I guess this month was my month to meet baseball players. First I sat down to interview Bucky Dent at McCoy Stadium, which was an official sort of thing. But since then I've run into two others, pretty much by chance.

The first was when I was in Los Angeles for Book Expo America. This is the annual trade show of the book publishing industry and I exhibit every year with my company, Circlet Press. It's three days of standing around in a suit, greeting booksellers and foreign language agents and reporters and sales reps. Yes, we got away from the show one evening to see a Dodgers game, but that wasn't when I met someone. You see, at the show, one of the features is autographing. Authors will be set up at tables with large piles of their books--free! to give away!--and for certain blocks of time they will sign. People line up between long lines of velvet ropes and get as many free books as they can. They idea is that since the people in line are mostly bookstore owners and employees, they will sell more copies of a book from an author they have met (and received a free sample from).

One of the scheduled signings was for Michael Lewis' Moneyball, a book on the Oakland A's which has hit the Publishers Weekly bestseller list. I was autographing a (non-baseball!) book of my own from 3pm to 4pm, and Lewis was scheduled for 4pm, so I figured I would get in his line when I was done.

In front of me in his line were two people from Minnesota wearing Red Sox pins, behind me, a Cubs fan wearing his corporate booth uniform (matching polo shirts with the company's logo... I don't remember which company now). Lewis was nowhere to be found, so we stood in line, chatting with each other about topics from Manny Ramirez to the Metrodome. Still no Lewis. We decided to give him until 4:15. A teamster came out from the back and started stacking up the free copies of the book and we were hopeful this meant Lewis' arrival was imminent. But still nothing.

Meanwhile I saw another guy just siiting in a chair off to the side, doing nothing. I pointed him out to the guy behind me in line. "That really looks like Jim Bouton." He looked. "He looks like Rudy from Survivor, to me." Okay, whatever. 4:15 came and someone at the front asked the teamster who was still stacking the books up if he knew if Lewis was coming. "No idea, but you can take the book if you want." So people began taking copies of the book and going away. I took a copy and just as I was walking away, Michael Lewis showed up. By then it was too late to go back and cut the line, and there were a hundred people waiting, so I figured, skip it. But I went over to the guy sitting in the back and told him, "you know, the reason everyone in Michael Lewis' line was staring at you is because you look like Jim Bouton."

"That's because I'm him," he replied.

So then we had a chat about how my mom knew him back in Englewood, New Jersey in the seventies, when they were both active in democratic party politics. I know, I know, shouldn't I have been asking him about Mickey Mantle or something? Instead I asked him about what was happening in Pittsfield, MA, where he was part of an effort to save/renovate a historic ballpark. "The people of Pittsfield are great," he told me. "And they wanted to save their history. But the town fathers thought differently about it." Then I said I missed seeing him at Old Timer's Day when I went last year at Yankee Stadium. "I'll be there this year," he told me. I resisted the urge to gush about how much I loved Ball Four. Then we went our separate ways.

When I got back to Boston, I had yet another confluence of art and sport in my life. The other night corwin and I attended a charity auction to benefit The Jimmy Fund at Todd English's Bonfire Restaurant. The items auctioned fell into two categories: beautiful impressionistic oil paintings by C. Edmund Sullivan and sports memorabilia.

I received the invitation from my contact at the Park Plaza Hotel because I plan and host conventions and meetings there. Bonfire (celebrity chef Todd English's take on an Argentinian-style steakhouse) is in the hotel and I've been wanting to check it out for a while.

The reception was set to start at 6:30, so I brought corwin a fancy shirt to change into, picked him up at work, and we headed over for cocktails and food. The crowd was still light when we arrived, and we snacked happily on various grilled meats on sticks, chicken liver mousse (no, really, it was delicious), tiny ham sandwiches, roast orange glazed pork loin, smoked salmon, sliced beef and horseradish on croutons, etc. etc. corwin enjoyed a glass of peppery red wine while I opted for the "Frida Kahlo," a mixed drink of Tequila, crushed berries, 7-up, and "secret ingredients." It was good, but an hour later I had only managed to drink half of it. We'll never be heavy drinkers...

Eventually it became clear that the small army of caterers was going to keep bringing us food until we cried uncle, and with our tummies getting full we opted to look at the auction items. Some of the paintings were for silent auction, while others were to go to live auction at 8:30. Nice paintings, though the light was dim in there, and the small lights on each canvas were not sufficient to show the colors. The minimum bids ranged from $650 to $2500. Far out of our price range.

And then there was the sports memorabilia, like a special Nomar Garciaparra art poster, autographed. "Eddie Boston" had put the first bid down on that at $275. In fact, "Eddie Boston" had bid on all the sports items. A soccer ball signed by Nomar's sweetie, Mia Hamm. A Paul Pierce signed basketball. A baseball signed by Hank Aaron. In the live auction they would also be auctioning off a trip to New York to see the Red Sox play the Yankees later this summer, including accomodations at the W Hotel. I wondered if the same people would be bidding on the art items and the sport items, or would they appeal to different bidders, covering all the bases? It was an odd combination, and yet it wasn't, considering the crowd.

Then Nomar and Mia arrived. Okay, here is where I go all gossip-column-y. The crowd at this function was a cross section of Boston's upper crust and various movers and shakers in sports, entertainment, art, restauranting, and so on. So when Nomar and Mia arrived, they were not mobbed. No, this was the sort of crowd that acted like it had met them a dozen times already, even if they hadn't. Well, mostly. Some press photographers then arranged them for some photos--Mia holding the ball, Nomar holding Mia--and most eyes in the room were turned toward them. Then the crowd began to thicken in the area nearest them. By then the crowd was fairly thick all over, probably more than 200 people, maybe even 300? But there was a noticeable magnetic effect around the two of them.

Damn, but they are cute. Seeing them standing there, talking casually with one of the event organizers, I had the urge to run up to Mia and shake her hand and say "Oh my god, Mia Hamm, I admire you so much, you've done so much for women's athletics -- oh hi, Nomar -- and I've always wanted to meet you!" Just to see what Nomar's reaction would be. (Of course, I didn't.)

Nomar looks a lot bigger on TV, his nose included. In person he's a completely normal-sized human being--as is Mia. You could almost call them both petite. corwin noticed in particular that Nomar's feet seem smaller than you'd expect. "Maybe it's from all that scrunching them in his shoes in the batter's box." I look at him and see forty home runs and think, hey, I could do that...

Now if only I could contrive to run into Derek Jeter that way.