Scorecard

A SAD REFRAIN

On Tuesday, Feb. 9, Rico Leroy Marshall of Glenarden, Md., celebrated his 18th birthday. On Wednesday, Marshall, a talented fullback at Forestville (Md.) High, signed a letter of intent to play at the University of South Carolina. On Thursday, Marshall, who sometimes sang the national anthem at home games, won his school's talent contest. On Friday, he was given an impromptu ovation as he walked into the school gym to watch a basketball game.

Early Saturday morning, Marshall died after ingesting several chunks of crack, the cocaine derivative. Prince George's County police said that they were investigating drug trafficking on a notorious street in the town of Capitol Heights when officers stopped Marshall's car at about 1:30 a.m. Police surmise that Marshall swallowed the crack in order to avoid arrest. He drove home and a short time later went into convulsions. After being taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, he died at 4:10 a.m.

On the wall of Marshall's bedroom was a photo of a basketball player who came from the neighboring community of Landover—Len Bias.

STATING THE OBVIOUS

There's a 4-year-old gelding racing at Aqueduct in New York with an unusual past performance chart. Last summer, in his first five starts at Philadelphia Park, the horse had two first-place and two third-place finishes, but eventually he was disqualified from receiving his winnings. The reason? Those races were restricted to Pennsylvania-breds, and this horse was foaled in Virginia.

You would think someone might have caught on sooner to the discrepancy. The name of the horse, after all, is Made in Virginia.

IN DOGGED PURSUIT

One can almost imagine a tweedy Scotland Yard inspector calling all the suspects into the library as a storm rages outside. "One of you [pause] is guilty," says the inspector. "One of you [pause] left a trace of powder in the coat of your Bedlington terrier." Gasp!

That scene is suggested by the extraordinary measures taken at the 92nd Crufts Dog Show in London's Earl's Court last week, a show which drew 15,567 entrants representing 135 breeds. It's common practice for owners to use powder to clean their dogs' coats, but to conform to a new Kennel Club rule, handlers had to brush out any remnants of the powder before bringing their animals inside the exhibition hall. It seems that all that powder was creating a frightful mess in the hall. In an attempt to curb violations of the rule, the Kennel Club threatened to take spot (or Spot) samples of dog hair for later examination by the forensic scientists of Scotland Yard.