[Exhibitman]

Not baseball but:

I saw Vitali Klitschko in a Whole Foods Market. Kinda hard to miss since he's
6'7" and built like a mountain. He bought a drink and jumped into a waiting SUV idling in the parking lot. I didn't have anything to write with so I couldn't get an autograph.

Speaking of tall, when I was in school in San Francisco I went out on a Friday evening and saw David Robinson in a club in the Marina (I think he was still in the service at the time). He was literally a head and shoulders taller than everyone else in the place and happily dancing by himself.

Even taller, Chuck Nevitt, 7'5". He was the 12th man on a few of the great Lakers Showtime teams, and a fan favorite because if he came in you knew the game was over. I met him on the campus of UCLA one summer when I was using UCLA's jobs center to look for work and he was working out at the campus. I was a sprightly 6' even back then and I remember his leg seemed to reach nearly to my shoulder.

Back in 1979 my parents and I went to see All That Jazz in Westwood (near UCLA). As we were leaving the theater we ran into John Belushi. My father angrily said "Hey, you keep my kid up late at night." Belushi did that shrug thing he used to do and mumbled something in "Samurai".

My wife and I had a week where we could not avoid Michael Chiklis. First we saw him in a local restaurant with his family a few tables from ours. A few days later we saw him at the Aquarium of the Pacific with his kids. Then on Saturday my wife and her sister went to see Mama Mia and he and his wife were sitting right behind them. My wife finally turned around and asked him if he was following her.

Back when my daughter was still a baby my wife and I went to a religious service where we had to sit in the very back because of the baby. Dustin Hoffman and his wife come in and sit down beside us. We wish each other "good yuntiff" which is Yiddish for happy holidays. He then spills a bottle of water and is frantically trying to deal with it. My wife gave him a diaper and I got to watch Dustin Hoffman mopping up with my daughter's diaper. And yes, it was a clean diaper.