Black Eye

Ambler's Megann Peddigree was only 11 years old when she got her first taste of karate. It was a right-hand chop to the mouth, delivered expertly by a boy the same age who had no intention of taking it easy on a girl . . . at least not with his friends watching. When the bout was over, Megann had a bloody lip, a bruised eye, a puffy nose and a set of shocked parents about to rethink their daughter's recreational priorities. "I thought I lost her," said Patrick Byrnes, her karate coach.

RICHARD POTTS returned to his rowhouse on Lancaster Avenue near 56th early in the morning of April 5 to find his Overbrook neighborhood on virtual lockdown. A cop had been shot; a manhunt was on. The block was cordoned off with yellow tape. Cops and SWAT teams fanned the streets. K-9 units scoured through brush. Some businesses were forced to close for five hours. "The cops were questioning everybody," Potts, 57, recalled. Sgt. Robert Ralston, a 21-year veteran and father of five, said he'd been shot on patrol by a black man with "cornrows" and a "mark or tattoo under his left eye. " Yesterday, the Overbrook neighbors were outraged to learn that it was all a lie. Ralston, 46, had intentionally shot himself in the left shoulder.

Brittany Snow was walking to the bench in Thursday's win over Cherry Hill West when she noticed some unusual stares coming from her coaches and teammates. "They looked at me and said, 'What happened? It looks like you have a third eye,' " Snow said. "I didn't even know. I had no idea my eye was that swollen. I honestly didn't know I had a black eye. " That about sums up the 6-foot center of the Seneca girls' basketball team. Snow also broke the school's scoring record of 1,075 career points on Thursday.

Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen was sporting a black eye behind the tinted visor he wore to practice yesterday. According to a university official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Clausen was punched outside a South Bend, Ind., bar early Sunday morning. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Clausen was the "victim of a sucker punch. " Clausen and a group he was with decided to leave P.J.'s Pub after words were exchanged with others at the bar. The official said someone followed them outside and punched Clausen, who did not fight back.

Julie Hull Elicker came away with some mementos of the World Cup Lacrosse Championship Saturday. The Great Valley High School graduate, a starter on the United States national team, ended her lacrosse career with a silver medal and a Joe Palooka-caliber black eye. Elicker would be the first to concede that the silver medal may be the one that hurts more . . . because it means second best. Elicker and Team USA came up three goals shy in their bid for a second straight world title.

Dumfounding! Unbelievable! Beyond comprehension! I'm talking about the continuing police scandals in our city. To the remainder of the men and women of the Police Department, it is an unwarranted black eye. The majority of officers do their job without depending on manufactured evidence or falsely accusing anyone, but people think, "There's another one of those criminal cops. " All the honest hard work over the span of a career is put aside and forgotten each time people read of yet another cop gone wrong.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - It was only a Grapefruit League game that will be erased from record books and memory banks in a few weeks, when the regular season begins. Still, Roy Halladay against CC Sabathia and the New York Yankees is as good as it gets in spring training. Halladay was better than good in his third spring start, throwing six shutout innings Thursday during a 7-0 Phillies win at Bright House Field. The ace of the Phillies' four aces threw three perfect innings, surrendered a couple of singles in the fourth, and finished by working out of a second-and-third, two-out jam in the sixth.

A key factor in planning any covert operation is full consideration of "blowback" - the painful consequences of an "op" gone bad. This time, the CIA is stinging from the "blowback" of last week's revelation that it has been playing warden to a string of secret overseas terrorist prisons. With human-rights groups howling "torture" and "gulag," the International Red Cross and the European Union seeking answers, and the Bush administration saying little, the effect on public opinion at home and America's image abroad will be painful.

Charles "Shovel" Staples may be getting a new place to stay, at least until after his trial on charges of murdering a Franklin Township police officer earlier this year. Staples' lawyer, Jeffrey C. Zucker, told a Gloucester County Court judge yesterday that he wants his client moved to Burlington County Jail. "I just think it'd be a better atmosphere," Zucker said, not commenting on whether Staples' black eye during his Nov. 16 appearance had anything to do with the request.

