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After I'd hit a home run and took my position in the field, the fans in the bleachers began throwing packages of tobacco at me. I stuffed them in my pocket.

My greatest moment as a jock occurred when I was 14 and playing punch ball in front of my house on Albemarle Road near East 17th Street in Brooklyn. I ran back, back for a ball, and it fell in my hands. I didn't even see it. Everyone congratulated me on the catch, and I never told them how it really happened.

I was a roving guard on the Lowell Hebrew Community Center's girls' basketball team all through high school. My specialty was stealing the ball, but my only shot was a lay-up.

I was hit by a car when I was 13, and the rumour was immediately that I had been playing chicken with the car with my best friend Kenny in front of the Nutmeg Pantry, which was the only shop in Sharon. In fact, the guy who hit me was inebriated.

When I was 7, an old lady was driving too fast in my neighborhood and hit me with her car. I was running out of the house, and when I got halfway into the street, my mom saw the car and yelled for me to run back. As I turned around the car hit me, dragged me five houses down the road, and I fractured my collarbone.

I got tackled once in a movie theater. I was with my mom and brother, and then suddenly I got hit from behind and sort of sprawled out on the candy counter.

I was playing baseball, and I tripped over first base - I'm very clumsy - and I fell and broke my wrist. That was pretty painful.

When I was a teenager, I was an umpire for a competitive league for 8- to 9-year-olds. I was really bad at it because I didn't know all the rules, and all these kids were better athletes than me. I made a bad call, and this dad snapped on me. Then he dumped his trash from his cooler, and I had to kick him out of the stands.

On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs.

I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.