Switch

DEAR CAL -- What is the best way to teach young players to switch-hit? Jeff Nelson, Annapolis DEAR JEFF -- The best way to learn to hit in general is through practice. The drills we use in our instructional programs help develop the building blocks that are necessary to establish the mechanics needed to hit live pitching. Those drills must be performed consistently from both sides of the plate before having a player attempt to switch-hit against live pitching. It can be counterproductive to have a player switch to his or her opposite side during batting practice or against live pitching if he or she hasn't worked on developing the swing first through drill work.

AFC EastDan Marino of the Dolphins has beaten the Jets 17 times in 28 career decisions. The Jets may have wasted their money when they gave Steve Atwater a three-year, $8.25 million deal after he was cut by the Broncos. The Broncos were pulling him on passing downs last year because he appeared to lose a step, and now the Jets are doing the same thing. Bruce Smith has gone to four Super Bowls with the Bills, but he says this is their best defense. The return of LB Ted Johnson to the Patriots' lineup has stiffened the defense and helped them hold Emmitt Smith to 75 yards last week.

YOUR WHEELSTER checked in with the online version of the Old Farmer's Almanac last week to find mixed feelings about the coming winter.Predicted is a winter that will be colder than usual -- although the Mid-Atlantic region is facing "below normal" snowfall.One of the biggest woes of snow is the pothole. Last year, despite a mild winter, Baltimore Department of Public Works crews patched 35,000 potholes, a figure that was 68,000 in 1997 and -- in blizzard-marred 1996 -- 140,596.An investigation by Intrepid revealed that pothole patrols love to use a gooey substance called Perma Patch.

IT'S A jungle out there, and for once, I'm not talking about investments. The subject is long-distance telephone calls. The marketing is wild. If you haven't lined up a special, promotional deal for yourself, you haven't tried.The salespeople who reach you by phone will sweeten almost any deal, if you'll quit your current carrier and switch to theirs. You're probably also being barraged with direct-mail offers.The carriers' arsenal of incentives includes free long-distance minutes, frequent-flier miles, videos, rate discounts and cash.

Diane R. Evans, an Anne Arundel County councilwoman for two terms and a Republican at least since she was in college, apparently is switching parties to run against County Executive John G. Gary in November.Evans, whose life has been so intertwined with her party that she met her husband at a Young Republican Club meeting in 1974, is expected to announce the switch at a news conference this afternoon, but word spread quickly in the Arundel Center and through State House corridors yesterday.

Davey Johnson's switch to a four-man rotation made sense for a club intent on reaching the playoffs this season.But like so much else with the Orioles these days, it raises disturbing questions for the future.Indeed, if either Mike Mussina or Rocky Coppinger gets hurt, it won't look like such a bright idea.Mussina is a perennial Cy Young candidate the Orioles need to sign long-term. Coppinger is a prized rookie who could develop into a No. 1 starter.Why jeopardize their futures?To win now, of course.

WASHINGTON -- Former Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who four years ago confounded his fellow Democrats by supporting George Bush's re-election for president over Bill Clinton, is at it again.Mr. Schaefer said yesterday he supports Republican Bob Dole's presidential bid."I just don't think the president is up to the job," Mr. Schaefer said of President Clinton. "He doesn't follow through with his plans. He's played politics all along."Mr. Schaefer, 74, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Clinton is "clever enough a good-looking guy" who can "convince you of anything."

Maryland and 24 other states told the Federal Communications Commission yesterday that it is too soft on the fast-growing number of small, high-priced long-distance companies that use tricky or high-pressure "slamming" gimmicks switch unwary customers to their phone services.The state attorneys general asked the FCC to reconsider -- and greatly toughen -- rules scheduled to go into effect Sept. 11 against deceptive and unauthorized switches, known in the business as "telephone slamming." "There is a rapidly growing problem of very aggressive entrepreneurs trying to capture long-distance business by less than upfront means," said Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., one of the signers of the request to the FCC. The problem has mushroomed so rapidly that the FCC, which received 1,700 complaints in 1993 and 2,500 last year, expects to receive as many as 10,000 this year at current rates, said Susan Salet, a commission spokeswoman.

Johns Hopkins must be the only university for which a switch in federal spending from weapons development into education is a disaster.

Some called about their favorite soap operas. Some called trying to find the new home of prime-time shows they like best. And some just wanted to know why the major Baltimore television stations were all swapping networks.Viewer calls were running up to 10 times the usual rate at Baltimore stations yesterday -- Day One of the highly publicized, three-way, affiliate and network switch that was announced last summer. WJZ (Channel 13), which was associated with ABC and now has moved to CBS, received the most telephone calls, about 1,075, according to a station spokeswoman.

