Sports Fans

While it's not so true in Baltimore -- we love our Orioles -- there is an almost adversarial relationship right now between sports fans and what they perceive as wealthy, pampered athletes. It's gotten to the point where a sports figure gives a huge amount to a charity and from the fans' reactions, you'd think it wasn't much at all.It struck staff writer Patrick McGuire that there was something out of proportion about the numbers here: Giving a lot of money is admirable, even if you make millions.

Spring is the season of free agency, when birds, retirees and professional athletes move their base of operations. These transitions are difficult for everyone, particularly sports fans, daughters-in-law and people who have been parking their cars under trees. But especially for sports fans. Oriole fans will need talk therapy and a lot of beer to cope with the sight of beloved Mike Mussina in a Yankee uniform for the next six years. And even Alan Greenspan is at a loss to explain what Texas saw in former Seattle Mariner Alex Rodriguez that's worth $25.2 million a year, although it isn't hard to understand why A-Rod changed addresses.

He hasn't yet made his American debut, but David Beckham has already made the cover of Sports Illustrated. Five thousand fans showed up at the Home Depot Center last week - for a news conference. The paparazzi have abandoned our favorite food-deprived starlets to deliver us round-the-clock Beckham coverage. We're still a couple of days away from Beckham suiting up for the Los Angeles Galaxy and already soccer's summertime sideshow has made it easy to overlook the actual game Beckham's supposed to be weaving into the American fabric.

THE LAST TIME Ray Lewis was in Atlanta, he wore his Ravens uniform, not detention center scrubs. He was there with his teammates to play the Falcons. I know because I watched on television. It was a warm October Sunday here in Baltimore. I put the portable television in the garage, fooled with the rabbit ears and angled the screen away from the sun's glaring reflection. I set some bratwurst on the grill in the driveway. Throughout the fall, my 9-year-old son shared this experience each Sunday.

RANDY JOHNSON to the Yankees; Shawn Green to the Diamondbacks: If the commissioner of baseball OKs this trade, 2004 will wrap up the same way it began: Rendering catalogs of sports gear - and loyalties of sports fans - worthless. Why, just last week, all those Pedro Martinez/Red Sox jerseys that should have been hot Christmas items landed in the discount bin. The Yankees were onto something a long time ago. Nameless jerseys are the only way to go - now more than ever. What a year. It all started with A-Rod.

LIKE MANY sports fans, I'm very familiar with the stadium denizen known as the drunken yahoo. Seven or eight Bud Lights swishing around in his big, fat gut, eyes bleary and unfocused, veins in his neck bulging like dock ropes, he spends the game shrieking for his "boys" and loudly (and often profanely) disagreeing with every call that goes against them. Of this basic variety of drunken yahoo, there are various sub-species: The idiot who goes bare-chested in 10-degree weather, somehow convincing himself that other fans think he's cool, when they really think he's a lunatic.

Good morning, Bal-tee-m@GOnline m@GOnliore, or Bal'mer, or simply Baltimore. And welcome, truly welcome, to your hometown newspaper's latest patch of cyber real estate. Some of you, I'm figuring most of you, don't know the dopey-lookin' guy with the mustache pictured here from a rock. A few - close friends and relatives - know that I'm a sportswriter at The Sun. If the mug looks familiar, you may have seen it affixed to a column I used to write on poker in the sports pages or you may recognize the byline from stories on pro football or sports business.

LIKE LEMONY DAFFODILS greeting the icy ides of March, the annual national collegiate basketball playoffs known as "March madness" are a welcome respite from the increasingly bleak and frigid landscape of big-time athletics.Just when you've had enough of Latrell Sprewell, the fire sale in Florida of baseball's world champions and the latest lawsuit against Mike Tyson, along comes, for many sports fans, the most enjoyable weekends of TV viewing all year. There are reasons aplenty why the National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament has become one of the most watched -- and wagered upon -- sports events in America.

Peel away the hype and these are the circumstances of Mike Tyson's comeback bout Saturday night: a convicted rapist, unremorseful, getting a hero's reception and a reported $25 million payday.Disgusting.But you know what? No one cares.Sports fans are so offended that they'll likely turn Tyson's fight with Peter McNeeley into one of the most popular pay-per-view broadcasts ever, shown in more than a million homes. The live gate at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is expected to exceed $15 million.

The NBA's labor crisis has reached the all-important "drop dead" phase, which, given the public's feelings for both sides, seems particularly well-named in this case.With the union set to vote on the owners' "final" offer today, and with the league's Board of Governors threatening to vote to kill the 1998-99 season tomorrow, we should know soon whether there'll be a season.In a related issue, we'll also know whether the players might have to sell off their beach homes and/or fifth cars.The public's response to it all?