The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh I was proud.

When you read about a car crash in which two or three youngsters are killed do you pause to dwell on the amount of love and treasure and patience parents poured into bodies no longer suitable for open caskets?

It just seemed too weird to me. I don't know maybe they were smoking a joint in the car downstairs from their parents' apartment. I had to go that far to put together a scenario of how they could have possibly recognized me.

Fact: The new '90210' is cooler than the old '90210.' It's the lithe streamlined Skipper to the elder series' venerable Barbie. Gone are the traditional parents - they've been replaced by a hipster mom n' pop who get busted necking in the car.

My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.

I think a lot of writers male and female write as if their parents were killed in a car accident when they were 2 and they have no one to hold accountable. And unfortunately I don't have that. I have parents who I care about what they think.

I know people think we drive around in these nice cars and we do whatever we want and our parents will pay our credit cards but that's not the case. Sure my parents were generous I got a nice car at 16 but at 18 I was cut off. I've worked really hard. I opened the store myself.

Although my family - parents and sister - all work in the personnel management business their real passion is performing amateur operatic societies and so on.

My parents were dishonest people. If it was my birthday I knew my mother took me to the K-Mart and she stole my toy. She'd put it in the shopping cart and we'd walk out. I was raised with that.

One I built when I was a kid and it was a real miniature of Disneyland. I fell in love with the park when I went there with my parents on my 12th birthday.