COLLEGE PARK -- Drew Gloster was a linebacker waiting to happen. At least that's what Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen hoped when he summoned the bulky third-year player to his office in the Gossett Football Team House near the end of last season. Gloster was a tight end, but Friedgen knew it was the final season for five of his top eight linebackers. Friedgen needed replacements, and he believed Gloster, a Montgomery County police officer's son with a tough-guy reputation, might be a good fit. Said Gloster, who delights in describing his jarring practice tackles in colorful detail: "Even when I was on offense, the guys on defense always said, 'Oh yeah, you're a linebacker.

The months-delayed transition to digital TV hits Baltimore at 12:30 p.m. today, and while surveys indicate the vast majority of Baltimoreans and their TV sets are ready, local stations are taking no chances. Phone banks and walk-in centers have been set up throughout the Baltimore-Washington area to help confused viewers with old TV sets that have suddenly stopped working. That's on top of the repeated public-service announcements, news stories and screen crawls that have been all over local television the past week.

Every Monday night, Janice Stephenson, a 68-year-old retired Baltimore social worker, climbs into bed to watch the Fox drama House on her small black TV set. The medical mystery series is her favorite show, but last night's episode might be her last for a while. Starting at midnight tonight, hundreds of stations across the country - including Baltimore's Fox and CW affiliates - will broadcast only digital signals, dropping their analog transmissions despite efforts by Congress to delay the switch until June.

Nuggets@Wizards 8 p.m. [Comcast SportsNet, ESPN] If Washington is playing lousy on one channel, you can always switch to the other one to see if the Wizards are doing any better. At least, fortunately for them, being on two telecasts doesn't make a loss count twice.

14 Families with 529 college savings plans have more flexibility this year if they experience second thoughts about their investments. Usually, the Internal Revenue Service limits the number of times you can switch investments to once a year. (The only other way to switch investments is by changing beneficiaries.) But after last year's horrendous market, the IRS relented - a little. For this year only, you will be able to change investments twice. The College Savings Plan Network, made up of state-sponsored 529 plans and others, wrote the IRS in December asking that account holders be able to switch investments two to four times a year.

It seemed reasonable. My friend said, "It's easy. You just go to Radio Shack, buy a router, plug it in, and you're wireless." I did this. Yet I was not wireless. Now I could not get to the Internet at all. Luckily, there was a phone number for tech support on the box. The people at tech support are wonderfully kind and saintlike in their patience. It beats me how they know what is happening on my computer screen 10,000 miles away, but they do. It's a Mystery. We have to accept it. It turns out I was a bit of a Mystery to them, too, and I spent several hours on the phone with a lovely woman in Chennai named Maya.

DEAR CAL -- My son is a sophomore varsity baseball player and has been able to switch-hit since he was 11. I have been told by many people that they are impressed that he can hit well from both sides of the plate. I have also been told by others who seem to have my son's best interest in mind that there is no advantage to being able to switch-hit and that he should concentrate on making his dominant side better. What are your thoughts on switch-hitting? R. Gary Jenkins, Odenton DEAR GARY -- I would question anyone who says that there is no advantage to being able to switch-hit.

BEIJING -- Nov. 15 is Li Xiulan's favorite day of the year - even better than her birthday. It's the day they turn the heat on. Winter weather has arrived here, with temperatures dropping into the high 30s on some nights. But Li's home in the 500-unit Flower Garden Apartments in a northern suburb of the capital has provided scant refuge from the growing chill. Instead, Li and an estimated 200 million of China's poor are forced to shiver as they mark off the days until Nov. 15 arrives.

DEAR CAL -- What is the best way to teach young players to switch-hit? Jeff Nelson, Annapolis DEAR JEFF -- The best way to learn to hit in general is through practice. The drills we use in our instructional programs help develop the building blocks that are necessary to establish the mechanics needed to hit live pitching. Those drills must be performed consistently from both sides of the plate before having a player attempt to switch-hit against live pitching. It can be counterproductive to have a player switch to his or her opposite side during batting practice or against live pitching if he or she hasn't worked on developing the swing first through drill work.

Louise White was skeptical when an energy marketer knocked on the door of her Northwest Baltimore home recently in hopes of getting her to switch to a competing provider for electricity and natural gas. The door-to-door salesman told her she could save money over BGE's rising rates -- something the low-income mother of four is concerned about. But what he didn't tell her is that if she switched, the federal energy assistance funds she receives could not go toward paying the alternative supplier's portion of the bill because of a quirk in Maryland utility regulations.