Hustle

Much has been written on this page and elsewhere about what's wrong with baseball, from performance-enhancing drugs to the out-of-whack economics of the sport. Let us give equal attention to something that is right with the national pastime - Jerry Narron. Mr. Narron is manager of baseball's oldest franchise, the Cincinnati Reds, and on Wednesday night he did something every baseball fan with basic cable and a memory of Little League has been aching to do for years - he benched a star player for not hustling on a routine play.

With the Grand Prix of Baltimore over, workers were taking down fences, removing safety barriers and opening streets Monday with the goal of restoring the flow of traffic through Downtown Baltimore in time for the Tuesday morning commute. By 5 a.m. Tuesday, Grand Prix of Baltimore General Manager Tim Mayer said, all major streets around the two-mile circuit would be open to traffic. Only Sharp Street, which connects Pratt and Conway streets through the Baltimore Convention Center, would still be closed, he said.

Hustle: the Myth, Life and Lies of Pete Rose.Michael Y. Sokolove.Simon & Schuster.304 pages. $19.95. We all know Pete Rose has a few character flaws. He gambled obsessively. He cheated on his wife. He pooh-poohed suggestions that he hadn't been a devoted father with the memorable quote, "I'm a great father. I just bought my daughter a Mercedes-Benz."Now along comes "Hustle" with yet more reasons to wonder how this man ever got his picture on a Wheaties box.Here are my new favorite things to dislike about Rose, all gleaned from Michael Sokolove's exhaustively reported, unauthorized biography, "Hustle: the Myth, Life and Lies of Pete Rose."

As of this moment, Huntsville, Ala., is the "Rocket City," a place best known for housing the military's missile development program. But if it were up to G-Side, the city's of-the-moment rap duo of ST 2 Lettaz and Yung Clova, Huntsville would be hip-hop's next hub. ST compares his hometown to another significant location in rap history. "Huntsville is the 'Ville, man," ST says. "Everyone hustles here. It's Alabama's Harlem. Everyone has a job and a side hustle. " Everyone, including his partner-in-rhyme.

EMMITSBURG -- Chad Stull is not the most talented of Mount St. Mary's players, but none of his teammates exceeds his enthusiasm and hustle. So, Stull was the perfect entry into the game last night when coach Jim Phelan decided to apply all-out defensive pressure against Monmouth.With the 6-foot-5 senior functioning as the big man in a lineup that also included a small forward and three guards, the Mountaineers forced Monmouth into turnover after turnover in the second half and rolled to an 81-65 Northeast Conference victory at Knott Arena.

Jeremy Baker may not have all the skills that other great Calvert Hall soccer players have had, but he more than makes up for that with hustle."When I was a sophomore, the only reason I made the [varsity] was my aggressiveness," Baker said. "I didn't need skills. We had [all-metro players] Brian Bugarin and J.J. [Kremer]. My role was to just get the ball and cross it."Since then, Baker's skills have improved, but it is his hustle and aggressiveness that have led second-ranked Calvert Hall (10-0-1)

BARCELONA, Spain -- The Dream Team-Croatia gold-medal basketball game became one of the year's best international hustling events.The parking lots outside the arena were full last night of ticket searchers and ticket scalpers.Undercover policemen made arrests, and the "honest" scalpers were talking about the low morals of the "crooked" ones.Tickets prices ranged from as high as $750 a pair three hours before the game to as low as $125 for one just minutes before tip-off.Face value: $95 a ticket.

"I guess it really started in 1961," Sonny Bono (Jay Underwood) says in voice-over at the start of "And the Beat Goes On: The Sonny and Cher Story" tonight on ABC."Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's record that year. Chubby Checker was twisting at the Peppermint Lounge, and I was delivering meat."That's as much social history or context as we get in this screwy film about the mom-and-pop singing duo from the 1960s and '70s. And even this isn't factually correct. It was Joey Dee and the Starlighters who were twisting at the Peppermint Lounge in 1961.

In his second varsity season, Brian Eads, a 6-foot-6 senior center, has provided strong inside play coming off the bench for the Howard Lions, who finished the regular season 14-6. Eads, who averages five points and seven rebounds, prides himself on strong defense, hustle and helping control the boards. Along with playing basketball, Eads has been in JROTC for four years and is battalion commander this year, responsible for 115 cadets. Maintaining a 3.17 grade point average, he is considering Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel and plans to major in business.

MIAMI -- Hustle Your Bustle led all the way in the $56,100 Aspidistra Handicap for fillies and mares on the grass.Ridden by Jose Velez Jr., Hustle Your Bustle ran 1 1/8 miles in 1:46 4/5 and paid $10.60, $6.60 and $4.80. Seaquay, a 12-1 shot, paid $9.80 and $7.20. Bounding Boldly paid $8.80 to show.Hustle Your Bustle grabbed the lead leaving the gate and was one length in front into the first turn. From the three-sixteenths pole to the wire, it was strictly a two-horse race.Hustle Your Bustle led Seaquay by two lengths at the eighth pole and maintained a safe margin to the wire.

