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Two major developments unfolded on Monday's episode of WWE RAW. The first was a big one in many ways - Paul Heyman revealed a new client, Michael McGillicutty, now known as Curtis Axel (Curtis after his father "Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, Axel after his grandfather Larry "The Axe" Hennig). Though many fans complained about it not being a bigger name (RVD was speculated throughout the day), this is a great move and an even greater opportunity for a superstar to not only have instant credibility being aligned with Paul Heyman (arguably the greatest mouthpiece in pro wrestling history)

Kevin Gausman made Orioles director of pitching development Rick Peterson look like a modern-day Nostradamus. After I watched Gausman, the Orioles top choice in the 2012 draft, dazzle for the Single-A Aberdeen Ironbirds in a 3-1 win over the Connecticut Tigers last August, Peterson couldn't stop gushing about the young right-hander. Gausman threw only 30 pitches that day - 20 for strikes. But his mid-90s fastball was dancing and his back-breaking changeup had the Tigers' batters swinging seemingly before the ball was out of the kid's hand.

Fans unable to cash winning tickets at Pimlico Race Course due to the electrical problems Saturday have a year to collect their money.As with all mutuel tickets at Pimlico or Laurel Park, fans can come in and cash them when the tracks are open or at any of the state's off-track betting facilities, said Maryland Jockey Club general counsel Martin Jacobs.Fans can also mail them via certified mail to the Mutuel Department, Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Md., 21215. The track will send a return check.

I am a big believer that you can tell a lot about a person based on whom they choose to follow on Twitter. My Twitter feed is a blur of football players, NFL analysts, beat reporters, and other sports personalities (plus the occasional swimsuit model), so even though this is a down time in the NFL offseason, my feed is blowing up around the clock with about 20 football tweets a minute. I'll let you decide what that says about me. Sometimes it is necessary for me to follow certain people -- I won't name names -- but otherwise, I've whittled my feed down to the folks I enjoy most.

The promoter of last year's Starscape Festival says a new event he's marketing that targets a similar audience won't have the safety problems associated with last year's June concert. Promoter Evan Weinstein says he wants to disassociate the new Moonrise Festival from the issues of Starscape last year. City officials said Starscape, the long-running electronic dance event at Fort Armistead Park, could not return because of issues at last year's concert, including overcrowding and drug overdoses.

The roots of Detroit's raucous reputation as a sports town go deep. Seventy years ago, Tigers fans pelted St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Joe "Ducky" Medwick with garbage during the seventh game of the 1934 World Series. Provoked by Medwick's mettle on the bases - he had just spiked a Detroit player - the crowd took aim. Bottles, shoes and rotten tomatoes flew at Medwick for 20 minutes. Enough, said baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who ejected the Cardinals Hall of Famer "for his own good."

Fans of Geof Manthorne - you lovelorn legions who thrill at the sight of the slim, slightly bedraggled hipster/cake decorator who's risen to unlikely cable fame on Ace of Cakes - you swooning masses must know something crucial. You swooning masses include the woman who jumped on Manthorne outside the Baltimore bakery where the show is set, snuggling up to him cougarishly for a photo. Also the three middle-aged women spotted giggling outside the bakery, bumping into each other as they tried to peek inside the mail slot.

Toni Brown of Brooklyn, N.Y., figures it was three years ago when she first noticed something weird going on in her mailbox.As editor of Relix, a magazine dedicated largely to the Grateful Dead, she was receiving loads of mail from fans -- Deadheads. Many were written from inside federal prisons."And it was not just a few isolated letters," said Ms. Brown, whose magazine has become so swamped with such letters today that it prints them under a new section, dubbed "Heads Behind Bars."What Ms. Brown was seeing back in 1991 were the first results of an undercover operation by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, as well as local and state police, to target the buying and selling of LSD at Grateful Dead concerts.

Fan criticism has apparently become the kryptonite to WWE's "Super Cena. " For the past several years, fans have been critical of the creative team's treatment of John Cena. Some fans have misdirected their gripes toward Cena himself, but he wasn't the one making booking decisions. No matter who the decision makers were, the facts were clear: Cena was not losing often, and when he did, it was rarely in clean fashion. But since WrestleMania, something has changed. WWE now seems to be taking Cena's character the opposite direction, pushing him into the corner and not giving him any breaks.

ClarificationYesterday's coverage of the power outage at Saturday's Preakness inadvertently left the impression that officials at Pimlico offered no apologies for inconvenience to fans.In fact, the front-page story about the outage should have included quotes from Joseph A. De Francis, president and CEO of the Maryland Jockey Club, praising the "patience and sportsmanship of our fans the greatest fans in the country." De Francis also apologized in remarks to other news organizations.In addition, a sports column criticizing De Francis for failing to apologize referred only to De Francis' remarks on the victory stand.

