Kids

DEAR CAL -- We have a 5-year-old boy who loves baseball, and we feel he has potential. Last year he had to play T-ball because of his age and Baltimore County rules. He got very upset because he wanted to play by the real rules. He got very frustrated because most of the children at his age aren't serious about baseball, and he was very discouraged. He could actually play with our 8-year-old because of his skills, but we understand the maturity issue and that most leagues won't let him play up. Can you offer any advice?

In pre-game warm-ups, Corey Donohoe was the most lighthearted athlete on the lacrosse field, just as likely to poke fun at her teammates as stretch her legs. Donohoe even joked with one of the officials during stick checks, prompting a playful pat on the head from a referee who had watched the recent North Harford graduate throughout her lacrosse career. "I just wanted to stay calm. I didn't want to get too nervous for the game and be off my game," Donohoe said of her pre-game antics.

DEAR CAL -- My town is voting on a "no cut" rule for travel ball, meaning everyone who wanted to play would be able to. Do you believe this is a valid rule, or has the town gone too far? Susan Matt, Berkley, Mass. DEAR SUSAN -- Without understanding the age group, I'll take a shot in the dark. At some point, competitive sports progresses to the point that it is based on merit, meaning that the best players get more of an opportunity to play. Early on, when kids are still in the learning and developmental stages, it makes sense to give everybody a fair chance to participate.

DEAR CAL -- What do you think about "knockout" games? Often in practice or camps, when time is limited, these games are played. While I understand the concept of keeping practice and camps fun by adding some competition, do some kids lose out? Often in knockout games, the kids that need the practice most are often knocked out first, leaving them to watch the better players compete. Do you think knockout games are effective for younger kids versus having other competitions/games where the kids can compete continuously?

You might have noticed that none of the Maryland public school teams in this weekend's Breezy Bishop Classic are playing today. That's because of a long-standing Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association rule that prohibits Sunday games unless there's an extraordinary reason, say, to get in tournament games that have been previously canceled because of weather. While Sunday blue laws were relevant at a particular time in our nation's history, they seem anachronistic and irrelevant now, especially given the way we live, with, in some households, multiple kids playing games at the same times on the desired Friday and Saturday slots.

The jumping in place left a few kids winded, at least one boy need to push off from the seat in front of him to clear the floor, and, when the fitness people asked what their favorite activities were, the first answer was the video game Grand Theft Auto. But as the saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Or in this case, 13,000 steps, which is the daily goal that wellness experts gave the students at Westside Elementary School yesterday -- along with pedometers to see how close they come -- as they launched a fitness initiative to target the growing problem of childhood obesity.

Two months before school starts again. That's 60 days, give or take a few, to coax a kid to open the front door and walk outside. Given the number of electronic gizmos and touch-screen doodads crying for attention, that's no small achievement. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids ages 8 to 18 spend 6.5 hours a day wired to things with screens and ear buds. So how do you succeed in your "No Child Left Inside" campaign? Perhaps a trail of Reese's Pieces from bedroom door to backyard - a reverse E.T. scenario - might work.

Later. That is the inevitable reply when I ask the kids to take out the trash, clean up their rooms or, while on vacation, pose for a family picture. They are so loath to pose that it's become a family joke. "This is so annoying," says 16-year-old Melanie, as she rolls her eyes. "This is taking too long," her brother, Matt, adds. In frustration, I've been known to stamp my ski boots in the snow or refuse to walk another step. What will I promise, they say, laughing, to get them to stop what they're doing long enough to get that perfect holiday-card shot -- on top of a ski mountain, clustered around a giant turtle in the Galapagos Islands, or on the boat they're sailing in the British Virgin Islands?

It was a tie game, so we were into extra innings. But then, the other guys kept crossing the plate, it was getting late and chilly, and I had left my sweater in the car. So when my husband asked, "Wanna leave?" I did what I've never done in a lifetime of baseball fandom. I left before the end of the game. I've sat, soaked, through rain delays; I've sat, hopeful, through hopeless games; I even sat, in the dark, for 2 1/2 hours at Camden Yards that night in August 1997 when they couldn't get the lights to work and finally postponed the game.

Auditions tend to inspire their own category of tired cliches. The proverbial lump in the throat. The butterflies dancing in the stomach. The knock-knock-knocking of the knees.The problem with cliches is that they're often true, and if you're the one auditioning for a play, an orchestra or a dance company, the platitudes begin to pile up fast.`Try to have fun'Eva Anderson, founder of Eva Anderson Dancers LTD in Columbia, says auditions are like little tests. Can you project an emotion or a feeling?

