Fans

Weeks before spring training, the Los Angeles Dodgers got an early workout Tuesday as jurors heard a woman's claim that the ballclub failed to protect her from a drunken, abusive, foul-mouthed woman who assaulted her in the stadium parking lot after a game against archrival San Francisco. The central issue is whether the Dodgers provided enough security at the ballpark in Chavez Ravine.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- His eyes were puffy and he felt a weird aftertaste in his throat today. Hardly the usual two things one feels the morning after going to a tennis match. But who would have guessed pepper spray and the Australian Open would be used in the same sentence? Certainly not Melbourne lawyer Peter Katsambanis, who found himself, and his teenage son, caught up in what he called a "complete overreaction" by local police and "subsequent horror show."

Because of my deep family ties to the University of Oregon and my long-held sense of Eugene as an open-minded and tolerant place, the ugly, bigoted way that some Ducks fans behaved during the men's basketball home game last week against UCLA was an embarrassment. That feeling, and my outrage, deepened when a school spokesman said after the game that little could have been done to keep unruly fans from yelling whatever they pleased.

PHOENIX -- So you're having a tough time finding lodging for Super Bowl XLII? Get thee to a nunnery. Or you could have, at least, until the last of the 10 rooms at the Our Lady of Guadalupe monastery was booked this week. "I'm most excited to meet them," said Sister Linda Campbell, one of three Benedictine nuns who have converted their two-acre spiritual retreat into comfortable accommodations for football fans coming to town for the game.

HOUSTON -- When the team bus pulls up at Reliant Stadium this evening and Coach Hugo Sanchez and the players on the Mexican national soccer team disembark, another milestone will have been reached. For the fifth consecutive year, the Tricolor will be on tour in a country where it is every bit as welcome and as well-supported as it is in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey or anywhere else "El Tri" travels.

We've only just begun . . . to learn what is happening to the Downey family home that was made world-famous by the pop duo the Carpenters. The five-bedroom tract house and a smaller next-door dwelling that was connected to it by an enclosed walkway was where Richard and Karen Carpenter fine-tuned their greatest hits in the 1970s. The pair lived in the main house with their parents. The adjoining house was something of an annex, where there was an office, rehearsal studio and recreation room.

Where were you the night that the finale of the comedy TV series "MASH" aired 25 years ago to a record-setting number of viewers? Most of the people gathered in a woodsy-fragrant clearing in Malibu Creek State Park on Saturday morning could tell you where they were while watching that famous episode. Some, alas, could not; they would be the ones who hadn't been born 25 years ago.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Mark Prather remembers when Red Sox Nation was a small country, like Luxembourg or Orange County. "Old-school people like me have been loving them forever," said Prather, decked out in an old-school Carl Yastrzemski jersey as he took in an early spring exhibition game here. "Now you have a second group that are like, 'Let's jump on the bandwagon.' There's a transition." "Yeah," added fellow fan Dan Gosslin from inside his Carlton Fisk T-shirt.

MESA, Ariz. -- The most reliable fans in America migrate here every spring, supporters of a team celebrating a complete century of failure. They bask in the informality of training camp, savoring a conversation or two with the men wearing the uniform of the Chicago Cubs. Derrek Lee, the Cubs' All-Star first baseman, hears from the fans about last year's playoff flop, this year's chances, how to pronounce the last name of Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome. And steroids?

Robert Ramos bumps when he should grind. If he's supposed to walk like an Egyptian, he gets down in a low swagger. With Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" blaring, Ramos isn't sure which way that is. Even when telling a joke about his lack of dancing prowess, his timing is off. "My girlfriend says that if it wasn't for no rhythm, I wouldn't have any rhythm at all," he says, furrowing his brow when that doesn't sound right.