Minutes after declaring victory in Pennsylvania Republicans' divisive, five-way Senate primary, Tom Smith brushed off questions about his ability to reunite his party. "There's no doubt in my mind that we will all come together," the former Armstrong County coal executive told a crowd Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. "It's what primaries are all about - sorting things out. " The trouble is, Republicans across the state said Wednesday, Smith's upstart victory leaves things more unsorted than ever.

Brittany Snow was walking to the bench in Thursday's win over Cherry Hill West when she noticed some unusual stares coming from her coaches and teammates. "They looked at me and said, 'What happened? It looks like you have a third eye,' " Snow said. "I didn't even know. I had no idea my eye was that swollen. I honestly didn't know I had a black eye. " That about sums up the 6-foot center of the Seneca girls' basketball team. Snow also broke the school's scoring record of 1,075 career points on Thursday.

Brittany Snow was walking to the bench in Thursday's win over Cherry Hill West when she noticed some unusual stares coming from her coaches and teammates. "They looked at me and said, 'What happened? It looks like you have a third eye,' " Snow said. "I didn't even know. I had no idea my eye was that swollen. I honestly didn't know I had a black eye. " That about sums up the 6-foot center of the Seneca girls' basketball team. Snow also broke the school's scoring record of 1,075 career points on Thursday.

EIGHT SUSPENSIONS, more apologies. Players from Cincinnati and No. 8 Xavier received the consequences of their on-court brawl that left both programs with a black eye. Cincinnati forward Yancy Gates was dealt a six-game suspension for throwing punches, and seven other players were disciplined for their roles in a brawl that ended the annual crosstown rivalry game. Four Bearcats and four Musketeers were suspended in all. Three Cincinnati players got six-game suspensions, the longest of those handed out. Gates punched Xavier's Kenny Frease in the face, causing a nasty gash below his left eye, and hit at least one other Musketeer during the fracas on Saturday, which prompted the referees to end Xavier's 76-53 win with 9.4 seconds left.

Joshua Farrell, 59, a retired social worker who spends his days in Occupy Philadelphia's encampment outside City Hall, has a nasty black eye. Years ago, under Mayor Frank Rizzo's billy-club-in-the-cummerbund rule, say, it would have been reasonable to assume the shiner was a gift from the city's then brutal police. But times have changed, radically. Occupy Philadelphia, now in its 23d day on Dilworth Plaza, remains one of the most peaceful demonstrations of its kind in the country.

This story was updated at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27. ABOUT 11 P.M. on Sept. 9, dozens of youths with bats and pipes descended on a tidy residential area of Port Richmond looking for white teens who allegedly had attacked an African-American kid at Stokely Playground a couple of hours earlier. Two fearful white teens spotted Mark LaVelle on Indiana Avenue near Belgrade Street and asked for help. Suddenly, the mob appeared. LaVelle, who said that he didn't know the two kids, who looked to be 13 or 14, ran with them into his nearby house.

The beauty of football - and on sports' landscape, no game is more beautiful than football - lies in its deviousness. Each play is a wondrous chess match, one coach trying to outsmart the other. A new play. A new formation. A new play out of an old formation. An old play out of a new formation. The coaches get to do it once, stop for 20 or 30 seconds, and do it again. More than 100 times in each game. The bigger and better the bag of tricks, often the better the coach.

IT'S MY favorite thing - biking from the suburbs into the city. I call it my Cradle of Liberty Ride, and I'm convinced I can sell anyone on the merits of Philadelphia with just one ride. I travel through the Wissahickon along Forbidden Drive, onto Kelly Drive paralleling the Schuylkill, past Boathouse Row, the Art Museum, then onto Old City, most all of it on bike paths. It is arguably the most beautiful inner-city ride in the nation. And, on the last Sunday of July, it seemed no different, at least at first.