I Knew

It has been since 1969, since he graduated from high school in Cumberland, that Sam Perlozzo spent a summer without wearing a baseball uniform. Yesterday afternoon in his Columbia condominium, hours before the Orioles took on the San Diego Padres, he considered that fact. "It really hasn't sunk in," said Perlozzo, 56, who was fired from his "dream job" as Orioles manager Monday. "I'm sure when the game comes on the TV tonight it will hit me. "It's sad for me, taking on a three-year deal and only getting this far with it. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I felt I was the guy to see it through.

I knew John Leo Virgil Murphy Jr., who was the father of a friend of mine, back in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a former safety engineer for U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co., and when I knew him, he was working as a city housing inspector. Murphy was one of Baltimore's great characters. He was an inveterate lunchtime walker and could be seen wearing his trademark crushed fedora or summer straw hat while slowly puffing on the extra-long cigarettes that were a fixture of his daily downtown perambulations.

As soon as I heard the piercing scream, I knew everything would be fine. As soon as I heard Katie's shrill cry, her vocal protest at being pulled from the dark warmth of the womb to the chilly glare of a Johns Hopkins Hospital operating room, I knew everything would be wonderfully, gloriously fine. It wasn't this way last time. About 18 months earlier, my wife and I had been in a room similar to this one as our son, Christopher, was born. But there was no healthy cry. Christopher had been diagnosed in utero with trisomy 18, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra copy of the No. 18 chromosome.

NEW YORK -- On Aug. 9, 1936, Jesse Owens ran the first leg of the 400 relay at the Berlin Olympics, a race that would lead to the last of his four gold medals in Germany. On Aug. 16, the final day of those Games, Owens was suspended by the Amateur Athletic Union for refusing to take part in the last leg of the cash-grab tour through Europe put on by the AAU and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Owens wasn't paid for his exhibition stops in Cologne, Germany, Prague or London, and was so strapped for cash that he would bum meals off fellow passengers.

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. -- Perhaps it isn't surprising that the person showing the most emotion yesterday after the death of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was his surgeon, Dr. Dean Richardson, the man who spent every day of the past eight months tending to his care. While Barbaro's owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, lost their voices to emotion once or twice during a news conference at the New Bolton Center, Richardson seemed overcome by the loss frequently and wiped tears from his eyes. "This is very difficult to get through," said Richardson, who performed the original life-saving surgery on Barbaro after his devastating injury in the Preakness on May 20. Yesterday, he was the one who advised the Jacksons to euthanize the horse.

Fallston midfielder Matt Nowicki wasn't able to help his team much on the field during the 2005 season. In the season opener against Centennial, his right knee buckled while he was going for a second-half tackle. He had to have surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament, which was followed by a long rehabilitation process. But Nowicki helped the team in ways no one could have anticipated going into the season. Named team captain by coach Christopher Hoover, the junior attended every game and became an unofficial assistant coach.

Can a 41-year-old American male raised on football, basketball and baseball suddenly learn to love soccer? Sure, one can. One just did. One has just spent more time watching soccer in the past month than he had, collectively, in his entire life - and, with no warning and no preparation, suddenly gets what everyone has been talking about. Well, not everything. But the wall definitely is down. I have crossed over. I like this sport - that's a notch below "I love this game," the slogan of my preferred sport, but I'm willing.

Before the twilight completely surrendered to the night Friday, the sky over the River Hill stadium alternately took on purple and orange hues, as if the gods of lacrosse knew something unusual was about to happen. And the conventional wisdom going into the showdown between the Hawks boys lacrosse team and Glenelg's was that the Gladiators would have their hands full slowing River Hill's run-and-gun attack. But Glenelg coach Josh Hatmaker knew the unconventional could happen when attendance for the team's late afternoon film session was double the expected.

BOSTON-- --Heroes in a half-shell. Say it slowly. Don't spit it out. Bounce it around your mouth before letting the words roll off your tongue. Something to savor, isn't it? The Maryland Terps were too everything this season. They were too young. Too inexperienced. And last night they trailed by too much. You know what they thought of it all? Too bad. These Terps just never knew better. They didn't know to quit. Funny the way tear glands work. Six seconds away from disappointment. You bet they would've been crying courtside.

When I first got the assignment to document Iven Bailey and Gary Sells as they completed their senior year at Lake Clifton-Eastern High School, I knew that it would be complicated. Documentary work offers the rare chance to bring some real depth to the reporting, and the methodology is very different. Over time I really was able to develop a detailed picture of who these young homeless men were. Once I had that bit of understanding, I could use it to inform the work. I don't see my role as giving voice to the voiceless.