He has been in five movies, 40 countries and thousands of pool rooms. He met his wife, Francine, giving her a lesson in the game. Mike Massey grew up in a little town near Knoxville, Tenn. "on the other side of the tracks" and wound up in his sport's Hall of Fame. Picking up a pool cue for the first time when he was 8 and starting to play seriously when he was 13, Massey saw potential shots on the smooth green felt like a tailback might see a developing hole on a swath of green grass.

Common kept his cool last week — and his artistic faith. While controversy swirled around his appearance at the White House for a poetry reading, the rapper-actor was anchoring a movie in Baltimore that should quiet even those pundits who tried to paint him as a gangsta. With concentration and intensity, he was helping first-time writer-director Sheldon Candis and a superb ensemble flesh out a script that proves (among other things) that gangsterism doesn't pay. "LUV" — it stands for "Learning Uncle Vincent" — captures the turning point in the life of an 11-year-old boy named Woody (Michael Rainey Jr)

Any place that can shut me up, slow me down and get me to smell the roses wins a spot on my list of favorite places. When it also happens to serve a really great cup of coffee, I designate it a personal four-star restaurant. These places invariably display character that flavors every other trait and detail. Enter Red Canoe Bookstore and Cafe. 12:45 I am behind schedule with an early afternoon meeting looming and weighty work-related issues burdening my brain. Glancing around as we walk through a tiny dining room, my friend and I see no empty tables.

It's a familiar scene for members of the Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team. At halftime and the conclusion of every game this season, after coach Dave Pietramala says what's weighing on his mind, he asks the same question. "Every time we come off the field for halftime or at the end of the game, the first thing Coach Petro asks before getting the stats is, 'Are we getting the ground balls? Are we winning the ground ball war?'" sophomore midfielder John Ranagan said. "… This year, it's been the one thing we've stressed.

It was one of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's most famous inventions, in 1714. But after nearly 300 years on the market, the still-common mercury thermometer now appears headed for extinction. While many Maryland residents probably still have them in their medicine cabinets, or on their walls, the retail sale of mercury thermometers has been banned in Maryland since 2002 because of mercury's hazards as a powerful neurotoxin. There are similar bans or restrictions in at least 17 other states, with more such legislation pending elsewhere, according to the Interstate Mercury Education and Reduction Clearinghouse.

When Juan Samuel was introduced as Orioles manager before the game against the Boston Red Sox at Camden Yards on Friday night, the change in the dugout elicited a mildly positive response from the crowd. Samuel was officially announced at 6:57 p.m., during pre-game introductions, and he flashed a smile when he was shown on the video board before presenting the lineup card at 7:01 p.m. While the reaction from the stands wasn't overwhelmingly vocal, several Orioles fans shared their opinion on the team's decision to replace Dave Trembley with Samuel before the homestand.

I don't think they should display it (nude art). I think there's enough teen-agers and younger kids around there; it's not appropriate for them. At galleries, the pictures are fine. I don't agree with a lotof these things they're showing at New York galleries -- they're tasteless. It gets to the point where they're banned. You want to encourage families to attend (the festival). I don't think (the nude art) will keep them away, but once they're there, the parents may want to hustle their kids past them.

"I just want to be a professional fisherman. That's about it." Allen Iverson Philadelphia 76ers guard, on what he might do after he retires "I'm sure 20 years from now, they will still be talking about this one." Yaniv Green Maccabi Tel Aviv center, on his team's exhibition win over the Toronto Raptors yesterday "It's just not a good sign when the ushers running on to the field for the seventh-inning stretch display more energy than the starting left fielder who is getting paid millions to play a game."

When Gogol Bordello hits the stage, chaos is the only certainty. Led by the spindly, mustachioed Eugene Hutz, the ragtag eight-member troupe churns through a maniacal mixture of punk and Gypsy music, romping around the room and whipping audiences into a fervor. "What we do on stage is so fun, it radiates," Hutz said. "It's the best thing I could possibly think of doing. When we all get on the same page — all eight of us — and give it, there isn't much choice." After more than 10 years, Gogol Bordello has live performances down pat, Hutz said.

Under fire for being unable to generate a consistent pass rush, the Ravens' defensive line turned up the heat on Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. The defensive front recorded 2 1/2 of the unit's four sacks, and although the Ravens wound up dropping a 23-20 decision to their AFC North rivals, members of the defensive line felt positive about their showing Sunday. "We just knew that as a D-line, we were kind of hurting on the back end with the defensive backs, and we kind of put it on ourselves that we needed to pressure Ben and get to him so that he couldn't magnify our DBs," said defensive tackle Haloti Ngata, who had a sack.