Young Guys

This is what it's like being High Priest in the Cult of Mel.You're leaving Camden Yards after an Orioles game when a bunch of young guys who look like they've been touring a brewery ID you."Hey, Mel Kiper Jr.!" they call out. "What'll the Ravens do in the draft?"You could blow them off, give 'em the Parris Glendening smile and wave, but that's not your style. Besides, these are your guys, hard-core National Football League draftniks, in the Cult all the way, nodding off every night to the bluish-white glow of ESPN.

When Rear Adm. Richard J. Naughton took command of training the Navy's top fighter pilots two years ago, he didn't wait long to make changes. Within a few months, he had pushed through a plan to gain oversight of 11 weapons schools around the country. And he soon turned an undistinguished tactics school in San Diego into a streamlined command he termed the Center of Maritime Dominance. But he also worried about the small stuff. Unhappy with the menu at the enlisted mess hall, he got the Navy to install a hamburger joint and a taco stand.

Brad Bergesen probably should've been with the big league team since Day One, but he finally took the mound wearing an Orioles uniform Tuesday night. His first inning as a major leaguer consisted of a couple of groundouts followed by a 12-pitch duel with Carlos Quentin. The White Sox left fielder finally went down whiffing on a slider, and the rookie pitcher shouted into his glove, hopped over the first base line and made his way to the dugout. Bergesen went on to pick up the win in the Orioles' 10-3 victory, and it was no surprise he received a standing ovation when he left in the sixth inning.

Good advice, I have found, often turns up in the strangest places.Recently, for example, I found the following piece of good advice in an old suitcase:"Hooray! This is the fourth day I've been here at camp and I finally got my trunk today. At first it was awful because I only had what was in my dufflebag. But then it turned out I didn't need as much of that stuff as I thought I needed."This wise observation -- and who among us has not learned the hard way that we don't need a lot of the stuff we think we need -- comes not from Thoreau but from Camp Deerwood, circa 1979.

LOS ANGELES - Hey fella, read any good magazines lately?Yeah, you with the paper bag over your brain and the epoxy glue holding your gym shorts together. An over-12, under-19 kind of guy. You're the new target audience for a hip, slick, in-your-face magazine that tells you what's what when it comes to women, dating, current events, sports and when to take a shower.Interested?The publishers of Dirt hope that you are.So does the editor, Mark Lewman, a San Pedro cutting-edge kind of guy who thinks male teens have been bored, ignored and ... well, whatever.

For so long, they had been the two faces of one of the league's most dominant defenses, Ray Lewis the punishing tackler and Ed Reed the unrelenting ball hawk. Now, they are both gone and the mass exodus from the Ravens defense continues. About six weeks after Lewis retired following his last game as a Raven, Reed moved closer to signing a two-year deal with the Houston Texans, who aggressively pursued the 34-year-old safety over the last week. Terms of the deal aren't known and there are still a few things that have to be worked out, but it's clear that Reed and the organization that he had played with for the last 11 years have parted ways.

It would have appeared to be pretty much of a no-brainer for Rony Seikaly. A deal had been made to send him to the Utah Jazz, a team that last year extended the Chicago Bulls to six games in the NBA Finals. Playing alongside Karl Malone and John Stockton, Seikaly -- who was not going to the playoffs with the Orlando Magic -- was as close to a title as he would ever realize.But the deal fell apart Wednesday. The Jazz said that Seikaly and his agent failed to communicate with the team. Seikaly -- perhaps in an attempt at spin control -- said on Friday that Utah was scared off by the deal because of a stress fracture in his foot that could keep him out for four weeks.

General Motors Corp.'s van assembly plant in Southeast Baltimore stopped production at 4:42 yesterday afternoon, the latest victim of the eight-day strike against two brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, that threatens to halt all of GM's North American vehicle production."

COLLEGE PARK - Senior shooting guard Drew Nicholas scored a career-high 28 points and set the tone for the type of rout the Maryland Terrapins anticipated last night, as the 11th-ranked Terps jumped on The Citadel quickly and cruised to a 97-49 blowout before an announced crowd of 17,053 at Comcast Center. Unlike Sunday's season opener, when the Terps had bits of trouble with a respectable Mid-American Conference opponent in Miami (Ohio), Maryland (2-0) barely had to break a sweat to seize control of the unranked and overmatched Bulldogs, who were playing the Terps for only the third time and the first time since 1947.

The biggest overachiever in Maryland basketball history -- maybe in the modern college game -- is trying to beat the odds again. At age 33, a decade after leading the Terps to the NCAA men's championship, three years removed from his last NBA game and now rehabilitating an injured left knee, Juan Dixon is plotting his comeback. "Don't count me out," Dixon said Thursday in his first extensive interview since being banned in February 2010 from playing in Europe after failing a drug test the previous season.