Famous People

FISHKILL, N.Y. -- Reid Ryan is a rookie right-hander for the Hudson Valley Renegades and, of course, he knows the numbers. How could Nolan's oldest boy not know them?Still, this was different. Ryan visited Cooperstown, N.Y., for the first time last week. He sought out the exhibits commemorating his father's no-hitters (seven), his strikeouts (5,714), the whole mind-numbing numerical parade built over 27 seasons.He stared at the displays, partly in awe, fully proud."I'm used to my dad being a legend and all that, but you don't really think of what he's done until you go up there and see all the records and numbers they have," Ryan said.

By now bookstores are so crammed with bad memoirs that the late literary editor Maxwell Perkins must be praying in his grave for an Alzheimer's pandemic. In some ways, the memoir has been to the last decade what the New Journalism was to the 1960s and '70s -- a definitive genre, a hybrid form, a craze even, of sorts. The memoir has come into its own at the end of the 20th century, serving as a benchmark of this generation's loathsome literary self-consciousness in much the same way as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" were the baby-boomers' Bildungsromans.

Whenever Ron Bruckman wants to reel in some free, gossipy entertainment literally out of thin air, he moseys down to the basement of his Carroll County home, flips a few switches and lets the good times roll.Perhaps today he'll tune into Sly Stallone bad mouthing a Hollywood pal over the telephone, not in a movie but live from some private jet. Or maybe a general with loose lips will blab a military secret, like the one Bruckman heard on the eve of the Persian Gulf war. Possibly a careless CEO will drop a hot stock market tip you won't read about for weeks, or, closer to home, the cops will be chattering about an impending drug raid.

LORAIN, Ohio -- Brad Daugherty used to make his living pounding against 300-pound centers in the NBA. Off the court, his wife knows a much gentler man.Daugherty met Heidi at a restaurant in Ormond Beach, Fla. She was a college student working as a waitress on the breakfast shift when Daugherty walked in, covered in grease after having just worked on his friend's race car.Even so, she thought he was perfect at first sight. Later, she found out he told his racing pals, "She's cuter than a speckled pup."

The Bacon Brothers need validation."We have something to prove," said Michael Bacon, 47.No, musician Michael, and his brother, actor Kevin Bacon, don't need witnesses to hide in a closet to verify carnal conquests, like Kevin's character Fenwick in "Diner," which was set in Baltimore.What they do need, at the peak of hot young-actor-cum-rock-star careers (Keanu Reeves, anyone?) is for people not to pre-suppose the "movie-star vanity trip.""You may not dig our music, but you can't say someone's packaging us, putting nice clothes on us and shooting a video," the 38-year-old actor said.

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Howard White, the former University of Maryland basketball guard who is Nike's most influential adviser to its athletic superstars, was in Hawaii when he saw a man with a chisel and a hammer standing beside a beautiful figure carved from a tree."

It was Baltimore steaming hot even after the sun set, and I didn't get to see the big street protest scene that I came to see filmed for "House of Cards. " But after two hours Wednesday night of standing around on Centre Street with about 40 others, most of whom seemed to have some connection with the Peabody Institute where the crew was filming or were drinking at the Anchor bar across the street, there was Kevin Spacey standing in the street in tuxedo pants and a T-shirt with his suspenders hanging down around his knees.

"Melancholy" is one of my favorite words, but if proper nouns may be considered, no word satisfies me more utterly that "Pushtunistan." Can you bear a fardel? The funniest word in English is "fardel," the most pompous is "obloquy," the most unnecessary is "congeries," and the hardest to pronounce without sounding like a twit is "prescient."-- Russell BakerSource: The Logophile's Orgy: Favorite Words of Famous People

At a time when a fellow Baltimorean named George Ruth was barely in knickers, Joe Gans was the biggest star in town. Along with Cardinal James Gibbons — the Cardinal Gibbons — Gans was one of the most famous people in the country. Maybe even the world. Boxing fans knew Gans, who died a century ago Tuesday, as the world's first African-American champion, but he was more than that. Those in Baltimore knew Gans as the proprietor of the city's hottest nightclub who tooled around the cobblestone streets in Henry Ford's newfangled automobile.

If you head down Sunrise Boulevard and make a right on Florida's scenic oceanfront Highway A1A, you'll soon happen upon the future home of swimming superstar Michael Phelps. No, he's not building some beachfront estate. I'm referring to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. The ISHOF Museum features swimming memorabilia from the all-time greats of the sport and also famous people who also were talented competitive swimmers, divers, water polo players or synchronized swimmers. Did you know Ronald Reagan was captain of his college swim team and John F. Kennedy was on the first Harvard team to defeat Yale?