Farewell Tour

Amid hip-high weeds and scraps of torn turf, nearly 100 sports-connected folks convened yesterday at Memorial Stadium to share tales and a curtain-call farewell to Baltimore's venerable field of past dreams. As VIP guests of the Maryland Stadium Authority and the Babe Ruth Museum, they toured the 46-year-old stadium for a final assessment of what should be saved or sold before the facility is razed to make way for a planned senior citizen housing community and a YMCA aquatics and gymnastics center.

Zakk Wylde has a hard time understanding why people would consider his trio, Pride & Glory, a Southern rock act. "I'm not from the South, you know what I mean?" he says, with perfect New Jersey diction. "People go, 'Oh, yeah. It's Southern rock.' But I don't get the Southern rock thing."He'll admit that his influences as a singer include Ray Charles, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant, and Gregg Allman, and even grant that the banjo picking he does on his band's first single, "Losin' My Mind," could be construed as a nod toward Dixie.

LOS ANGELES -- Magic Johnson has met the press in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Detroit in the past three weeks, and has kept reporters on their toes with something new at every stop.The feeling here is that people can't read enough about him -- particularly in Los Angeles where he played for the Lakers since 1979. Here are some excerpts from last Saturday's 30-minute session before the Lakers-Pistons game in Auburn Hills, Mich., that did not make it into most news reports or sound bites on television:* ON HIS HEALTH: "I feel good, I feel great.

This is it, fans. Honest.After eight years on the road together, including a farewell tour that lasted longer than an Energizer six-pack, the final Naomi and Wynona Judd concert is at hand.Take their word for it. This is it. Positively, absolutely, guaranteed.The concert takes place at 9 tonight at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., where 10,000 fans will watch in person and, if they all wish, millions more can see it via pay-per-view.Naomi, 45, the mom half of this most successful mother-and-daughter duo, isn't exactly raving at the prospect of saying so long, y'all -- she says she'd rather run naked through a meeting of truck drivers.

SHE didn't want to call it the Farewell Tour.Naomi Judd -- at age 45 the senior member of country's most popular mother-daughter team, also known as the idea person, the Imagineer, the Queen of Everything -- had some other suggestions.Such as the Sunset Tour."Because the sun sets every evening but rises the next morning," she said."I hate the word farewell because it means goodbye," she said during telephone interview during a pause in what was ultimately called The Judds' Farewell Tour. "I have a hitch in my giddyap, but I'm still going.