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1. Sen. John Kerry made a surprise appearance at Sunday night's Red Sox-Yankees game in Fenway Park. The presidential candidate wasn't scheduled to arrive in Boston for the Democratic Convention until Wednesday, but the Massachusetts senator changed his mind so he could watch his home state team win. Republicans immediately labeled the decision yet another Kerry flip-flop.

2. Athens officials finally unveiled their $312 million surveillance system consisting of hundreds of street cameras, surveillance vans, underwater sensors and a 200-foot blimp outfitted with sensors and cameras. And that's just to keep the track athletes from shooting up.

3. Dolphins running back Ricky Williams announced his retirmement over the weekend. Williams said he simply didn't want to be in the business of football any longer and couldn't ever remember being as happy as he has been since deciding to walk away from the game. At least that's what it sounded like Williams said; it was hard to understand him through the helmet.

4. Baseball insiders often decry the apparent aggressiveness of some of today's umpires, who seem to seek out conflict as much as defuse it. But that's nothing compared to what happened on a South African soccer field on Saturday. A referee pulled a gun and shot dead a coach who had argued with one of his rulings. The same bullet struck the hands of two players. While the coach lay dying on the field, the referee fled the scene. Presumably, nobody was too eager to get in his way.

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5. What is it about running backs that evidently make them much more likely to retire both early and oddly? Williams might be the strangest case yet, but he's certainly not the first to walk away while seemingly in his prime. The trend started with Jim Brown and continued through Barry Sanders and Robert Smith. One might think that given all the pounding that backs take, the position wouldn't attract flighty, prima donna types. It would be less surprising if running backs tended to retire because they were worn down by the physical beatings, but then returned after a year or two on the sidelines, like boxers have done from time immemorial. Yet Brown, Sanders and Smith all stayed gone. Will Ricky? My hunch is no, though history clearly disagrees.

6. I first saw the highlights from Saturday's Red Sox-Yankees brawl from a bar on New Orleans' Bourbon Street, where I was kibitzing with college friends. Predictably, it was far too loud to hear the TV's audio. So I'd just like to thank A-Rod for enunciating so clearly before he and Jason Varitek went at it. Even the most hurricane-addled lip reader couldn't help but understand what A-Rod was saying.

7. The Jaguars are reportedly considering covering up seats at Alltel Stadium before the 2005 season to artificially reduce the seating capacity. The goal would be to make it easier to achieve sellouts and thus lift a potential local TV blackout. In related news, the Expos sold out Sunday's game against the Marlins, packing 2,125 rowdy fans into Olympic Stadium.

8. Saw the Bourne Supremacy over the weekend and give it the thumbs up. It was better than the original, in which the Matt Damon character did a little bit too much I-can't-remember-my-past moping around. Round two had much more action, though the frenetic jump cuts were sometimes too much to bear after a night on Bourbon Street. Still, it had a breakneck pace plus some great lines by grizzled Brian Cox as a seen-it-all CIA vet. Damon also puts a serious beatdown on a fellow assassin with a rolled-up magazine, which has made my work environment suddenly seem much more perilous.

9.  Angels pitcher Kevin Gregg's record-tying four wild pitches in one inning on Sunday made me wonder about Rick Ankiel. Gregg's wild streak tied the post-1900 regular-season record, set by Walter Johnson in 1914 and tied by Phil Niekro in 1979. (Gregg can take solace in the fact that both are Hall of Famers.) Bert Cunningham (real name: Ellsworth Elmer Cunningham) threw five wild pitches in one frame in 1890. That mark was tied by Ankiel in the 2000 NL playoffs, when he was a 21-year-old stud who suddenly lost his control. Ankiel hasn't pitched competitively since last July after having ligament replacement surgery on his pitching elbow. But he has been throwing to hitters at Class A Palm Beach and is expected to be optioned on a medical rehabilitation program on Aug. 1. The Cardinals will wait until then because they can't send him to the minors -- Ankiel is parked on the big-league disabled list -- without passing him through waivers because he is out of options. St. Louis feels that some team would take a chance on Ankiel, who just turned 25. Last year Ankiel was 2-6 with a 6.29 ERA in Double A, but he gave up only four runs and nine hits over his last 20 innings before the surgery.

10. Jeopardy! note of the day: Ken Jennings finished the summer season in style, winning a single-game record $75,000 on Friday to up his 38-day total to $1,321,660. Jennings won't be back on the air until Sept. 6 as the show will air repeats until then. On Friday, Jennings nearly broke the single-game mark of $52,000 before Final Jeopardy, until he missed his last response of the game to fall back to $51,400. Then Jennings wagered $23,600 and correctly supplied two of the four Shakespeare plays in which a ghost appears on stage. (Jennings said Hamlet and Richard III; the other two are Julius Caesar and Macbeth.) Jennings had tied the previous record on three occasions before smashing it on Friday. The question now is, will the long layoff cool Jennings' buzzer finger? Well, that's why they play the games.