Sidekicks

The San Diego Sockers and the Dallas Sidekicks have come under new ownership and will be treated as new franchises in the 1991-92 season, Major Soccer League commissioner Earl Foreman announced yesterday.Foreman also said the Wichita Wings, who had to meet a 5,000 season ticket sale deadline by 5 p.m. yesterday, reached their goal and are ready to show a letter of credit. Foreman also said the Tacoma Stars are approximately 2,600 season tickets from their goal of 4,000, which they must meet by July 29."

Ed McMahon, who for 30 years rode shotgun to Johnny Carson on NBC's legendary The Tonight Show and became the model for a generation of talk-show sidekicks, died early Tuesday. He was 86. Mr. McMahon died at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Westwood, Calif., according to NBC, the network for whom he worked more than three decades. The entertainer and TV pitchman had been seriously ill for several years. He had been at the UCLA medical facility for the past three weeks being treated for pneumonia, according to a spokesman.

The odds were stacked so high against Baltimore Blast goalkeeper Steve Powers Saturday night that it would have taken a near miracle for him to come out of the game with a victory.Powers never had played one game of indoor soccer, he had participated in only 15 practices with the Blast over two months, he had not practiced in a week, and he had only 19 1/2 hours to prepare mentally and physically for his Major Soccer League debut.Also, he was facing the Dallas Sidekicks and their great scorer Tatu at the Baltimore Arena in front of his many fans and friends from the Maryland Bays, for whom he has been an outstanding outdoors goalkeeper for three years.

Capsules by Michael Sragow. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. The Dark KnightHeath Ledger gives a bravura performance as the Joker in this handsome piece of work. But it goes from absorption to excruciation within 20 minutes, and then goes on for two hours more. It's scaled to be an urban epic about the deterioration of hope and possibility in Batman's (Christian Bale) hometown, Gotham City, but there isn't a single inspired moment in it. It's all about the responses of citizens, lawmen and criminals to the emergence of the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins.

Tatu scored two goals, giving him a club-record 74 for season, as the Dallas Sidekicks damaged the Wichita Wings' playoff chances with an 8-4 victory Thursday night in Dallas.A victory would have lifted Wichita to within half a game of third-place Baltimore in the Major Soccer League Eastern Division.Tatu tied his Dallas record for most goals in a season, 73, late in third period on a shootout after being given a second chance when goalie Kris Peat's hand touched the ball outside the box. He scored his 74th early in the fourth period.

Not all is well with the Dallas Sidekicks these days.Sidekicks owner Phil Cobb said last week that he expects to lose more than $800,000 this season, prompting him to put the team up for sale.Cobb said he has received overtures from one group of investors that would move the team to Cincinnati and most likely continue play in the Major Soccer League.Cobb said there is a chance the Cincinnati group would take the team out of the MSL and put it in the indoor National Professional Soccer League (formerly American Indoor Soccer Association, which includes the Hershey Impact)

DALLAS -- Tim Wittman's explanation for the Baltimore Blast's lackluster performance against the Dallas Sidekicks was simple: The Sidekicks wanted the victory more than the Blast.Embarrassed in San Diego 16 hours before, the Sidekicks took out their frustration on the Blast, 7-4, before 6,195 at Reunion Arena. It was the Blast's first loss in four meetings with the Sidekicks this season and its first loss in Dallas since Nov. 26, 1989.The Sidekicks were coming off a 7-0 loss in San Diego Saturday while the Blast was in Dallas waiting for yesterday's game.

Dallas Sidekicks defender Doc Lawson has vetoed the trade that would have sent him to the Baltimore Blast for midfielder Richard Chinapoo.Lawson, a five-time Major Soccer League All-Star defender who is known as "The Indoor Warrior," told Blast coach Kenny Cooper late Wednesday night that he would stay in Dallas the rest of the season.Cooper said yesterday: "Doc said that after the trade talk got into the newspapers, there was such an outpouring of public sentiment for him to stay in Dallas that he reconsidered his immediate future and decided to at least finish out the season.

The Dallas Sidekicks are a last-place team and going nowhere in the Major Soccer League.But last night, the Sidekicks made life more miserable for the troubled Baltimore Blast before 9,093 at the Baltimore Arena.Dallas dealt Baltimore a 6-5 defeat, dropping the home team two games under .500 for the first time since the end of the 1987-88 season."Any blind man could see that we're not playing well," said Blast midfielder Billy Ronson. "We only have 12 games left, and it's time for the healthy 15 players to start getting the job done.

