Primer

Crafty Guy routed the field in the $40,000 Primer Stakes for 2-year-olds yesterday at Laurel Park. The winner completed the six-furlong distance for trainer Jerry Robb in an impressive 1 minute, 8.98 seconds and paid $7. Jockey Mark Johnston hustled the son of Crafty Prospector out of the gate and clicked off fractions of 22, 44.3 and 56.2 seconds. Morning-line favorite Mt. Carson loomed boldly turning for home, but Johnston roused his mount, and they powered to a 3 1/2 -length victory.

First things first: Grantland has a terrific look-back at Hunter S. Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. " I always start the Derby primer with a link to this story -- and by always, I mean I also did it last year -- and this adds even more context to how the story came about. A very popular question I receive from fellow Baltimoreans upon my return to our fair city by the bay is: How does the Derby compare to Preakness? The answer I ended up giving usually went something like this: The Preakness debauchery seems to be compressed into one day and in one spot, the infield, where once upon a time people ran across the portable toilets for sport.

Tell me this isn't a big weekend in Crabtown, with the Army-Navy game at M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday and the Ravens poised to deliver their sixth straight underwhelming performance against the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. With thousands of out-of-town visitors descending on our city and a national TV audience tuning in for both games, we answer some Frequently Asked Questions about Baltimore, including the big one. Let's get the big one out of the way first.

The NFL offseason heats up on Tuesday when the free agency period begins and the NFL draft will take place next month. In anticipation of those events, blogger and reporter Matt Vensel will look at six key positions the Ravens might address in free agency and the NFL draft in the days leading up to the start of free agency. The Ravens are heading into life without inside linebacker Ray Lewis, but they must also prepare for life without free safety Ed Reed, who is also expected to be patrolling the halls of the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday.

The All Rap Round Robin has become a refreshing staple of Baltimore's underground hip-hop scene. That tradition continues Friday night at Floristree, and it's only getting bigger. Now in its fifth year, the annual showcase expands to 12 acts from last year's nine. (Thirteen if you include Secret Weapon Dave, the night's DJ.) That's a lot of performers, and you'd be forgiven for not knowing all of them. You can read my primer on the night's bill here . It'll be published in Wednesday's b and in the weekend edition of the Sun. Words can only do this unique event so much justice.

In his home state of Florida and at Philadelphia Park, The Material Boy launched his racing career by competing at distances usually reserved for quarterhorses.The experience served the gray colt well yesterday at Pimlico when The Material Boy came blazing out of the gate on the rail, led all the way and went on to a three-quarter-length victory over fast-closing Spanish Halo in the $50,000-added Primer Breeders' Cup Stakes."He's really fast," said jockey Mark Johnston, who rode The Material Boy for his third win on the card.

"Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom," by Doug Henwood. Verso. 372 pages. $25.Doug Henwood has no academic degrees in economics. She is prepared to be attacked as a dilettante, despite six years of research devoted to this book.In an effort to bring audience members into what they are quite likely to perceive as a stuffy tent, Henwood invokes a previous writer who tried explaining Wall Street to commoners. That previous writer is H.L. Mencken, who wrote an essay titled "The Dismal Science."

After a 12-year absence, a horse trained by H. Steward Mitchell returned to the winner's circle yesterday in the Primer Stakes.It was the fifth time in 17 runnings that a Mitchell runner has won the race, which jokingly has been referred to as the H. Steward Mitchell Stakes.In the late 1970s, the Bowie-based trainer won consecutive runnings of the race with Iron Derby, Iron Streak and Rare Wind, horses he had purchased in the Florida 2-year-old Sales. Then Mitchell won again in 1981 with Gay Christopher and was second in 1987 with Russian Diplomacy.

"What Every Parent Needs to Know About 1st, 2nd & 3rd Grades," by Toni S. Bickart, Diane Trister Dodge and Judy R. Jablon. Sourcebooks, 1997; $12.95; 166 pages. (To order, call 800-43-BRIGHT.)Three educators researched what works and what is outdated in today's schools.Full of useful information and practical resources, this book empowers parents with knowledge and competence to become advocates for their child's early education.The authors provide clear descriptions about developmental stages of early learning, and their book includes a checklist so parents can compare their child's classroom to effective learning principles.

Punch up: http://money.cnn.com/pf/101/ Why it clicks: Money can be a complicated subject, but it needn't be overwhelming if you start by learning the basics. For a quick primer - or a refresher - turn to "Money 101," a 23-step program for mastering the basics of managing your finances. The download: Created by the writers and editors of Money magazine, this quick course touches on saving, budgeting, banking, investing, borrowing and planning for retirement, just to name a few topics. The information is delivered in easy-to-understand language that helps demystify complex topics.

There's only a month to go until the start of the most anticipated college lacrosse season, well, ever. Why the excitement? There's the return of Cornell attackman Rob Pannell, the 2011 USILA National Player of the Year, who missed most of last season with a broken foot, but really what will make 2013 different is that the game itself will be different -- much different. Sweeping rules changes , including the adoption of a shot clock for the first time, have been crafted to make the "fastest game on two feet" even faster.

I know a lot of you out there are not digesting the news of Nick Swisher as a potential Oriole particularly well. His griping and guffawing rub some people the wrong way, in other dugouts and in the stands throughout baseball. But the guy probably is the best fit position-wise and skills-wise for the Orioles in the free-agent market. He can play first base -- and is solid there -- or the outfield. He is a switch-hitter who gets on base and has hit 21 or more homers in eight straight seasons.

Fort Meade's rapid growth in the past few years has made it the state's largest employer, but getting a foot in the door — or, rather, inside the guarded fence line — can be daunting. Many of the Army installation's 56,000 jobs require a security clearance. And though it's one base, Fort Meade contains 95 employers, including the National Security Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency. When local officials held an event last week to demystify Fort Meade hiring, 300 people showed up, armed with notebooks and resumes.

Although it's commonplace for opera-goers to attend preperformance lectures and study libretti before attending unfamiliar operas, such preparation is seldom part of ordinary theater-going. This changed when Colonial Players Inc. scheduled a challenging work by a major playwright with Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, realizing that audience members might welcome some advance preparation. Winner of the 1993 Laurence Olivier award for best play when it premiered in London, and two years later on Broadway the winner of the New York Drama Critics Award, Stoppard's Arcadia moves beyond the usual human appetites to the desire to know about our surroundings in landscape architecture, thermodynamics, the chaos theory, literature and Romanticism.

Wall treatments invariably stamp a house with their era. Think about the bright (even garish) mixed-pattern papers used in Victorian design, or the bold geometric papers used in the '30s, '40s and '50s. Or the ubiquitous off-white paint that dominated ,, the '60s and '70s. Knotty pine paneling was popular in the '50s and '60s, especially for dens and club basements. The look can be quaint or dated, but most people who buy an old house long to update the surfaces.That's the goal of a reader who said in an e-mail message, "I have some knotty pine paneling I'd like to paint, rather than replace with drywall.