Yahoo has added another major property to its portfolio, Kanye West went dark and political for his SNL gig, and France is buying military equipment. Welcome to your post-weekend trends report for May 20, 2013. With the exception of television show reactions, most Internet attention this morning centers around Friday news. That includes France's Friday announcement that it is buying drones and Yahoo's announcement that it is buying Tumblr. Apparently only one of those decisions was unpopular enough to warrant NYT reaction coverage . As for weekend content: Kanye West gave what one Twitter user described as "the most terrifying PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen" on SNL Saturday.

For as long as Ryan Hunter-Reay can remember, the Indianapolis 500 was a huge deal. As a small child growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Hunter-Reay used to plop down a plastic race track and line up his miniature race cars in front of the television set on the Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend. For the next few hours, he was mesmerized. "My dad was a gearhead - he loved cars. I grew up loving cars as well," Hunter-Reay recalled Monday. "He took me to a few races as a fan, and that's where it started.

Less than two weeks ago, the Orioles were tied for first place in the American League East. Despite subpar starting pitching, they were winning games -- more than 60 percent of them -- because Manny Machado, Adam Jones and Chris Davis were pounding the ball and the Baltimore bullpen continued to be a stabilizing force. The top-heavy offense is still producing -- the Orioles scored 17 runs over the weekend -- but with the rotation being held together with bandages and Scotch tape, closer Jim Johnson having blown back-to-back save opportunities, and seemingly every bounce going the other way right now , the 23-20 Orioles are free-falling.

The slumping Orioles have lost five in a row, but on Monday, they came away with a win off the diamond. The Orioles have the best uniforms in the major leagues, according to a recent fan poll conducted by ESPN. The O's entered the SportsNation bracket, dubbed the Battle of the Uniforms , as the 13th seed in the American League. “Always liked the orange-and-black scheme, but the white-paneled cap is a bad, bad look from the '70s,” wrote ESPN's Jim Caple, who seeded the AL side of the bracket.

No Triple Crown winner this year, no first-female-jockey-to-win, no sunshine? No problem, said those who flocked to Pimlico Race Course on Saturday and waited out a midafternoon downpour to watch Oxbow leave behind Kentucky Derby winner Orb to capture the 138th Preakness Stakes. "This is always an exciting race," said Tom Meek, 59, of Phoenixville, Pa., smoking a postrace cigar. "As much as I love Orb and as much as I want a Triple Crown, this is great for Oxbow. That horse rocked.

I am a female sports fan. I go to games, watch them on TV, download the apps, read the stats, and buy the T-shirts. I recently heard about the launch of a new professional women's soccer league, and I started thinking about the sports to which I am attached. They are all professional male sports - plus men's college basketball - but I have never thought about why. I suspect it has to do with my age (51), which limited my exposure to girl's athletics - Title IX was just beginning to be implemented when I was in school - as well as my sports fan role model, my father.

Always, there were those lovely old country estates and gracious manor taverns with roaring fireplaces, but in the old days fine dining was associated with the city. Not so anymore. Now, there are more compelling reasons than ever for diners to cross county lines for a good meal. The 50 best county restaurants in Howard County, Anne Arundel County and Baltimore County is a mix of the old and the new, destinations for special occasions and joints for Monday night suppers, the chef-driven and crowd-pleasing.

Despite wintry conditions, the 2012 edition of the Orioles' annual FanFest is under way at the Baltimore Convention Center. While plenty of fans are here to collect autographs and participate in Q&As sessions with Orioles players, the event doesn't seem to have the same buzz as last year, when fans were still glowing from a hot finish under manager Buck Showalter. While the fans I talked to praised FanFest for the access it gave them to Orioles players and personalities, they weren't as positive when talking about their expectations for the team this coming season.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Baltimore lawyer Frank Morgan helped swimmer Michael Phelps , then 16 years old, select Peter Carlisle as his agent. Phelps was years away from stardom, but Carlisle aggressively marketed his client, hoping to eventually elevate him beyond the confines of an Olympic sport that mattered to a broad audience only every four years. Earlier this year, Carlisle signed another client - at the suggestion of Morgan - and put her on the Phelps plan. He's already signed a deal for jockey Rosie Napravnik to endorse Snickers - an agreement proposed before Carlisle learned that the candy bar was named for a horse - and has another in the works that could be announced before Preakness.

There are many ways to describe Merriweather Post Pavilion 's M3 Rock Festival - passionate, sweaty, loud, over-the-top, sartorially questionable. Sometimes, it's even romantic. Just ask the Australian couple that got engaged while in attendance and returned the following year as part of the honeymoon. "We did a toast from the stage with a couple of the artists," said Brad Canfield, the festival's producer and general manager of Merriweather Post Pavilion . Now in its fifth year, the M3 Festival (which stands for May Merriweather Metal)