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The final, heart-stopping play of Super Bowl XXXIV has its own Wikipedia page.

But that's not the play that comes to my mind first when I think back to that game, and the efforts of Titans quarterback Steve McNair, who was found shot to death today in Nashville.

I was covering that game, on Jan. 30, 2000, for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, sitting with the rest of the less-important media in the upper level of the Georgia Dome, so high I could have probably reached up and touched the roof.

The play I'll always remember is the next-to-last play of that Super Bowl. Not the last one.

It was classic McNair, avoiding multiple tacklers and a near sack, spinning and scrambling -- impossbily staying on his feet far behind the line of scrimmage -- and ultimately finding Kevin Dyson for a 16-yard gain to the Rams' 10-yard line with six seconds remaining. Without that effort by McNair, there almost certainly is no Famous Last Play.

McNair, in his prime, was one of only a small handful of NFL quarterbacks in history who could have pulled off that next-to-last play, given the pressure of the situation.

That was my jaw-dropping moment from Super Bowl XXXIV.

That's my Steve McNair memory.

The slumping Philadelphia Phillies got a lift from an unlikely source on Friday night -- former Baltimore Oriole Rodrigo Lopez.

Lopez pitched 6.1 innings and allowed just two runs in the Phillies' 7-2 win over the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park.

Lopez was one of baseball's best stories in 2002, when he burst onto the scene with the Baltimore Orioles and went 15-9 with a 3.57 ERA.

Dan Connolly, who covered the Orioles that year for the York Daily Record, wrote the following for the June 8, 2002, edition:

BALTIMORE -- Rodrigo Lopez dreamed of one day pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers like his childhood hero and fellow Mexican, Fernando Valenzuela.

He never was given the chance. He signed with the Orioles as a minor-league free agent when no other team, including the Dodgers, showed interest.

On Friday, Lopez started against L.A. and came within one out of capturing his first complete-game shutout. Instead, he settled for a 4-2, interleague victory and a standing ovation from an energized Camden Yards crowd of 33,624.

 "The feeling is pretty good," said Lopez, a native of Tlalnepantla, Mexico. "I've been a Dodgers' fans since I was a kid. (The win) means a lot to me."

Within six months, the 26-year-old right-hander has gone from the Culiacan Tomato Growers of the Mexican Winter League to being arguably the Orioles' staff ace. Lopez (6-1) is second in the American League with a sparkling 2.51 ERA and is making a claim to become the Orioles' representative to the American League All-Star team.

"He's incredible," Melvin Mora said of Lopez. "This guy can just pitch. He throws the ball and uses his brain.... That's pretty good."

Lopez mixed his nasty slider with a 93-mph fastball against a team that had only one hitter in the lineup - Brian Jordan - that had ever faced him before.

The fairy tale didn't continue forever for Lopez, though.

He struggled in 2003, posted 14 and 15 wins in 2004 and 2005, respectively, for the Orioles (while seeing his ERA rise). And then he fell off the cliff in 2006, losing 18 games and posting a 5.90 ERA.

He was quietly dealt to the Colorado Rockies in the winter following that season. Lopez made 14 unremarkable starts for the Rockies in 2007 and then didn't pitch again in the majors until tonight. He made three minor-league starts for the Atlanta Braves in 2008 and started this season in the Phillies' Triple-A rotation at Lehigh Valley.

Now, with the World Champion Phillies struggling with injuries and inconsistency in their starting rotation, the 33-year-old Mexican native might just have a chance to stick in Philadelphia for awhile.

Friday was a promising first step.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the start of the "Get Outdoors and Be Creative!" summer program sponsored by the Healthy York County Coalition.

We went out with Sarah this past weekend and found two more of the 30 creativity stations that are spread across York County.

I took a couple of snapshots. Can you tell me at which park or trail these were taken? If so, e-mail me at cotto@ydr.com.

The above location at Gifford Pinchot State Park is the site of one of the 30 creativity stations that can be found across York County as part of the "Get Outdoors and Be Creative!" summer program.

Our family spent some time this week doing some letterboxing in York County, as the "Get Outdoors and Be Creative!" summer program from the Healthy York County Coalition officially kicked off on June 6. It's a sequel to last year's popular "Catch the Activity Bug" program, which had kids and their parents rustling through bushes and shrubberies to find those elusive ant and spider stamps.

Information about this year's program can be found at www.goyork.org, and the necessary book and materials for the program can be picked up at any branch of the York County Library System. Once again, there are 30 locations (called "creativity stations") to be discovered within York County's parks and kids have three months to find as many as possible and become eligible for a grand prize in October.

This morning, we were at two different locations at Gifford Pinchot State Park. Nine-year-old Sarah plowed ahead of us on the trails, clip-clopping in a fashion that would make King Arthur and Patsy proud. We read about Pinchot Park's history, the reverting of the farm fields that were once located there and how to recognize different types of trees in the ecosystem, such as the eastern red cedar, white oaks and, of course, the larch.

And -- success -- we found both creativity stations, meaning we're already 10 percent finished (3 of 30 stations).

There's much fun ahead again this summer, with this excellent program for kids and families.

Mothra attacks the Tokyo Tower....

... and French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova threatens to crush the Eiffel Tower.

It's been a pretty good week so far for baseball's World Champions (feel free to knock on wood, Phillies fans). And that's pretty good, considering the team suffered a rough blow last week with the loss of its No. 2 starter, Brett Myers.

1. Entering Friday's game, the Phillies had won seven games in a row and built a four-game lead over the hobbled New York Mets in the National League East.

2. The Phillies have an astonishing 20-6 record in road games, far and away the best record in Major League Baseball. The Dodgers are second at 17-12.

3. Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard are both in the NL's top five in home runs and RBIs.

