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	Warren Sapp  Bill Frakes

In my sports fantasy, I roll out of my canopied bed, in my room overlooking the Caribbean, and join Rebecca Romijn-Stamos for breakfast. So engaging is her conversation that it is almost possible for me to forget that she is not wearing a top.

Having grown weary, after a long weekend in the company of scarcely clad swimsuit models, I jet back to the States, stopping on my way in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There I meet with Vera Clemente, widow of Roberto, the Hall of Fame right fielder who died on December 31, 1972 flying relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. Most of my seven siblings and I recall gazing with awe upon Clemente from the cheap seats at Three Rivers Stadium. In my sports fantasy, I reverse the direction of the earth's rotation around the sun, traveling back in time to see No. 21 play one more time, to intimidate one more pitcher with his predatory stance, to play one more carom off the wall and make one more otherworldly peg from the deepest recesses of right. What the hell, as long as I'm in Pittsburgh in the early '70s, let me see the Immaculate Reception.

Back in the here and now, I'd chat with Fox analyst John Madden about that miraculous finish -- the portly oracle was Oakland's coach on that surreal afternoon when Franco Harris scooped Terry Bradshaw's ricochet off the turf and knocked the Raiders out of the playoffs -- and about life in general.

Next, I'd drive from Tampa to Orlando with Warren Sapp, the smartest, funniest athlete I've run into in five years on the NFL beat. (Considering the way Sapp drives, I'd make damned sure I had an air-bag on my side of the car). I'd play a round of golf with Mark Messier, have beers with Brett Hull, then pick Wayne Gretzky's brain for an hour. After lunch with Jim Rome -- the lord of sports talk radio's jungle is actually a nice guy, at least I think so -- I'd be ready for some real exercise. I'd head up to Marin County, Calif, birthplace of mountain biking, and go on a two-hour ride with Ned Overend, six-time national champion. Or maybe I'd hook up with genius, gonzo downhiller Marla Streb, and do my best to follow her down some gnarly single-track.

Hot, dehydrated and bloodied from trying to follow Streb's line over a bunch of baby-head boulders, I'd get on the Lear and head back to my room on Richard Branson's private island in the Caribbean, where I really did stay a few years ago while writing a story about the body-painting of supermodels for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

That, like every item on this extended wish list, really happened to me, most of it in the line of duty for SI. I did see the Immaculate Reception, with my dad, my brother Chris, and my late uncle Jack; really did visit, decades later, with Vera Clemente; really have met Madden, breakfasted with Rebecca, lunched with Rome, drank with Hull, gossiped with Gretzky and taken spins with Ned and Marla. Life is sweet because sometimes it exceeds one's fantasies. Toward the end of my stay on the Island of the Naked Supermodels, for instance, I found myself treading water in the deep end of Branson's pool, discussing the fall of the Berlin wall with a topless Heidi Klum.

What do you do for a living?