DALLAS -- Cris Vacarro was virtually flawless in goal last night, allowing just two shots to slip by as the Dallas Sidekicks were practically helpless in their home by the Baltimore Blast, 6-2."Vacarro has been magnificent," Blast coach Kenny Cooper said. "We talked about it late in the game and decided to leave him in to get his goals-against-average down." Rod Castro got two goals, one from a shootout, to lead the Blast. He would have had another but goalie Joe Papaleo successfully defended the shootout.

Steve Carell has always been a master of implosion. He's at his pungent, original best suggesting currents of thought and feeling roiling right beneath the surface and also running deep, so when he lets them out the effect is cathartic, funny and revelatory all at the same time. Carell smooching Catherine Keener endlessly in The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a contemporary comic milestone, kicky and true. And he was keenly sympathetic as the suicidal academic who shakes off self-loathing in Little Miss Sunshine to become part of a family team.

SKY HIGH / / Buena Vista Home Video / / $29.99 One of the summer's few sleepers, the clever, piquant superhero family comedy Sky High arrives Tuesday on DVD. The movie cost $35 million -- peanuts for a big-studio picture -- but it grossed more than $63 million on good reviews and word of mouth. It's about an American superhero high school that floats in the clouds. Nonetheless, it appeals as much to adults as to teenagers. Director Mike Mitchell and writers Paul Hernandez and Bob Schooley & Mark McCorkle maintain a cheery balance in the writing and the casting.

Sky High, a movie about an American superhero high school that floats in the clouds, turns out to be a lighter-than-air comedy. It should tickle everyone. The target audience may be kids who are enduring the same central crisis as the main teen characters: Just what are these fantastic powers that arrive at roughly age 13? How do I control them? What am I supposed to do with them? But as it pokes fun at cliques and crushes and favoritism and smug, unthinking hierarchies, it may hit home to adults who see their workplace as high school on acid.

"Aye, aye!" exclaimed Nicholas Paone as he swaggered aboard the ship. The 6-year-old swirled his sword in the air and snarled, "Arrrgh! I'll find the treasure, and then I'll be captain of this ship." Nicholas joined a six-person crew and 21 other young pretend marauders for the inaugural voyage of Treasure Hunters aboard the skipjack Martha Lewis in Havre de Grace. Designed as an educational outing for children, the narrated, two-hour trip combines Chesapeake Bay history and landmarks with rudimentary navigation to search for buried treasure.

Any good marketing executive knows that a trek down Hollywood Boulevard is often the best way to reach the MTV Generation. That's why it's no coincidence that early versions of the Sidekick II - a handheld communications device targeted at on-the-go 20-somethings - are being carried around by Jennifer Aniston, Justin Timberlake, Paris Hilton and other A-list celebrities. While the Hollywood buzz is exciting for Danger, the Palo Alto, Calif., startup that developed the technology behind the wireless device, the champagne isn't flowing at its offices just yet. The four-year-old privately held company is heading into unknown territory by pursuing a business model that leaves its fate in someone else's hands - notably wireless carriers - and targeting a slice of the consumer market that has yet to show its love for a device that doubles as a cell phone and Internet machine.

The No. 2-seeded Blast has been off for 13 days, practicing against each other, waiting for tonight's Major Indoor Soccer League semifinal against the Dallas Sidekicks. As players left the field at 1st Mariner Arena yesterday after their final pre-game practice, their coach was taking nothing for granted. "I've been over it, and I'll go over it again," said Blast coach Tim Wittman. "All I want them to do is play to their ability. The ability is here, and if we play to our ability, no one can beat us. But, if we don't, anyone can beat us."

DALLAS -- The Baltimore Blast made enough mistakes and failed on enough opportunities in the first half to lose a game anywhere else. But the Blast was in Reunion Arena.Billy Ronson recorded his third hat trick of the season and Scott Manning made several spectacular saves, as the Blast stopped the Dallas Sidekicks for a 6-5 victory before 8,123. Baltimore is 15-6 lifetime at the Sidekicks' home field, its best record in any foreign Major Soccer League arena.But for the first 30 minutes of the game, the Blast looked less than spectacular in giving up the lead three times.

DALLAS - The Blast and Dallas Sidekicks are through with regular-season games against each other, but if they meet in the Major Indoor Soccer League playoffs, fans should be able to count on the game being close, and likely going to overtime. That trend continued last night at Reunion Arena as the Sidekicks defeated the Blast, 7-6, in overtime to even the season series at 2-2. The loss ended a seven-game winning streak for the Blast (16-6), which leads the Eastern Division by three games over Philadelphia (11-7)