4. Antonio Bastardo, a 23-year-old pitcher from the Dominican Republic who is taking Myers' spot in the rotation for now, won his major-league debut on Tuesday, pitching six innings and allowing just one run in a win over the San Diego Padres.

5. J.C. Romero returned from his 50-game suspension to further bolster a strong bullpen.

6. World Series MVP Cole Hamels tossed a 97-pitch shutout in Thursday's 3-0 win over the host Dodgers. Hamels is rounding into form after a slow start. He is 4-0 with a 2.84 ERA over his last seven starts.

7. Former first-round draft pick Kyle Drabek made a strong first start for the Reading Phillies after being promoted to Double-A. He went seven innings, allowing three hits and no runs in Wednesday's win against the Akron Aeros. Drabek might not be too far from seriously challenging for a spot in the Phillies' rotation.

Bob Rhein, the president of the York County Lacrosse Association, did some number-crunching on participation in the sport this spring. (see above chart)

Rhein wrote: "As you will see, our growth in participation for both the boys and the girls (1,959 total) continues to dramatically increase each year. When you take into account the total number of 12th graders who have graduated each year, the increase is even more significant. Please note that since West York and Kennard-Dale did not offer high school boys programs this spring, we lost a significant amount of players from these two programs. It is our hope that both school districts will vote to approve the addition of boy's lacrosse for 2010 to enable our numbers to exceed 2,000 participants."

I was recently helping my mom clean out her basement -- which partially involves going through all of the stuff my grandmother and great-grandmother pack-ratted over the years and stuffed in envelopes and boxes and filing cabinets -- and I stumbled across this postcard from the 1970s.

It's quite a blast from the past, showing three sports complexes in south Philly -- two of which don't exist anyone.

From top to bottom are:

1. John F. Kennedy Stadium, which was originally Philadelphia Municipal Stadium. Among other things, it was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles for a short period in the 1930s and 1940s; the host stadium for the Army-Navy Game from 1936 to 1979; and the site of the American portion of Live Aid in 1985. The stadium was demolished in 1992.

2. The Spectrum, which opened in 1967 and will close its doors forever this fall. It is scheduled for demolition in late 2009 or early 2010. Its most famous tenants, of course, have been the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia 76ers. Plus there have been countless concerts, circuses and pro wrestling events held there.

3. Veterans Stadium, which opened in 1971 and was demolished in 2004. Its concrete bowl was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies, among other teams.

Funny what you find in a basement. What memories does this postcard evoke for you?

Bob Lawrence of Spring Grove submitted this photo of his 6-year-old daughter, Ireland, who recently bowled a perfect game -- a 300 -- in Wii Bowling. (Hey, we're committed to covering the entire realm of sports here on The Lineup Card.)

Bob writes: "We know fully what an accomplishment it is to bowl 12 strikes in a row. What just blows us away is that our 6-year-old daughter did it! We videotaped the last few frames, as she was nearing the end. I have enclosed a photo of our daughter posing with her 300."

My 9-year-old daughter Sarah has been devouring a library book about Bigfoot and other Sasquatch Lore, so I figured it was a good time to see what the latest news is from the Yeti News Service:

1. United Press International reported earlier this week that a group of Bigfoot hunters in Oklahoma has found footprints and "heard calls" of the elusive beast.

Apparently, the sasquatch investigators went on a Memorial Day weekend Bigfoot hunt in the Kiamichi Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. And, apparently, they have a cast of a footprint five inches wide and 15 inches long.

The hunters described the "Bigfoot sounds" as imitation bird calls, including whippoorwills and owls. It's unclear why a tall, hairy, apelike creature would need to sound like an owl, but, hey, that's what they said they heard. (Also, the bigfoot hunters did not indicate to what extent the Memorial Day bigfoot outing also involved swigging bourbon.)

2. Also, a new book, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend, written by Joshua Blu Buhs, has been published this month and is now available for purchase on Amazon.com and from other booksellers. Buhs is described in the press notes as an "independent scholar" who surveys the history of bigfoot sightings and lore. Publishers Weekly indicates: "Buhs's rote application of race-class-gender theory -- By imagining themselves into the body of Sasquatch, white working-class men could imagine themselves as black, as women, could come in contact with... repressed and forbidden desires -- yields more academic cant than insight; his oft-invoked white proles feel almost as legendary and stereotyped as the creature itself."

I think Sarah and I will be skipping that one.

Harry Kalas, who was perfectly described as "the narrator of our memories"; whose baritone delivery could be picked out in a half-instant from all the static and swill on the AM band; whose easygoing play-by-play and banter with Richie Ashburn was a constant summertime companion in the heads of Phillies fans as they cooked meals, folded laundry, ran errands, relaxed down the shore and nodded off at night; whose dramatically rising tones sent chills down the spine with descriptions of Michael Jack Schmidt's Hall of Fame career and the exploits of four World Series teams; whose time in the Phillies' broadcast booth was bookended by Boots Day and Troy Tulowitzki at-bats; who had us almost convinced that Chunky Soup was a good and healthy idea; who made "Outta here!" forever a part of the baseball lexicon; and whose voiceover work on NFL highlight reels stands on its own high pedestal despite the impossible challenge of following in the footsteps of John Facenda, sat down with his notes and scorebook in the press level at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., for the seventh game of his 39th season as the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday afternoon and died.

He was 73.

Hard to believe.

"In many ways, Harry is the narrator of our memories," said NFL Films president Steve Sabol.

And now, our narrator is himself a memory.

A new book tells about the West York High School's district champs.

A 56-page book about the West York High School varsity football team's District 3 championship season is being published this month by the York Daily Record/Sunday News and its high school sports Web site, GameTimePA.com.

For details, see:The dogs got out.