World Of Sports

Visitors to Baltimore's Inner Harbor might one day experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat -- over and over again.Representatives of ABC Sports in New York, a division of the ABC television network, have expressed strong interest in transforming part of the Pier 4 Power Plant into an elaborate multimedia display about the "Wide World of Sports," based on pTC the long-running TV show.As part of the display, video libraries would show "Wide World of Sports" segments at the push of a button.

The Loyola men's lacrosse team will face the U.S. national team in the exhibition Champion Challenge, a US Lacrosse event, on Sunday, Jan. 27 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The game will pit the defending NCAA and Federation of International Lacrosse champions in a game that will be broadcast on ESPNU and ESPN3.com. Further details about the event, including a game time, will be released at a later date. "We are very excited about the opportunity to go down to Florida to play against the best of what the United States has to offer," Loyola  ooach Charley Toomey said.

Roone Arledge, the ABC executive who did as much to shape the look of American network television as anyone except its founders, died yesterday of complications from cancer. He was 71. Mr. Arledge was pronounced dead at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. A 36-time Emmy winner, Mr. Arledge, who retired in 1998, defined thinking outside the box from the moment he arrived at ABC in 1960. Among the groundbreaking programs he introduced in his career - which included a decade as president of the network's news and sports divisions - were Monday Night Football, Wide World of Sports, Nightline and 20/20.

2008: The Greatest Year in Sports 8 p.m. [ESPN Classic] Years from now, you will recall this terrific year in the world of sports ... and tell your grandchildren how you watched an ESPN show of highlights.

2008: The Greatest Year in Sports 8 p.m. [ESPN Classic] Years from now, you will recall this terrific year in the world of sports ... and tell your grandchildren how you watched an ESPN show of highlights.

A $30 million sports museum and entertainment complex has been proposed to fill the Power Plant building, the cavity in the wide smile that is Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It will have a "Wide World of Sports" display honoring veteran sportscaster and Baltimorean Jim McKay, sports clinics, memorabilia shows and "virtual reality" theaters in which spectators will get the sense of riding a bobsled or powerboat racing.The center wouldn't open for a couple of years, but already Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has inaugurated it with a maneuver no athlete could accomplish: playing both sides of the fence.

The Inner Harbor's next major attraction may be a $30 million sports museum featuring ABC TV's "Wide World of Sports" program and Baltimore native Jim McKay, if Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke accepts the recommendation of a blue-ribbon panel.Called Sports Center USA, the entertainment center would be the first of its kind in the nation. Motion simulators, video, a large-screen theater and "virtual reality" computer technology are among the concepts under consideration.Visitors could participate in interactive exhibits that simulate various sports events and experiences, such as skiing down a mountain slope.

People talk about pressure, but if you want real pressure, try letting a magazine subscription lapse.As my subscription to a well-known sports magazine ran out, I received the following letters:*Dear Subscriber: Just a gentle reminder that your subscription is due to expire after six more issues.Simply fill out the enclosed card and you'll continue to receive the very best reporting and commentary on the world of sports -- all at 20 percent off the newsstand price!Renew today and we'll send you a free Michael Jordan poster!

"The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports," by Jim McKay. Dutton. 293 pages. $24.95. Outside of the president or Elvis, he is probably the most familiar figure on television. Each week, as if on some cruelly repetitive cue, he sweeps down the broad ski jump, makes an ill-advised right turn, and tumbles off the side and turns into a human snowball. Vinko Bogataj was an otherwise unremarkable Yugoslavian forklift operator and amateur ski jumper who had the misfortune in 1970 to not only crash spectacularly, but to do it on a live broadcast beamed into the hotel room of an ABC television producer who was in Yugoslavia to cover the World Gymnastics Championship.

Lynda O'Dea made her reputation in sports marketing as the "Queen of the Sports Palaces" at Maryland's thoroughbred racetracks and for throwing elaborate and fun parties at the state's big horse races.She has had waiters on roller skates and dinner for 1,000 people on a Norweigian cruise ship. And she has used Baltimore backdrops from the Dundalk Marine Terminal to the Peabody Conservatory as props for her racetrack entertaining.But since the death of her mentor and companion, Frank De Francis, three years ago, she has kept a low profile at the track, serving mostly as a social consultant, coordinating such events as the tented village in the infield for the Preakness and Maryland Million and activities for the International Turf Festival.

