All Victor's Children

But it's still early, and Newman is leering in his Lear. His nostrils twitch as if at an offensive smell.

"Oh, my!" says Roe.

Newman curls his lower lip into the most malignant of sneers. His face suggests a clenched fist.

"Jeez, Victor's foaming like a Maytag!"

Newman swells with righteous indignation and begins talking LIKE THIS. Roe's lips tremble like strawberry Jell-O. "Oooooooooh! Evil!"

The episode ends with Newman standing outside the door of a hospital room, looking in anxiously at his bedridden wife, who has just given birth, and her ex-fiancé. "I think I'll give Victor another look tomorrow," Roe says. "If he doesn't grab me, I'll put my finger on the remote and switch to another channel." In other words, he'll give Victor the thumb.

"Victor Newman is not only omnipotent, but omniscient," says Braeden. "He's forceful, yet reacts in an emotional way. That is what athletes dream about."

The man who is Victor Newman is exercising his acting muscles on an L.A. soundstage. He has just taped a wrenching scene with Signy Coleman, who plays Hope. Coleman continues weeping. Braeden has long since detached himself. He and the crew are playing catch with a balled-up page from the script. "Sports keep you honest," he says between tosses. "The joy is real, the pain is real. Acting is innately fake. The challenge is to be real."

It is somewhat ludicrous, Braeden says, to be alive in the time of your own legend. This was never more apparent to him than the day he met George Foreman in a dressing room at CBS Television City, where The Young and the Restless is taped. "Oh, man, I am blessed," said the heavyweight champ. "Oh, man, I am blessed. I met Victor Newman."

To keep himself Victorious, the 54-year-old Braeden spars and pumps iron in the home gym he calls his "temple." He plays tennis with Alex Olmedo, the 1959 Wimbledon champ. He coaches the Los Angeles Soccer Club on which his 25-year-old son, Christian, is a sweeper. The team successfully defended its Golden West League title this year.