Now I've Heard Everything

They say baseball is a funny game. No, really, it's a funny game full of funny characters.

In the 1980s, one of the best chroniclers of those characters was former Major League umpire Ron Luciano. 

Luciano umpired in the American League from 1969 to 1979. And along the way, he collected hundreds of stories about some of the most colorful characters in Major League Baseball, past and present.

I met Ron Luciano in 1989, as we talked about his book Remembrance of Swings Past. 

Happy Mothers Day weekend to all the moms listening right now. 

Today, the story of one exceptionally courageous mom. 

Her name is Betty Mahmoody. In the mid-1980s she accompanied her her iranian-born husband back to his native country for what she thought would be a two-week vacation. 

But instead of returning to the US, her husband informed her that they would be living permanently in Iran. And that was just the beginning of the ordeal for her and the couple's four-year-old daughter Mahtob.

Betty Mahmoody tells the story of what happened over the next 18 months in her best-selling book Not Without My Daughter. Her book was later made into a major Motion Picture starring Sally Field as Betty Mahmoody.

For seven years, the Duggar family captivated American TV viewers, with their reality show “17 Kids and Counting” -- which was later renamed “18 Kids and Counting” and ultimately “19 Kids and Counting.:

Michelle and Jim Bob and their multitude of offspring stood for solid Christian family values.

But, as you know by, eldest child, 33-year-old Josh, has been charged With ossessinon of child pornography.  He has pleaded not guilty.

I met the Duggar parents ten years ago when they published their second book, when their TV show was at its peak of popularity.

Lewis Black makes us laugh by being the angry man.

The perpetually irritated Lewis Black wrote a book in 2005, a semi-autobiographical account but he called Nothing's Sacred.

And that;s when I met him.

But instead of an “angry ma,” I found a gentle, warm, and very likeable man, who was eager to talk about seriouos things as well as comedy shtick.

When I was a kid one of the TV shows I most look forward to every week was the Sunday night episode of “Candid Camera.”

With hidden cameras set up to catch their reactions, host Allen Funt played benign but often ingenius practical jokes on ordinary people. “Candid Camera” was a TV hit for years.

After Funt's death in 1999  at aged 84,  his son Peter Funt took over the family business, as it were, and carried on the “Candid Camera” franchise.

She is one of America's most high-profile lawyers.  

In a career that began in the 1970s, Gloria Allred has become especially known for taking on cases involving sexual harassment and women's rights, especially in the workplace.

In 2006, she looked back on her career in a book that she admits may be the closest she will ever come to writing a full-fledged autobiography. 

In the early 1960s, the San Diego Chargers were a powerhouse in the American Football League.

In 1966, the franchise was purchased by a very successful California businesman named Gene Klein.  He paid the them-princely sum of 10 million dollars. 

But after running the team for 18 years, Klein solded in 1984. 

And a couple of years later he wrote a book about his experience, which he called First Down And a Billion. And that's when I met him.

Well, in most of the U.S. warm spring weather is here. And for many of us, that's an inspiration to get

 outside work in the garden.

And it reminded me that in the late fall of 1991, I had the first of several interviews I’ve done with Martha Stewart, the well known master of all things domestic.

People often ask me, when they find out I have interviewed her if she was rude or condescending or otherwise difficult. And I always say, no, Martha Stewart was always kind and pleasant to me. 

He was the kid from a small town in Arkansas who grew up to become a country and western superstar.

Born in 1936, Glen Campbell first took up the guitar as a young boy. By the time he was in his twenties, he was an in-demand studio musician in Los Angeles, recording with some of the biggest names of the day.

He broke out as a solo artist in the mid-’60s, and had his first big hit -- "Gentle on My Mind" -- in 1967.

Then came more chart-toppers: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix".. "Dreams of te Everyday Housewife" .. "Wichita Lineman" .."Galveston" .. "Rhinestone Cowboy".. and "Southern Nights."

He also had his own very popular, TV variety show.

When you begin to list the greatest American Jazz percussionists of all time, near the top of that list has to be the great Vibe the harpist and drummer Lionel Hampton.

In a career that began in the 1920s, when he was a teenager, Lionel Hampton rose to primnence in the jazz community, playing alongside such names as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. 

Later, Hampton became a bandleader himself.

He wrote a memoir in 1989, and that's what I met him