Madman

SIXTEEN SUMMERS ago, the first time I laid eyes on Tom "Goose" Kaiser, he danced out of his Wishing Well Bar and hopped onto a bus he'd chartered to Cooperstown, N.Y., for Brooks Robinson's Hall of Fame induction.It was not yet 6 in the morning, and Goose hadn't been to sleep since maybe the previous decade. A big television screen inside the Wishing Well was showing a stock car race. I thought: Who can watch cars crashing before dawn?As the bus pulled onto Interstate 83 toward Pennsylvania, Goose stood at the front and faced everybody like some cheerleader who'd taken a bad turn.

America's physicians are holding their breath as they wait to see how Washington will resolve the latest mess resulting when the methods of "Madman Muntz" meet Medicare. Earl William "Madman" Muntz was the pioneer pitchman who explained his low prices by saying, "I lose money on every one I sell, but I make it up on the volume." His business model is being tested by Medicare, which tries to keep its budget balanced in response to the increasing number of services that doctors provide by reducing the price paid per service.

Say it ain't so, Bob.But Bob De Niro can't say it ain't so, and Wes Snipes can't say it ain't so either.That's because it is so: The mighty expensive "Fan" has struck out.An extremely overwrought, finally ludicrous stalker thriller set against a background of major league baseball, it appears to have been made by people who never set foot in a ballpark until they showed up at Candlestick Park with $50 million worth of equipment.They don't even get the crack of the bat right. If there's a signature baseball sound, it's the Louisville ash meeting the horsehide, that deeply organic, vibratory SWAK that sends reverberations of sheer quivery pleasure into the center of your ancient brain -- that is, unless it's the other team's guy who's made such good contact, in which case it's the pain center that lights up. Here's how they handle it in "The Fan": BONK!

Jeffery Deaver opens his novel "Praying for Sleep" with this quotation from "Hamlet":And can you, by no drift of conferenceGet from him why he puts on this confusionGrating so harshly all his days of quietwith turbulent and dangerous lunacy?It's an ambitious undertaking, to look inside the mind of a madman -- and Mr. Deaver fails completely. This thriller sheds no light at all on the mind of the madman at the story's center.The novel begins as Michael Hrubek, an escapee from an asylum for the criminally insane, is riding in the back of a hearse.

IN ONE of the most poetic and chilling of his narratives, Elie Wiesel tells the story of a small group of Jews gathered together to pray in an underground synagogue during the Nazi occupation. In the middle of the service, the small door burst open to reveal what could only be described as a half-crazed Jew. The man, with that unblinking stare that only accompanies religious fervor and certain kinds of insanity, put both his index fingers to his lips and said, "Shh, don't pray so loudly.

That morning we awoke to hear the sound of airplane engines very loud. Rushing outside, we saw wave upon wave of bombers, heading south, toward France, flying low over the rooftops. They were ours, thank God, Marauders and Mitchells and Typhoons and Mosquitos, and all of them had bold black and white stripes under their wings, not the usual drab camouflage.This was it, we said. At last, the invasion of Europe, the beginning of the end.Fifty years later it's impossible to say exactly what a 13-year-old thought or felt at that moment.

DON'T TALK TO David Segui about being put out to pasture. He knows what happens to ballplayers whose time is up. Take his father, for example. Diego Segui, the Cuban emigre who fled his country at age 17 and wound up pitching 15 years in the major leagues, has taken up cattle farming back home in Kansas City, Mo. The father's 30 acres and the son's 60 acres abut, but David has insisted that fences keep his father's cows in their place. "He started with two. He bought them for my grandmother.

WHEN YOU'RE a passenger in the front seat of a tiny car hurtling across the cold macadam at 60 mph and the driver says "Here's a 180 coming up," the thing to say is: "Uh, maybe you could drop me off first." But this is the part I forgot. So by the time veteran Hollywood stuntman Sean Graham threw us into a tire-squealing, smoke-spewing, 180-degree slide, it was too late to get out. And by the time we did a big four-wheel drift and a reverse 180, which is also called a J-turn, my mouth was contorted in a permanent scream that wouldn't come.

CHICAGO -- He's a megalomaniac who has weapons of mass destruction and dreams of conquest. If left alone, he is bound to shatter the stability of the Middle East and the world. Anyone who expects him to behave rationally is deluded. He's so reckless and warlike that there's no telling what he might do. No, I'm not talking about George W. Bush. I'm talking about Saddam Hussein, as portrayed these days by those advocating war with Iraq. They claim we must act now to keep him from getting nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction.

Washington A MADMAN HE is not, say those familiar with the character and career of Saddam Hussein.Aggressive, yes. Power-hungry, yes. Ruthless, yes.But it is a mistake, say Middle East scholars and others who've examined the personality of the Iraqi president, to think he is an irrational and unpredictable fanatic who cannot be stopped."