Olympians

When the officials called his name, 15-year-old Jerome Gregory "Greg" Ellis Jr. patted his father on the back and sauntered to the registration table as if he had already won a ribbon in yesterday's Basketball Skills Competition at West Middle School.Fifteen minutes later, he wore a huge grin as he stood on the first-place winners' step and received a blue ribbon."I asked him was he nervous and he just laughed," said Jerome Gregory Ellis Sr., a special education teacher at South Carroll High School.

It began modestly enough, with 10 swimmers practicing under Tim Pierce and Murray Stephens in 1967 at the Towson YMCA.Today, the North Baltimore Aquatic Club has 130 swimmers working at Loyola High School, the renovated Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center and any other pools nearby where lane space is available.Under Stephens, NBAC's coach and the owner and operator of Meadowbrook, the club has produced five Olympians -- Theresa Andrews, Pat Kennedy, Anita Nall, Beth Botsford and Whitney Metzler -- and some near Olympians and other top-level national swimmers.

D'Andre Stewart, who copes with spina bifida, acts shy around strangers, smiling and ducking his head while speaking almost inaudibly to a new acquaintance.But ask him how much he can powerlift.The 17-year-old from Claremont Special School, paralyzed from the waist down, displays a quiet confidence as he speaks about winning Special Olympic powerlifting competitions, estimating he can raise 80 pounds.(Not to mention his silver medals for bowling.)Stewart's winning tradition continued in yesterday's Baltimore City Special Olympics, where he took a gold medal in a wheelchair race, defeating a competitor in an electric scooter.

This one's pretty easy to deduce, even though it's a shame to have to diminish one person's accomplishments to elevate another's. Nevertheless ... If Cal Ripken Jr. had done what he did in the same year Michael Phelps won his eight Olympic gold medals, who would earn the SI Sportsman of the Year honors? The answer is as simple as the answer to this: Which is bigger, major league baseball or the Olympics? There is no grander stage than the Olympics, and doing what Phelps did on that stage, against the best in his sport, with the eyes of the world on him, eclipses even Ripken's record.

Baseball Diamondbacks: Activated P Robert Ellis. Basketball Nuggets: Acquired draft rights to G Kenny Satterfield from Mavericks for second-round draft pick or future considerations. College Auburn: Suspended F Mack McGadney indefinitely from basketball team for disciplinary reasons. Goucher: Margo Becker (Franklin) was named female Cross Country Runner of the Week in Capital Athletic Conference. Football Bengals: Renegotiated 2001 contract of DT Glen Steele and added two years.

GLYFADA, Greece - None of them had heard the song before at an Olympics, not at their first one in 1952 or their tragic one in 1972 or any of the years before or after. And the funny part even after the crowd stood last night, and the Hatikvah played over the loudspeakers, is that the anthem still couldn't be heard as Israel's flag rose up a center Olympic pole for the first time. Their voices carried too loudly. Their words swelled so proudly. The several hundred Israelis singing at this golden ceremony in this small amphitheater on the edge of the Saronic Gulf, as well as the several hundred more who stood outside the gates, overpowered the music with their chorus, their emotion and surely their decades of waiting through murderous suffering and sporting disappointment for one Olympic-sized celebration.

With flashy backhands and grunts that would make Monica Seles blush, pingpong enthusiasts from all over the world battled at the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday for glory and fame in one of the United States' unappreciated sports. For decades, most Americans have dismissed table tennis, viewing it as a nerdy stepchild to football, basketball and baseball - a sport for kids and the poor few who never graduated to the grown-up version, tennis. But this weekend, for the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships at the convention center, there were no snickers - only the pitter-patter of players hitting balls across 144 tables.

The Secret Service detail at the White House operated without the services of Jim Klock for about a month this summer."I finally had to have to surgery on my shoulder," said Klock, a Columbia resident. "Whenever I threw a [bowling] ball, the pain was intense."It wasn't bowling that did the damage to my shoulder. "It was throwing a baseball that started the problem. It compounded a problem with the alignment of the arm and a shoulder that I had since I was a kid."Klock was a pitcher in high school and college and, as most pitchers do, lived with discomfort and pain in his arm."

BaseballAngels: Agreed to terms with OF Gary Thurman to minor-league contract.Devil Rays: Named Bill Evers manager of Triple-A Durham.Giants: Agreed to $600,000, one-year contract with club option for 1999 with SS Rey Sanchez, who had been with Yankees. Invited P Jason Brester, P Dean Hartgraves, P Chris Brock, P Jeff Darwin, P Rick Huisman, P Steve Soderstom, P Erik Plantenberg, C Guiseppe Chiaramonte, C Henry Mercedes, C Yorvit Torrealba, IF Jeff Ball, IF Matt Howard and OF Alex Diaz to major-league camp.

NOW THAT Michael Phelps has won the first of a possible eight gold medals, isn't it time to dispense with the ridiculous notion that the expectations surrounding America's top Olympian are more inflated than the Goodyear Blimp? I read Kevin Cowherd's column on that subject the other day, and I have only one thing to say, baby: Seven to go. If you think some of us have lost perspective with regard to Baltimore's brilliant, handsome, invincible, God-like Olympic swimming superstar, then take your defeatist attitude somewhere else.