Hank Greenberg

I think it is fair to say that Mark Reynolds is on a bit of a tear. In Saturday's second inning, Reynolds hit a 91-mph fastball from CC Sabathia for his 21st home run of the season. It also was his ninth in nine games and seventh in September. How locked in is Reynolds right now? Consider he had seven homers in the first half of the season. And seven since Sept. 2. Reynolds has hit seven homers this season against the Yankees, that ties for most in Orioles history (Ramon Hernandez in 2006)

Recently, The Baltimore Sun interviewed Maryland state director of the American Association of Retired People, Hank Greenberg, who said, "One of the things we're looking to do is to be a resource for anyone who's looking to figure out what's next. " The Social Work Community Outreach Service at the University of Maryland School of Social Work has a program to address that very question. The program, called ReServe Maryland, connects continuing professionals age 55 and over with meaningful, paid part-time service opportunities at nonprofit organizations and public agencies.

After saying last week that Pete Rose broke the rules of baseball by participating in a ceremony before a minor-league game in Reading, Pa., commissioner Fay Vincent apparently now wants to downplay the seriousness of the violation."

With the Baltimore Orioles in the playoffs for the first time since 1997, it's a good time to review great books on the sport, and the best I've read in years is "The Art of Fielding. " Chad Harbach's first novel is about much, much more than baseball. But the sport -- and a small college player's search for perfection -- is the driving force of the tale. Harbach has a great feel for the nuances of baseball, and even readers who aren't sports fans will come away with an understanding of the physical and psychological demands of the game.

The 3,804 runs scored in April were the third most for any single month in baseball history. There were 4,043 runs in August of last year, and 3,807 in May 1995.Hitters are averaging 2.3 homers per game, putting them on a pace for 5,216 homers this season. The record is 4,458 homers in 1987.The AL ERA for April was 5.30, the NL ERA 4.25. The worst AL ERA in history is 5.04 in 1936, and in the NL is 4.97 in 1930.Three teams scored more than 20 runs in a game, the most for a single month since June of 1950.

We've gotten tons of comments from readers about BGE's PeakRewards program after the utility activated an "emergency event" on Friday at the direction of the regional grid operator, triggering air conditioning cycling that left people without cooling for hours on the hottest day since 1936. Check out Jay Hancock's column about PeakRewards , as well as his blog posts about PeakRewards. Here are a couple of items that did not make it into my PeakRewards story today: 1. Paula Carmody of the Office of the People's Counsel advises that the program, which offers customers bill credits as an incentive for agreeing to cycling, might not be a good idea for households in which people are home during the day and could suffer ill effects from the heat.

Starting in May, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. will begin installing "smart meters" in a huge undertaking intended to modernize Central Maryland's electricity grid and save customers money by helping them control energy use. The three-year, $482 million rollout is scheduled to begin in Pasadena and continue in stages until 1.3 million analog electric meters are replaced with digital ones and 700,000 gas meters are upgraded by the end of 2014....

Nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. Maybe we should take it easy on poor ol' gigantic insurer American International Group, whose extensive accounting errors over five years could total $3 billion. After all, a little mistake here, another there. It all adds up. Darn those summer interns; they never get anything right. I'm sure any individual taxpayer among us could stand bravely before an IRS auditor and explain: "OK, so I forgot to add a couple of zeroes on my income tax return.

Voting percentages The Hall of Famers who were named on the highest percentage of ballots in voting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America: Player Year Ballots Votes Pct. Tom Seaver 1992 430 425 98.84 Nolan Ryan 1999 497 491 98.79 Ty Cobb 1936 226 222 98.23 George Brett 1999 497 488 98.19 Hank Aaron 1982 415 406 97.83 Mike Schmidt 1995 460 444 96.52 Johnny Bench 1989 447 431 96.42 Steve Carlton 1994 455 436 95.82 Babe Ruth 1936 226...

Civil and criminal complaints are expected to be announced today against three former top executives at the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary General Reinsurance Corp., and a former senior executive of the American International Group, according to people with direct knowledge of the charges. Those expected to be named in the indictment and civil charges are Ronald E. Ferguson, General Re's former chief executive; Elizabeth A. Monrad, the former chief financial officer; and Robert Graham, the former general counsel.