News item: : The Hereford boys cross country team lost its Baltimore County championship because of a minor underwear violation by the fourth-place finisher. My take: : This is the kind of thing that drives more and more kids to video games, where there are no overly officious adults to take the fun out of everything. Related news item: : Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association official Steve Smith acknowledged in The Baltimore Sun that the infraction had absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the race and also said that officials headed off a number of other uniform violations before the race so those kids could run legally.

Jon & Kate Plus 8, a TV show about a large family that millions of viewers have come to care about, returns to prime time Monday night as a tabloid-ravaged tale of divorce. With its return comes a host of questions that will perhaps tell us as much about ourselves as the Gosselins. Will viewers come back to the TLC reality series about a family with sextuplets and twins now that Dad's got a condo and a lady friend in Manhattan, and Mom's reported to have a condo and a boyfriend in Maryland - and the kids are living in the family mini-mansion in Pennsylvania with only one parent at a time?

The cops in Baltimore's Southwestern Police District knocked on 28 doors, searching for 28 juveniles they had locked up in the past month. They were serving not warrants to put them back in jail but invitations to a meeting, to teach, to guide, to inform, to keep them from being locked up a second time. Deputy Maj. Charles V. Carter Sr. led off the meeting, held Friday night at the Kedesh House of Prayer Christian Church on West Lombard Street, with a prayer and a reading of grim statistics of juvenile crime - 260 kids under 18 arrested this year in his district alone, 16 of them deemed violent, 27 of them repeat offenders.

Most young football players cringe at the idea of early-morning practices, except when they're led by Ray Lewis. More than 300 Baltimore kids gathered to get hands-on instruction from the Ravens linebacker at the Sun Products Corporation Youth Fitness Clinic at Patterson Park on Saturday, part of Lewis' fifth annual Ray's Summer Days fundraiser weekend. His personal trainer, Monte Sanders, and volunteers led the youngsters through numerous drills. Then the kids learned the importance of proper nutrition and leading a positive lifestyle.

I find it interesting, amusing and a little sad that what Greg Dunn today describes as "magic" we once would have described as routine, common, everyday - a way of life, really. I'm talking baseball and what happens on the rare occasions when kids get together, pretty much on their own, and start a game. This happened last week in Baltimore, and these days that's something worth writing home about. And it gave me an idea. But first, let's hear from Mr. Dunn, whose company, The Crew Works, stages, manages and staffs concerts, film productions and other such events.

Getting kids ready in the morning is often a struggle during the school year, but it's especially difficult this time of year - when the kids (not to mention parents) would rather stay in their warm pajamas. All those hats, gloves and scarves have to be collected and put on, adding to the morning rush. Today I'm passing on some advice from the Wondertime blog's expert advisory board, made up of family experts, who had some tips for taming morning madness: * Make getting ready fun, if you can, by singing songs for each stage of the process.

Ed Reed stands at the epicenter of a storm of more than 500 children turned loose in a field beside Booker T. Washington Middle School on a sunny, humid October morning. Boys and girls occasionally break ranks to reach the Ravens' Pro Bowl safety, shake his hand, exchange a high-five or just say hello. They embrace him at every opportunity. From all appearances, Reed enjoys the repartee as much as the kids. He smiles often and responds to each request as he roams the field on Fitness Day, a day set up by the NFL to emphasize the merits of exercise and healthy diet.

There are many times when fishing with kids beats fishing with grown-ups. Sure, you might spend a great deal of time baiting hooks, wiping fish slime from tiny hands and dodging the occasional incoming bobber. On the other hand, you don't have to talk about gas prices and spineless politicians while scrambling to think of a compliment for fried chicken that tastes like it came in close contact with WD-40. For me, it's no contest. Yesterday morning, as the sun was turning the Chesapeake Bay into the world's largest bowl of steaming bouillabaisse, families willingly left the protection of the cooling woods of Downs Park to take part in the Pasadena Sportfishing Group's fishing derby.

All those devoted to teaching deserve praise and respect, and none more than those who teach where all the school lunches are free, where expectations have been too low for too long, and where every hand goes up when the guest speaker asks: "How many of you know a family member who's in prison?" Ed Morman was there, in a classroom at Patapsco Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore's Cherry Hill, when a former prison warden asked that question. Every hand went up again when the kids were asked if they'd ever been inside a prison for a visit.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- It's been a long time since cowboys parked their ponies on Main Street in what was once proudly marketed as the West's Most Western Town. Today's Scottsdale is two P.F. Chang's, two California Pizza Kitchens and two Merrill Lynch offices. It is art galleries and turquoise shops and boutiques and Beemer convertibles and monster shopping malls serving monster subdivisions hidden behind faux-adobe walls. Fortunately, though you may have to look carefully, Scottsdale is still desert and the mountains -- or at least a short drive from desert and mountains.