is to fulfill its mission of preparing students for the academic rigors of a traditional college or university, or of giving them the skills they need to succeed in the work world.

The Firestone Indy Lights car started the ontrack action on time Saturday morning and things were running smoothly, until a storm cloud passed over the Baltimore Grand Prix course around 10:30. Officials cleared the grandstands in anticipation of lightning and cars stopped running. Fans headed to protected areas under awnings and into the Convention Center, to check out what was inside. "I was impressed by their attitudes," said Mary Kay Carver, a greater, who was advising people of suite locations and telling them how to find the IZOD IndyCar paddock in the bottom of the building if they had passes – or wanted to buy passes to get a look at the teams' work area.

If attendance at a kick-off meeting last week to form a new Sykesville Main Street Association is any indication, then quite a few Sykesville residents, business owners and property owners are hungry to spark new life into downtown Sykesville. Nearly 50 people turned out at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, on Main Street, May 12 to hear guest speaker Steve Moore, president and CEO of Washington, DC Economic Partnership, discuss The Main Street 4-Point Approach, which the town hopes to utilize to revive its sleepy Main Street.

Bill Boniface of Bonita Farms in Darlington won the 1983 Preakness with Deputed Testamony. He remembers the buzz his horse created during the week leading into the race and after the victory. He can't wait for the 2011 Preakness in two weeks now that trainer Graham Motion's Animal Kingdom, a horse based in Fair Hill, Md., won the Kentucky Derby Saturday. "I think it will be a plus for Maryland, and, as you well know, we need some good news," Boniface said Saturday. "It's going to add excitement for the local trainers.

"An armed society is a polite society," guns rights advocates are fond of saying. And if they have their way, we'll all soon be very polite indeed. We'll practically be walking on eggshells. The Arizona legislature is poised to pass a law allowing guns to be carried on college campuses by students and professors alike. Other states seem prepared to follow suit — and some voices in the gun lobby are going so far as to urge that schoolteachers be armed, too. Feeling safer yet?

After 194 regular-season games, 1,770 tackles and a couple of thousand practices, 11-time Pro Bowl linebacker Ray Lewis is having as much fun now as he did 14 years ago, when he first put on a Ravens uniform. He is still like a little kid at an amusement park. Lewis is the first in line for every drill. He sprints from station to station, either playfully taunting a teammate or chatting away. If he isn't high-fiving one player, he might be wrestling another. Training camp is supposed to get harder as you get older, but someone forgot to tell Lewis, 35. "The man runs sideline to sideline just like he did years ago," said Ravens defensive tackle Kelly Gregg, in his 11th season.