Zach

A boy could hide in Columbine High School. Let others choose colleges, majors, futures. Senior Adam Foss drove fast, pulled pranks and drifted towards graduation. School was a lark, life a good time. Then the halls erupted with gunshots. The killers were outside the choir room. Panicked students needed help. Who could they turn to? "In here!" Adam shouted. He herded them into an empty office. They waited. They prayed. And in those hours, an aimless boy discovered himself.It was the kind of day that made Adam Foss want to skip school.

In today's Baltimore Sun, I wrote a story on the Orioles' efforts to convert minor league pitchers Zach Clark and Eddie Gamboa into knuckleballers. Clark and Gamboa are working with Hall of Fame knuckleballer Phil Niekro, who won 318 games and revolutionized the knuckleball, while both pitchers are at Double-A Bowie. In speaking with the 74-year-old Niekro this week, you can tell he's still very passionate in teaching the knuckleball to young pitchers. He realizes that, in some ways, it can make a difference in helping a pitcher break into the majors.

Bastrop, Texas -- Folks here crinkle their faces at the mere mention of his name. Some curse him. Others rue the day he moved to this conservative cattle town 35 miles from Austin.The object of all that scorn? A chunky 12-year-old boy named Zachariah Toungate, who spent part of third grade being taught in an isolated room because he refused to agree to demands by school administrators to cut off his ponytail. After four years, he still won't."I don't care what they think, I'm not going to cut it," says a defiant Zach, clasping the 15-inch lock of blond hair that has made him a virtual outcast in Bastrop, but a cause celebre around the world.

BOWIE -- Right-hander Zach Clark has never thrown a knuckleball in a game, but the UMBC graduate would often tinker with the pitch while playing catch during his eight years in the minors. And in his brief stint in the majors with the Orioles last week, that fact was brough to the attention of Orioles manager Buck Showalter and pitching coach Rick Adair. On Friday afternoon, Clark - who within a span of 10 days made his major league debut, was designated for assignment and then optioned to Double-A Bowie to begin a transition toward becoming a knuckleball pitcher - threw his first bullpen session using the pitch.

Ever since West Nile virus struck the United States in 1999 - killing seven people and infecting 62 others with encephalitis in New York City - health officials have been struggling to control mosquitoes that carry the disease. Fifteen-year-old Glen Burnie resident Zachary Groff thinks he may have found a solution - bats. "Movies portray bats as evil, blood-sucking creatures, when really bats avoid humans and eat insects, especially mosquitoes," Zach said. Zach has taken up the cause of attracting as many bats as he can to Baltimore-Annapolis Trail, a breeding ground for many mosquitoes in Anne Arundel County.

Anna Sowers celebrated her 28th birthday in a Federal Hill restaurant yesterday with cake, balloons and good friends. But the most important person in her life, her husband, couldn't be there. Nine months after Zachary Sowers was robbed and beaten near the young couple's Patterson Park home, he lay across town at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in a persistent vegetative state.

We all love parades marching byBut dare one begin to ask whyWe cheer evermore` For a lopsided warReborn on the Fourth of July?Historians, you may recall,Thought Abe was the first one to fallTill somebody reckoned, He might have been second --But Zach wasn't zapped after all.

Nick ColvinMcDonogh, tennisColvin won his third straight MIAA A Conference No. 1 singles title with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Zach Myers of Loyola. Colvin finished 14-0 in league play this season and 55-0 for his career.

Fresh off their state title last week, Calvert Hall's Zach Walz and Kenneth MacLean Jr. have been selected to play in the first High School All-Star Hockey Game today at the Rockville Ice Arena at 9:30 p.m. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/varsityletters)

On this holiday, when many people take a deep breath and count their blessings, Zach Chamberlin considers himself lucky just to breathe. For the first Thanksgiving Day in his life, the 18-year-old Glen Burnie resident doesn't need a ventilator, or an oxygen tank, or a breathing tube to help him stay alive. Last November, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital performed a successful double lung transplant that saved his life. Now, the chest, shoulder and neck contortions he had done all his life to draw a simple breath are no longer necessary.

Right-hander Zach Clark had a crazy week -- he went from being promoted to the majors, to pitching in his first big league game, to being designated for assignment and then finally to clearing waivers on Monday. The 29-year-old UMBC graduate has been sent to Double-A Bowie, where he'll work on throwing a knuckleball. After parts of eight seasons in the minors, Clark made his debut with the Orioles on Wednesday in Seattle and allowed three runs in 1 2/3 innings. He was taken off the 40-man roster to make room for Freddy Garcia.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Right-hander Zach Clark's first taste of the major leagues lasted just one appearance, but given the long road it took to get there, the UMBC product wasn't surprised by the news that he had been designated for assignment before Saturday's afternoon game against the Angels at Angel Stadium. The Orioles needed to make both 25-man and 40-man roster space for Saturday's starter, right-hander Freddy Garcia, and Clark - a non-drafted free agent who signed for $1,000 and played parts of eight years in the minor leagues before this week's promotion  - was the odd man out. “It's about right for my path,” Clark said.

