Purge

WHO WOULDN'T be mad at corporate America? I assume even Ken Lay's dog is a little hacked off at how things are going. Last August, Enron boss Lay said there were "no previously unknown problem issues" at the energy company. Five months later, Enron was in bankruptcy proceedings, and Lay had presided over the breathtaking destruction of $70 billion in wealth. If three examples of anything make a trend, as journalists joke, the corporate dishonesty exposed in the last eight months is a megatrend, an era-defining avalanche of bad news.

The Ravens didn't let their first free-agent visitor of this off-season leave the building. Shortly after meeting with team officials yesterday, quarterback Jeff Blake quickly signed a one-year deal for the NFL veteran minimum of $750,000. Blake represents the team's first free-agent addition since their salary cap purge in early March. Ravens officials remain publicly committed to Chris Redman as their starter and have penciled in Blake as the backup heading into tomorrow's three-day minicamp.

More than $400,000 in damages has been awarded by a federal judge to a former assistant Baltimore comptroller found by a jury to have been fired illegally because of gender and race. U.S. District Judge David A. Faber awarded the damages to Erwin A. Burtnick, a city employee for 26 years before his civil service job was eliminated in 1992 by then-Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean. Burtnick filed his federal discrimination suit against the city and McLean in late 1994, claiming that his ouster was part of "a purge and wholesale dismissal" of Jewish and other white male executives in her office.

Esther's Pillow, by Marlin Fitzwater. PublicAffairs. 242 pages. $25. Marlin Fitzwater handled the media for the White House during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. He still lives in the Washington, D.C., area, but he has never forgotten his Abilene, Kan., roots. Those roots led to this novel, Fitzwater's first. The plot is based on events of 1911 involving Marlin's great-uncle Jay Fitzwater and great-grandfather the Rev. Levi Fitzwater. It is not a pretty story, and, until recently, Fitzwater had no idea such shame had befallen an ancestor.

A season of progress has brought the Orioles this far: Instead of asking which veterans to purge, they spend this July contemplating whether to add or subtract. Four weeks remain before baseball's unofficial trade deadline. Not ready to consider themselves a legitimate playoff contender, the Orioles now ponder whether to accelerate their drive to attain such a label. They do so in a climate promising frantic industry-wide dumping of salaries and a clogged National League chase for the postseason.

CHICAGO - Count manager Mike Hargrove among those who would be surprised by another July purge of the Orioles' clubhouse. With less than a month remaining before the waiver deadline and an accompanying flurry of trade activity, Hargrove said last night that he doesn't anticipate anything rivaling last summer's exodus of Charles Johnson, Harold Baines, Mike Bordick, Mike Timlin, Will Clark and B.J. Surhoff. "We've done that, so I don't see any reason to do it again. I don't see us doing that.

It's not, strictly speaking, a diet, even though most people who go through it for an extended period of time do indeed lose weight. And deprivation and self-denial aren't guiding principles - even though these are the feelings people most often associate with the practice of fasting. Short for "detoxification," the health detox, as it has come to be known, is exactly what it sounds like: a period of time used to purge - or so practitioners believe - the body of harmful toxic substances.

Beginning to make his mark on one of the city's most troubled agencies, Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano has forced out two top administrators in a major shake-up of the Section 8 rent-subsidy program. The acting deputy executive director of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City also left the agency Friday in what Graziano said was a voluntary decision made after he hired an outside candidate to fill the job permanently. Graziano said the Section 8 dismissals reflect concerns he and federal regulators have about the program.

"UM, SO DO you have an eating disorder?" asked a woman who had known me for five years. "Um, so do you have an eating disorder?" asked a colleague who had known me for 11. "So, um, do you have an eating disorder?" asked my sister who has known me all my life, 41 years and counting. The source of these queries was not my stunningly svelte figure, I regret to say. All three were responding to a piece of fiction I had written. And while they were sophisticated readers who were not quick to read fiction as autobiography, the authenticity of detail I provided about anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating seemed to convince them that I must have gone beyond normal research tools.

The abrupt departure of five present or former All-Stars from the Orioles' roster may have rejuvenated an aging club, but it is likely to make selling tickets -- and caps, bratwurst and corporate sponsorships -- harder. Next to wins, baseball fans most like to see famous faces on the field, according to sports marketing experts. And the Orioles appear to be headed into a "rebuilding period" that will lack both wins and famous faces for at least a season or two. "When you basically disassemble your franchise -- and if that's not disassembling the franchise, it's pretty close -- it means that there are going to be some significant marketing challenges there," said Dean Bonham, president of the Bonham Group Inc., a Denver-based sports consulting firm.