Fences

Almost no one believes watching major-league auto racing is totally safe, but it had become easy to be lulled into a sense of security. The events of the last nine months in open-wheel racing have changed that.Three fans died and eight others were injured (one critically) after being hit by debris from a three-car wreck May 2 in the Indy Racing League event at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C. They were the first deaths in the track's 40 years of existence.But it was the second accident in nine months involving multiple fan fatalities in open-wheel racing.

Hundreds of police officers were hunting last night for a murderer and an armed robber who escaped in broad daylight from the medium- security state prison in Jessup by sliding past an unmanned watchtower and scaling two fences, one topped with razor wire.Yesterday morning, blood was visible on the fence where Byron Lester Smoot, 38, and Gregory Lee Lawrence, 39, leaped to freedom. Smoot was found to be missing at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to prison officials, launching a manhunt for the first escapees from the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup since 1986.

This time it is the rider, not the horse, who has come back from adversity.Before the Grand National Steeplechase last spring, the defending champion, Buck Jakes, was returning from an untidy stint in England where he apparently wasn't happy. There was a question about how well he would run at Butler.The answer was authoritative when Buck Jakes won over what ranks as his home course for the second straight year.Now, the other half of the team, Anne Moran, has returned to the saddle after suffering three nondisplaced fractures in her lower back during a training accident last autumn.

Quote: "It was really nice to be a part of this. To win the last home opener in Tiger Stadium is something special." -- Twins starter and Maryland alumnus Eric MiltonIt's a fact: If the fences seem closer at Anaheim's Edison Field, it's because they are. The fence in center, 408 feet from home last year, is now 400 feet away, and the power alley in left center is 387, down from 396.Who's hot: The Indians are hitting .366 (90-for-246) during their six-game winning streak.Who's not: Todd Greene, playing behind the plate for the first time since Aug. 20, 1997, overthrew second base by about 50 feet when the Rangers' Tom Goodwin stole second in the first.

Fed up with finding strangers cooling off in their pools, apartment owners, community groups and homeowners are fighting back this summer.In what's becoming an annual post-Memorial Day struggle, pool owners are building fences and barricades, hiring guards and taking other measures to keep out unwanted swimmers. Two Washington-area community pools even installed an underwater sonar system to alert police and release a whirlwind of flashing lights and sirens on illicit nighttime swimmers."To be honest, I hate the pool season," said apartment manager Loretta Campbell, who sees more and more people every year try to slip past the pool gate at Autumn Woods in Howard County.

THIS COLUMN is about a ball, the most wonderful ball ever invented. It's better than a baseball, basketball or football. It's better than any ball you can name. It was gone for 20 years, but it's making a comeback.It is called a Spaldeen, which might not mean anything to you, unless you grew up on the East Coast, preferably New York, before 1979. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, which means my childhood memories are filled with Spaldeens.Starting in the 1920s, the Spalding Co. manufactured tennis balls at its home base in Chicopee, Mass.

Three questions about work on Route 27I have three questions regarding the recent resurfacing of a part of Route 27 south of Westminster.First, why was this done? My neighbor agrees with me that we saw no need for this work to be done. The road seemed fine to those of us who use it regularly.Second, the new double yellow lines are solid all the way. The former lines were broken in a few spots where passing was legal. Now it looks as if there is no passing at all, even a straight stretch more than a half-mile long.

With no building left to fight over, the city of Annapolis and the owner of 184-186 Main St., which was destroyed in a spectacular fire nearly a year ago, are fighting over the alley next to the property.With the holiday shopping season approaching, the city has asked Ronald B. Hollander to reopen Tate Alley, connecting Main Street to State Circle, a walkway he has blocked with fences to enclose the remains of his building. But Hollander said opening the alley would give vandals more access to the rubble-filled lot and could open him to more liability, even if he puts up a fence along the walkway, as the city has asked.

Call Buck Jakes a home boy. Shrugging off a four-race experiment in England, the 10-year-old horse won his third Grand National timber race yesterday in Butler, declaring himself the favorite for the Maryland Hunt Cup on April 25.Owned by the Arcadia Stable of Andre Brewster, Skip Cochran and Francis Iglehart, Buck Jakes ran down Welter Weight over the final three fences and won by nearly three lengths under jockey Anne Moran. The winner covered the three miles and 18 fences in 6: 06 1/5. The finish duplicated that in last year's Grand National and Hunt Cup, but added a touch of inspiration.

Brigadoon on the bay; Making memoriesSomewhere down there near the bay there is a lost village, a Brigadoon. I used to spend a lot of Sunday afternoons poking around the Chesapeake Bay Western Shore country; I enjoyed the gentle beauty of the Southern Maryland countryside, the hamlets, the woodland, coves, ravines, the fenced horse farms, the rolling fields of tobacco growing like Jack's beanstalk from the tiny, lop-eared seedlings set out in the spring of...

