Gus Johnson

SURE, THEY'VE been gone for more than three decades, but we still have a soft spot for the NBA franchise formerly known as the Baltimore Bullets. The now-Washington Wizards ended their season this past weekend, losing to the Miami Heat to conclude an 0-4 sweep. But it was an honorable effort and the pain shouldn't last. The Wizards had a turnaround year, their best in a quarter-century. The Bullets weren't much of a success when they came here from Chicago in 1963 either. But in a decade in Baltimore, a playoff-caliber team emerged with stars such as Wes Unseld, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, Kevin Loughery, Gus Johnson and Jack Marin.

IT'S pitiful enough when a sports team performs consistently poorly over a period of many years. It's even worse when the team we have in mind, the Washington Bullets of the National Basketball Association, is still remembered in these parts as an exciting and powerful club during its long-ago Baltimore incarnation.The Bullets' plight has gotten so bad that one of their latest advertising campaigns focuses not on the home squad but on other good teams that will face Washington at the Capital Centre next season.

Brenda Lemon lives in Laurel and bowls in five -- that's right, five-- leagues each week.Monday, it's the Ball and Chain league in Woodlawn; Tuesday, a mixed league in Fort Meade; Wednesday, the Bendixmixed in Columbia; Thursday, in Columbia again with the Hi-Flyers; and, Saturday, it's back to Woodlawn for another mixed league.It was with the Hi-Flyers at Brunswick Columbia on March 12 that Brenda put together games of 201, 267 and 211 for a career-high series of 689. That 267 is her high game.

He wasn't much to look at - a slender, 6-foot-3 guard with knobby knees, creaky hips and elbows that looked as if they had been run through a pencil sharpener. But, oh, could Earl Monroe play basketball. For four years, Monroe wowed the crowds in Baltimore with circus shots, between-the-legs dribbles and no-look passes. "God couldn't go one-on-one with Earl Monroe," former Bullet Ray Scott once said of his Hall of Fame teammate. From the time Monroe hit town as a rookie in 1967, the Civic Center was his juke joint.

On the front page of last week's Baltimore Business Journal was a story to touch the distant places of the heart. It was a sports story. It brought back memories of Earl Monroe dancing, and Wes Unseld powerful as a redwood, and Gus Johnson, who was the godfather of Julius Erving and thus the great-godfather of Michael Jordan, who now shaves his head in our living rooms.The shaving of the head, we will get back to. The story in the Journal says Baltimore tops every metropolitan area in America (except one, San Diego)

Nothing says NCAA basketball mayhem like the words of Gus Johnson calling a down to the wire game. "Cold-blooded," Johnson howled last Saturday when Washington's Isiah Thomas, well, cold-bloodedly ended the Pac-10 championship game in overtime against Arizona with a jump shot at the buzzer. UCLA fans still love to replay Johnson's call of the 2006 West Regional semifinals when the Bruins came from 17 points down to beat Gonzaga in the final seconds. "What a game," Johnson screamed as Jordan Farmar made a steal and a pass to Luc Richard Mbah a Moute for a layup in the final seconds, "what a game, unbelievable after being down by 17. " It wasn't so much the words as the tone, a tone as excited as any fan, UCLA or otherwise, who was watching at home.

Larry Cavolina and Mark Wolff heard the news that CBS had regained the rights to telecast the NFL just as everyone else did last winter.But it wasn't until Wolff, the lead producer on CBS' telecasts, and Cavolina, the director, walked through the New York Giants' training camp in Albany, N.Y., with former Giants quarterback Phil Simms last month that the concept became reality.CBS would be doing football again."We're walking on the field and Larry says to me, 'Man, isn't it great to be doing football again?

The player who scored the biggest basket in Baltimore Bullets history turned 68 Thursday. Happy Birthday, Mad Dog. "I can still shoot," Fred Carter, the man with the feral nickname, said from his home in Norristown, Pa. "I can't make the 20-footer, but I'm good from 12 to 15. The range isn't there, but the jump shot is. " The shot was there 42 years ago, too, in the seventh and deciding game of the 1971 NBA Eastern Conference finals....

It isn't just because he once kidnapped a general that you should know about Seymour Smith or because when Wes Unseld went into the Hall of Fame, there was Smith sitting at his table or even because he can read type upside down. No, the reason you should know about Smith is that when he retires today, after working at The Baltimore Sun for 40-plus years, no one will have ever said an unkind word about him. It must be a record.Smith joined The Sun in 1944, at age 16, as a wide-eyed copy boy in the pre-computer, pre-television glory days when city rooms didn't look like insurance offices and when, inside a man's desk, there was as likely to be a bottle of gin as there was a dictionary.

LOS ANGELES - Yesterday was just another day at the Southern California beach for Sam Cassell, with the usual drill, including hosting the family and playing point guard in the NBA All-Star Game. Cassell (Dunbar), selected as a reserve for the Western Conference squad, said he spent the morning and afternoon relaxing with his family before coming to Staples Center for last night's game. The hoopla of being the second-oldest first-time All-Star in league history rolled off Cassell's back easily.