Locker

Greg Little repeatedly dropped the ball Sunday afternoon, and again after it when he ducked out of the locker room without speaking to the media. But he set about correcting both of those mistakes on Monday. He faced the music and stated his determination to become an elite receiver like Cincinnati's A.J. Green. "It was kind of like when basketball players have a bad day shooting free throws," he said. "Sometimes you can't throw it into the ocean. Sometimes you just can't ever hang onto it. It's definitely something I can learn and grow from.

A group of reporters was gathered around Ravens center Matt Birk this week, asking difficult questions about the team's pitiful pass protection, when someone across the locker room turned up his stereo as loud as it would go and began to sing. You didn't even need to turn around to identify the troubadour. Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in the Ravens' locker room over the last five years knew immediately that it was Terrell Suggs. When things get a little too tense during the season, especially after a difficult loss, there are a few things you can always count on at the team's complex in Owings Mills.

Joy swelled through every corner of Nationals Park late Thursday afternoon after a landmark victory by the winningest Washington Nationals team in six years. But before the announced 21,161 could reach the exits, and the players could change into their street clothes for their flight to Chicago, euphoria faded into shock, then shattered into a jumble of emotions. Manager Jim Riggleman had chosen this heady moment — the day the Nationals moved over .500 in June for the first time since 2005 — to resign abruptly, taking a principled stand against what he saw as an unfair contract situation: the team's refusal to pick up the option that would have kept him in place for the 2012 season.

Derrek Lee, who had been an Oriole for all of 31/2 months, summoned his struggling teammates together and delivered a message that was a mix of encouragement, insight and advice. With the Orioles in the midst of an eight-game losing streak in mid-April, Lee urged his teammates to relax, acknowledged that he needed to start doing his part and concluded there was too much talent in the home clubhouse for the lineup to be performing as it was. "He thought it was appropriate at the time, and so did everybody else," Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis said.

Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco has accomplished a lot in his young career -- three winning seasons, three postseason appearances and four playoff wins -- and he is taking on more of a leadership role entering his fourth season. But NFL Network analyst Jaime Dukes reports that there are doubters in the locker room. According to Dukes, via USA Today’s Nate Davis , some Ravens players think Flacco needs to “put a little more time in,” which is surprising because we are used to hearing that Flacco is a film nut and a gym rat. “He still may have to work a little harder than he's working right now," Dukes said on NFL Total Access on Wednesday.

— Ed Reed cracked a wide smile as he listened to running back Willis McGahee, whose locker neighbored Reed's in the visiting locker room at Arrowhead Stadium, recount to the media his 25-yard touchdown dash through the heart of the defense that cemented the Ravens' 30-7 thrashing of the Kansas City Chiefs in an AFC wild-card playoff game Sunday. Moments later, when it was Reed's turn to talk to reporters huddled around his locker, the mood was discernibly sadder. It was the first time Reed had spoken publicly since news emerged late Friday that his younger brother had gone missing in Louisiana after jumping into the Mississippi River while eluding police.

The first seven years of Cory Redding's NFL career, he didn't have a lot to do come the first week of January. Redding, who was born and raised in Texas, would head to his offseason home in Austin and try to put another season of football in his rearview mirror. Sometimes literally. If you wanted to find him while the NFL playoffs were going on, your best chance might have been to rent a 4-wheeler and cruise the dirt roads of the Lone Star State. Because Redding, all 295 pounds of him, often spends his offseason days straddling a 4-wheeler, churning up dust with a smile on his face.

Ravens receiver Anquan Boldin doesn't talk a lot, but he is never at a loss for words. So when the Ravens were stinking up the Georgia Dome Thursday night in Atlanta, Boldin delivered a halftime speech to his teammates. Apparently, some of them didn't get the message, because after quarterback Joe Flacco threw an interception on the Ravens first possession of the third quarter, it was on. And Boldin went off. In front of a national TV audience, Boldin ripped into his offensive teammates in a speech that would have made Gen. George S. Patton proud.

Top administrators at Loyola Blakefield, the Jesuit boys school in Towson, are investigating anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on the locker of a Jewish ninth-grader. The message was discovered late Wednesday and the school maintenance department removed it early Thursday, said Rob Robinson, a spokesman for Loyola Blakefield. Robinson would not describe the graffiti other than to say it included the word "Jew. " "It was very clear," Robinson said. He said the school is interviewing students to determine who is responsible, but police have not been notified.

City school officials said a student hit another student with a handgun inside the locker room at the Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship high school in West Baltimore Monday. City Schools police received a report from a school coach that a student had a handgun in a locker room after school Monday. The incident remains under investigation and school officials said a warrant has been issued for the student's arrest. The unidentified student has not returned to school, officials said.