Sit Down

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Right-hander Scott Erickson wanted to do more throwing yesterday -- if not on the mound, then at least on the side. "But they wouldn't let me," he said with a shrug."

Orioles manager Davey Johnson gave Jeff Reboulet a day off Saturday, then raised the possibility of resting him again last night at Camden Yards.Reboulet, who has a slightly strained muscle below his rib cage, chewed on Johnson's suggestion, looked his manager in the eye and said, "Are you crazy?"OK, he didn't put it quite like that. But he made his point."He said, 'I waited seven years for the chance to play, I can play through this little thing,' " Johnson recalled.Reboulet remembered the conversation somewhat differently.

I stood in the presence of greatness the other day. True, it was a nauseating greatness. A disgusting greatness. A greatness that made you reconsider whether we, as the human race, have truly evolved as much as advertised, or whether it's time for an asteroid to smack into the planet and end the whole thing. I watched 14 men and one woman gather for the Phillips Crab Cake Eating Contest at the Inner Harbor, watched them cram great gobs of the stuff into their mouths with hundreds in the audience cheering this stunning display of either eating prowess or sheer gluttony, take your pick.

Their avenue to prominence is neither as open nor as welcoming as the route taken by Maryland's Joe Smith and Keith Booth, both starters as freshmen. But then, North Carolina's highly acclaimed trio of newcomers, rated by many as the top recruiting class in the nation, never expected it would be.Which makes all the more surprising the extensive playing time seen by Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse and Jeff McInnis during second-ranked North Carolina's 11-1...

NEW YORK -- Dali never dabbled in porcelain toilets. Picasso didn't paint Porta Potties. But who says a john can't inspire great art?"We wanted people to think about disposing of waste as a visual issue," said the Municipal Art Society's Tracy Calvan.Now, here's your chance. Some 300 designers -- from a Japanese architect to a Georgian surgeon -- answered the Urban Outhouse Design Competition's call for a "site-enhancing, self-cleaning" public toilet. Last summer, the JC Decaux public toilets made their big splash.

In January 1955, Morgan State College students staged an impromptu sit-in at the lunch counter of the Read's drugstore at Howard and Lexington streets in Baltimore, demanding that African-Americans be served. Their protest, along with others at local Read's stores, worked: That month, the retail chain began serving all patrons, black and white, at all of its 37 Baltimore-area lunch counters. But the students' victory has been largely overlooked in the annals of U.S. civil rights history, in part because it was not photographed or widely reported by the mainstream news media.

It's the finale already! That seems quick, doesn't it? I guess that means this season has been better than most, because I haven't been praying for it to end already. I might feel differently about that if Phillip had stuck around longer. Speaking of who stuck around, can you believe that Eddie is still around? He, as Jeff points out in the recap at the beginning of the show, has been at the bottom since the very beginning. If Eddie makes it to the end, I will laugh and laugh at Cochran and Dawn.

When Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. completes three deals announced in the past two months, it will own more television stations across the country than any other company. The Hunt Valley company will operate 134 stations in 69 markets, reaching more than a third of all U.S. homes with televisions. It will have more than doubled in size in about two years, and that's presuming it doesn't broker any more acquisitions. It still won't own stations in megamarkets such as New York or Los Angeles, but that's part of its strategy.

USUALLY the Super Bowl isn't much of a football game, but it is a good excuse to eat chicken wings. That is what I plan to do this Sunday as I watch the gritty underdog Pittsburgh Steelers meet the flashy, top-dog, Dallas Cowboys.The game is in Tempe, Ariz., where the weather, no doubt, will be sunny and the crowd will be tanned, privileged and behaving like people on vacation. For those of us watching the game on television, it will be just another Sunday night in front of the tube. We can't get too lathered up in the festivities because it is a "school night" and, in a few hours, car pool and other Monday morning duties will be upon us.Still, watching the Super Bowl on TV is as good a reason as any to socialize.

What a year. To think that on Jan. 31, 1999, we were worrying about whether we'd have enough canned food and bottled water if the Y2K bug caused the end of civilization as we knew it. Since then we've feasted on goat cheese souffle at Sascha's 527 downtown, sea bass covered in yuca at the Bicycle in South Baltimore and pork tenderloin with mango salsa at Aqua Terra in Annapolis. We've drunk dirty martinis at the Cosmopolitan Bar and Grill in Canton, prickly pear margaritas at Blue Agave in Federal Hill and pouilly fuisse by the glass at Petit Louis in Roland Park.