The tributes have flowed since the news of his passing, but perhaps none will sum up the legacy of Jim McKay better than the description by former colleague Al Michaels that Mr. McKay "was like a favorite teacher." As someone who grew up learning from Mr. McKay, I have lost that favorite teacher, and for me and millions of others in my generation, we are all the poorer that his voice has been silenced. Jim McKay was more than the most significant sports broadcaster of the second half of the 20th century; he was the most significant teacher of sports the world has known.

Heads turned when CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric, Orioles owner Peter Angelos and network sportscasters Bob Costas and Jim Nantz walked to their seats yesterday at the funeral service for Jim McKay. Also there, melting into a back pew, was Jeff Jerome. Who? "I'm nobody. I just wanted to pay my respects," said Jerome, of Annapolis, as he left the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. "There are a lot of big names here; I'm just part of the common folk who never met Jim McKay but who grew up watching him on TV. "I always felt like he was talking to me. He was a friend, and I wanted to be part of his going away.

Jim McKay, who in 1947 spoke the first words ever heard on Baltimore television and later became the model for the modern sports anchorman with his marathon effort amid a terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics, died yesterday of natural causes at his horse farm in Monkton. He was 86. Raised in Baltimore, the former Evening Sun reporter covered virtually every major sports event on network TV during his half-century career.

Back at the dawn of Baltimore television, when the Sunpapers owned the first station here, a 25-year-old Evening Sun reporter named Jim McManus agreed to work in front of the camera for $65 a week. It was 1947. The station, WMAR-TV, had to fill hours upon hours with original programming. So its crews did remote telecasts, running from the races at Pimlico to supermarket openings to professional wrestling matches at the old Baltimore Coliseum. McManus, a reporter and announcer, didn't care for the pro wrestling assignment.

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.

Football, as best-selling sports author John Feinstein notes in his recent book on the Ravens, is America's preeminent game. Its television ratings, advertising riches and weekly attendance tell us so. And yet, football and top-notch writing have rarely gone hand-in-hand. The sports canon, most of it produced since 1960, is rife with baseball. But relatively few football books stand out (Sports Illustrated included 10, compared to 26 for baseball, in a ranking of the 100 greatest sports books)

Remember Penn State?Last year, the Maryland Terps went for the field goal to tie Penn State and said the team deserved the tie because it's like a win against Penn State.So what does Joe Krivak say about Louisiana Tech? That if he were in that situation, he probably would have gone for the victory. Who is he kidding?Hap Hoy BaltimoreRun big-league race resultsI deplore your discontinuance of publishing the New York race results. Charles Town and Penn National have their place -- but not at the expense of major-league racing.

Visitors to Baltimore's Inner Harbor might one day experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat -- over and over again.Representatives of ABC Sports in New York, a division of the ABC television network, have expressed strong interest in transforming part of the Pier 4 Power Plant into an elaborate multimedia display about the "Wide World of Sports," based on the long-running TV show.As part of the display, video libraries would show "Wide World of Sports" segments at the push of a button.

Jim McKay: My World in My Words, an HBO documentary on the life of the legendary sportscaster, is at its best when it gets personal, very personal - as in his relationship with his wife, Margaret. There's the story about how McKay's hands began shaking uncontrollably one Sunday morning in 1960 while trying to read a newspaper. It was the start of what Margaret describes as a "regular nervous breakdown." As McKay becomes more isolated and withdrawn, she is the one who finds a psychiatrist, takes McKay to meet the doctor and puts her husband on the road to recovery.

Roone Arledge, the ABC executive who did as much to shape the look of American network television as anyone except its founders, died yesterday of complications from cancer. He was 71. Mr. Arledge was pronounced dead at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. A 36-time Emmy winner, Mr. Arledge, who retired in 1998, defined thinking outside the box from the moment he arrived at ABC in 1960. Among the groundbreaking programs he introduced in his career - which included a decade as president of the network's news and sports divisions - were Monday Night Football, Wide World of Sports, Nightline and 20/20.