Senior Zach Palmer returned to No. 13 Johns Hopkins after sitting out two games with an undisclosed injury and finished with zero points on four shots in Saturday's 8-4 loss to then-No. 7 Loyola. But rather than take up his usual spot on attack with sophomore Wells Stanwick and junior Brandon Benn, Palmer ran with seniors John Ranagan and John Greeley as members of the second midfield. Senior John Kaestner made his third consecutive start with Stanwick and Benn for the Blue Jays (8-5)

SEATTLE - As a veteran of eight minor league seasons, right-hander Zach Clark has endured plenty of excruciating bus rides during his career. He had never been on a cross-country flight, however, until he flew to Seattle on Tuesday. The five-hour airplane ride seemed even longer knowing what was on the other side: The Safeco Field clubhouse and his No. 64 Orioles uniform hanging in his first big league locker. "I've never been on a long flight, so five hours on a plane was crazy," said the 29-year-old Clark, who was added to the Orioles' 25-man roster Tuesday as bullpen insurance.

Right-hander Zach Clark, the former UMBC player who was added to the club's 40-man roster this offseason, will be activated by the Orioles tonight in Seattle, an organizational source said. He will provide some bullpen insurance as the Orioles are in the middle of an 11-game road trip on the West Coast. Clark is a pretty incredible story. A non-drafted free agent out of UMBC in 2006, the Newark, Del., native was signed by the club's local baseball guru, Dean Albany. Clark, who turns 30 in July, is in his eighth year in the minors without ever getting a big-league sniff until now. He may be returning soon to the minors -- the Orioles under Dan Duquette are known for shuffling players back and forth.

SEATTLE - Orioles left-hander Zach Britton was hoping to get more than one start to show the organization that he had regained the form that made him one of the club's most promising pitchers a few years ago. He is going to have to do that again at Triple-A. As part of Tuesday's roster shuffling designed to provide help for the bullpen, Britton was optioned to Norfolk and right-hander Zach Clark , a UMBC product, was recalled from Triple-A. "They needed another guy, the bullpen has been battered," said Britton, who allowed six earned runs in six innings Monday in his first start of the season for the Orioles.

Zach Teal is just 17, but his love for books led him to write one of his own and to volunteer more than 250 hours at the Finksburg branch of the Carroll County Public Library. "Two hundred and fifty hours is quite unusual for our teen volunteers," said Heather Owings, who was volunteer coordinator at the library and now works at the North Carroll branch. Zach logged those hours over the course of three years, performing such tasks as making crafts for story times, signing in reading program participants, even wearing a mouse costume for a reading of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

"Adventures From the Book of Virtues" might look like a simple and innocent little animated series of fairy tales and stories for kids, but, as one of tonight's tales teaches, looks can be deceiving.This new prime-time PBS series from William J. Bennett, former secretary of education for Presidents Reagan and Bush, is chock-full of the very complicated and controversial, values-laden stuff over which cultural wars are fought.If you let your children watch, view the program with them and crank your cultural antennae up to their full height and finest tuning for messages about gender and beauty, for example, which may not be nearly as "universal" or "commonly agreed-upon" as Bennett claims.

Zach Britton had been wondering for four days whether he'd get into a big league game against the Oakland A's. He didn't. And that's not a bad thing. Because now the 25-year-old lefty gets the call to start Monday night at Safeco Field against the Seattle Mariners in what will be Britton's 2013 big league debut. "I am definitely excited. I just want to kind of continue what I was doing in Norfolk and not try to change anything," said Britton, who was 1-0 with a 1.93 ERA in three Triple-A games.

The Orioles have called up left-hander Zach Britton before tonight's series opener against the A's to add an extra arm to a taxed bullpen. Britton was scratched from his scheduled start for Triple-A Norfolk tonight. After optioning right-hander Josh Stinson following Wednesday's game, the Orioles said they would make a corresponding move today. Britton, who is 1-0 with a 1.98 ERA in three starts at Norfolk, is coming off a six-inning, one-run outing in his last start a week ago. He could provide long relief in the Orioles bullpen for the next four games in Oakland and, if available, could fill the void for a starting pitcher Monday in Seattle.