Candy, you must be spending too much time on the fishing boat. Out here in the real world, the economy is crashing harder than Amy Winehouse in detox. It's so bad, you can barely buy a Senate seat these days. Look, one of my favorite things about baseball is how the fences are different in every park. Metaphorically, they're different for every team, too. The Orioles swinging for the fences is different from the Red Sox swinging for the fences. All a fan in Baltimore can hope is that the Orioles chase a guy like Mark Teixeira in good faith, that they offer him a respectable offer.

Equestrian enthusiasts gathered in Glyndon on April 26 to enjoy the Maryland Hunt Cup. Charles Fenwick III, riding Askim, a horse trained by Fenwick's mother, won the 112th running of the race. Fenwick's win continued a family tradition: His father, Charles Fenwick Jr., won the race five times. His mother, Ann D. Stewart, has won the race three times as a trainer. About 7,500 fans perched in grassy fields and on fences to catch a view of the race, which is four miles with 22 fences and carries a $75,000 prize.

The Maryland Hunt Cup course is considered one of the two toughest in the world, rivaling the English Grand National for its sheer difficulty. Attempting to traverse the four miles and 22 timber fences is a supreme challenge for horse and rider, one that nine such teams will attempt to navigate today in the 112th running of the venerable race at Glyndon. No one knows this better than Charles Fenwick Jr., who won the race five times as a jockey - the last in 1987 aboard Sugar Bee - and continues to be a prominent figure on the scene as a trainer, today entering Make Your Own for owner Laurence F. Oster.

The chain-link fences surrounding Mount Vernon Place were opened briefly yesterday by the art student who had, with the city's approval, cut off public access to the popular downtown park with his gold spray-painted creation. By late afternoon, though, access was sealed off again when the fences - made less stable by the removal of one section in each of the park's squares - appeared in danger of being knocked down by high winds. For safety reasons, the artist and officials at the Maryland Institute College of Art - after explaining they were opening the fences in a spirit of compromise - replaced the sections that had been removed and will revisit the issue today.

Nothing but silence and black stillness fills the stage. Lights slowly fade up on the front door of a shabby household, an upper balcony and a clothesline. Two striking men enter discussing the day's work. So begins Reservoir High School's production of August Wilson's Fences. Fences opened on Broadway in 1985 and ran for 526 performances, winning a number of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play. The plot centers on the life of Troy Maxson, an outspoken African-American, and his family who live in Pittsburgh during the late 1950s.

Wilson's `Fences' The lowdown -- August Wilson's Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play Fences will kick off the 92nd season of the Vagabond Players at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Vagabond Theatre. Fences follows Troy Maxson (played by Louis B. Murray), a former star of the Negro baseball leagues, who is working as a Pittsburgh garbage man in 1957 and frustrated that racial integration in baseball happened too late to benefit him. If you go -- Fences is at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays until Sept.

Cameron Stirling Cromwell, whose ponds and fences dot the Baltimore region, died of a heart attack Tuesday outside his home in Sparks. He was 72. Self-employed for most of his career, he specialized in post-and-rail fencing and in pond construction, mostly in Baltimore County. His family estimated that he built more than 100 ponds over more than four decades. Though semiretired for the past few years, he continued to build and repair ponds. Born in Baltimore and raised on a farm in Hereford, he graduated in 1956 from Hereford High School.

Daniel Michael "Mikey" Smithwick, a thoroughbred trainer and steeplechase rider who won the Maryland Hunt Cup a record six times, died Monday of multiple system atrophy, a form of Parkinson's disease, at his Hydes farm. He was 77. Born in Baltimore and raised on the family farm in Hydes, he was the son of Alfred Smithwick, an Irish-born horse trainer, and the former Emma Warner, an equestrian. A Towson High School graduate, Mr. Smithwick and his elder brother, A. Patrick "Paddy" Smithwick, grew up learning how to train horses and ride from their father.

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicated yesterday he was willing to consider a guest worker program as part of the immigration-reform package now moving through Congress. Meanwhile, the Senate began debate on immigration reform with the split between senators who support a new path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and those opposed on full display. In comments to reporters, Hastert, an Illinois Republican, did not embrace the idea of a guest worker program such as that contained in legislation approved earlier this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The port of Baltimore is asking the state Board of Public Works to approve a $5.5 million contract to design and install a camera system that would allow security officials to remotely monitor the port's fences, terminals, gates and piers. The contract request, listed on the board's agenda today, comes a month after The Sun reported numerous deficiencies in the port's security systems almost four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Vast areas are not covered by surveillance cameras, and until recently, wooden decoy cameras provided the illusion of security along part of the port's perimeter, the article said.