Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993 TAG: 9307090194
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A group hoping to ease tension between beggars and their targets at baseball's All-Star Game on Tuesday in Baltimore planned to hand out the kits along with brochures of "Tips for the Panhandled" outside Camden Yards on Thursday night at the Orioles-White Sox game.
The Orioles' new stadium, where the midseason game will be played, has became a hot spot for beggars since it opened.
"We're trying to make sure panhandlers are looked at as human beings, as the moral stoplights of society," said Lauren Siegel of City Advocates in Solidarity with the Homeless.
The kit contains a guide to panhandlers' legal rights, spelling out what is allowed and what is against the law. Panhandlers can ask for food or money, as long as they don't block traffic or otherwise pose a public danger where they panhandle.
Included are tips such as "smile - you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," reminders to say "please" and "thank you" and yellow-green buttons, reading "Polite Panhandling Pays."
The brochure for the panhandled reminds citizens, "You have the right to say no and the panhandler has a right to ask."
Both beggar and begged also are told to never use profanity and to "make eye contact, acknowledging the other person's humanity."
\ TV TIME: NBC Sports executive Ken Schanzer will head baseball's new television operation, a ground-breaking partnership with NBC and ABC that will oversee all major-league network broadcasts. Schanzer has been executive vice president of NBC Sports since 1983.
In May, baseball owners approved a six-year contract with ABC and NBC that is expected to cut national broadcast revenue in half next season, to about $200 million from the $1.06 billion, four-year deal with CBS.
\ CARD TROUBLES: The Major League Baseball Players Association isn't amused by groups that wants to provide a humorous alternative for baseball card collectors.
Cardtoons L.C. of Tulsa, Okla., seeks to market a package of 130 cards that parody current and former major-leaguers. Players like Dennis Excellency of the Pathetics and Rob Quibble of the Dreds. There's also Carlton Fist, Darryl Razzberry and Lee Smite, Don Battingly and Tommy Lasagna. And Vince Poleman, who is "so fast he can think up an excuse before he makes an error."
An attorney for the MLBPA recently wrote to Cleveland-based Champs Marketing Inc., which had contracted to print the cards, saying the MLBPA was "enforcing its exclusive rights with respect to group licensing of active Major League baseball players."
The letter told Champs that "if you will not agree to cease these activities, the MLBPA will have no alternative but to pursue its full legal remedies to enforce its rights."
Champs promptly stopped printing the cards.
Cardtoons in turn filed a federal lawsuit June 22 asking a Tulsa judge to rule that Cardtoons does not violate the MLBPA's rights of publicity or other property rights. That suit is pending.
by CNB