Hangover

SARASOTA, Fla. -- There's a malaise afflicting baseball executives and managers these days. It's called Strike Hangover, caused by many days and weeks of scouting and negotiating with replacement players. The symptoms are depressed spirits and exceedingly slow radar guns and stopwatches.None of that was in evidence on reporting day at the Orioles' Twin Lakes Park camp, where there are no replacement players. New manager Phil Regan strode happily from meeting to meeting in a bright polo shirt and slacks, his smile broad.

New Orleans. -- Every day since the Republicans won the elections I've woken up with a hangover -- and I haven't been drinking. I keep dreaming that someone turned me in for being an alien. Then I wake up and I remember: I'm not. I'm a U.S. citizen. But just as I relax, I open the paper and see that the new proposals on law and order in the land call for a lot of snitching.Republicans want to force pregnant mothers to tell who the fathers are before they can get an abortion. In California, they are trying to get teachers to snitch on kids that might be aliens.

Richard Bright lives and dies by soccer. He grew up in Manchester, England, playing what the Brits call football, and each spring he takes the field with Hangover United -- a Maryland team that, despite its name, takes its league games seriously. This year, Hangover United's first game is April 5, and Bright has a problem -- he's "not in shape whatsoever. "With this harsh winter, there was little to no opportunity to get out and do something," says the 38-year-old, who lives near Ellicott City.

If some rogue nation - Canada, let's say - wanted to pick the perfect day to invade the United States, today would be the day. Today is the Day of Digestion, the traditional soporific "work" day nestled betwixt holiday and weekend. A day when 9-to-5 becomes 10-to-2 and the most complex chore is reorganizing the Rolodex or unwrapping a turkey sandwich. If anyone says they're working the day after Thanksgiving, they should probably make those little quotation marks people do with their fingers.

Fidelity Investments reports that 70 percent of the Class of 2013 leaves college with on average $35,200 in debt. That's all kinds of debt, from student loans and money owed to Mom and Dad to credit card balances. And half of 2013 graduates say they are surprised how much debt they have accumulated, despite so much publicity on the subject, the Boston-based financial company said in its study released last week. The study found that 39 percent of grads - a jump of 14 percentage points over two years ago - said they might have made different decisions had they realized they would have a debt hangover.

FOR Democrats, the 10-week binge of Mariomania was exciting and left only a residue of empty calories. After the withdrawal of Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York Friday, six major presidential candidates remain, and life moves on.For the media, however, Mariomania has left a massive hangover. Betrayed by a skewed sense of history and a weakness for soap opera soliloquies, the press can convert this contrite katzenjammer into a useful New Year's resolution: From now on, regard political ambition as a felony and treat each suspect as innocent until proven guilty.

At the end of the long, warm night, after 13 innings and 244 minutes and 378 pitches and a couple of Houdini escapes and a finish that pushed 45,903 fans into the parking lots in silence, there was the sight of Randy Milligan in a clubhouse full of tired Orioles, affixing the events of the evening with this label: "Not a hangover game."Not?Not one of those losses that linger, and multiply into more losses?It is a question integral to the Orioles' hopes of catching the Blue Jays. The answer will come quickly.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The B.C. Lions preserved the Canadian way, but couldn't stop the controversy.They kept the Grey Cup out of American hands, but couldn't quiet American voices.The Border War broke out in earnest in the wake of Baltimore's 26-23 loss to the Lions Sunday night in the 82nd Grey Cup.The morning after B.C. was awarded a critical completion on a questionable catch late in the game, Baltimore owner Jim Speros said the Canadian Football League had to address the issue of officiating.

At a town hall meeting in Catonsville last week, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin spent a half-hour answering questions, including whether Congress would cut Medicare, address immigration or impeach President Barack Obama. Despite the breadth of the discussion, the Maryland Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not hear a single question about Iraq or Afghanistan, the broader goal of curtailing terrorism or efforts to bolster security in the United States. Ten years after the attacks of Sept.

When you hear the slogan "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," your imagination starts working overtime, and the raunchy Vegas bachelor party in "The Hangover" shrewdly tapped into those fantasies. It resulted in millions of movie-goers turning up at the box office a couple of years ago. That hit made "The Hangover Part II" as inevitable as, well, the aftermath from a night of hedonistic excess. Although there is nothing particularly novel about the new sequel, it successfully takes the comic formula that paid off in Vegas and geographically transfers it to another celebrated "sin city," Bangkok.