Cowher is moving to Lenox Hill. (www.bleedblackandgold.com)

The Upper East Side seems to be the hottest place to be for NFL coaches these days. First Kansas City Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel bought a place in Yorkville and now Bill Cowher is heading to the Royale condo tower in Lenox Hill. Stars of the football field take Manhattan?

Mr. Cowher, the former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and current studio analyst for NFL Today plunked down $2.65 million for the two-bedroom condo at 188 East 64th Street, according to city records. He purchased the pad under the William L. Cowher Revocable Trust from Whitebar Holdings Limited.

The apartment.

At 1,500 square-feet, the place isn't exactly a football field, but it does include a wrap balcony and views from the 36th floor, including some of Central Park—head coaches seem to enjoy seeing the city from the nosebleed section.

The apartment was listed with Peter Ashe broker Asher Alcobi, who didn't quite get the $2.9 million ask, but then, it seems natural that an NFL coach would engage in at least a little goal-line bargaining. Men who spend years shouting at professional football players are not generally known for their shyness, particularly not those who lead their teams to Super Bowl victories. And the seller, having paid $1.65 million in 2002, did make a nice profit on the place. Butt pats all around.

It's unclear if the famed coach is abandoning his current place in Raleigh, N.C. altogether (one helpful reader pointed out that he hasn't listed his house there... yet) or just looking for a place to get away. Perhaps he's been lured north by one of the region's teams? After all, New York sports writers love nothing more than calling for coach's heads even a year after they win the championships. Now they have an able recruit. Or he just wants a place to call his own when he's in town on Sundays to shoot NFL Today.

Whatever the reason, so long as it brings a pack of Terrible Towel-waving drunks to the quiet streets of the Upper East Side, we'll be happy.

kvelsey@observer.com

I'm asking because I've been doing Super Bowl predictions for 20 years and have written three books on professional football and countless articles on football analysis, and I can find absolutely nothing to base a prediction on for Sunday's game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals.

Let's start with the Steelers.  They were 12-4 during the regular season, and all four losses were to playoff teams: 6-15 to the Eagles, 14-21 to the Giants, 20-24 to Indianapolis, and, in the next to the last game of the season, a rather convincing 14-31 loss to Tennessee.  All four of those teams, it seems to me, are better than Pittsburgh; the Steelers were 20^th in the league in points scored, and that's not even close to mediocre.  They didn't really have an impressive win all season long, unless you count their 33-10 victory in Week 13 over the Brady-less Patriots.  In the postseason they lucked out completely, not having to play the AFC's two best teams, the Titans and the Colts.

Then why are the Steelers still standing? I have no clear answer, and I haven't seen anyone who does.

The case of the Arizona Cardinals is even more baffling.  Many are saying that they're the worst team ever to make it to the Super Bowl, and though I am a big fan of Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald, I have to admit that this is probably true. During the regular season, Arizona scored 427 points, tied for third with the Giants, and allowed 426, which is pretty much as close to mediocrity as you can get.  Their 9-7 record was just good enough to win the division - a division whose other three teams were a combined 13-35 in conference play and with a 10-26 record against the rest of the NFC West.

I haven't done a detailed study on this, but I would guess that by any objective standard one could use, the Cardinals have the worst defensive record of any team to make it to the Big Game. On Sept 28 they gave up 56 points to the Jets; on Nov 23 they gave up 37 to the Giants; on Nov 27 it was 48 to the Eagles; on Dec 14 it was 35 to the Vikings; and in Week 16 they gave up 47 to New England and lost by 40 points. (Backup QB Matt Lineart started in that game and tanked, but he can't be blamed for the disgraceful defensive performance.)

I hear a lot of people saying, "The Cardinals have really turned it around defensively," but what is that judgment based on?  Just two playoff games - Jan 10 against the Carolina Panthers, which the Cardinals won 33-13, and Jan 18, when they beat the Eagles 33-25.  But Arizona's defense didn't play that well against the Eagles.  Philadelphia outgained them by more than 100 yards and gave up more than 400 yards running and passing to Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb. Nor did the Cardinals defense play all that well in their first postseason appearance on Jan. 3 against Atlanta, a game the Cardinals won 30-24. 

That leaves only the Carolina game as an argument for this supposedly great defensive turnaround, and yes, they were very impressive in that game, crushing a Panthers team that looked to be much their superior during the regular season. (Carolina was 12-4.)

Why did they beat Carolina by 20 points? I really can't tell you, and I haven't found anyone who can.  Let's look at it this way:  Since beating the St. Louis Rams 34-10 in Week 14, the Arizona defense has given up 165 points in six games.  And for all you math majors out there - Jets fans can go smoke a cigarette while we go work this out [Editor's note: Smoke this.] - that's a whopping 27.5 points a game average. Just for emphasis, let me point out that over that same span the Cardinals scored just 145 points. Does anyone remember a team playing in the Super Bowl that was outscored over its previous six games by 20 points?  I don't.

Something very strange has happened in pro football, and I'm going to be honest and tell you that I haven't figured it out. For the most part, the Super Bowl has always been like professional wrestling:  what's supposed to happen did happen. You could almost always know who was going to win by their regular season statistics. The question was usually not who was going to win but by how much. But the last Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots was the weirdest in the game's history. 

Most pro football commentators are fond of calling the New York Jets' 16-7 victory over the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 game "the biggest upset in Super Bowl history" -- the Colts were favored by 17 to 19 points, depending upon which pundit you read. But looking back on it, it's doubtful that the game really was an upset. The Jets, with Joe Namath at quarterback, were younger, faster and better coached. (The Colt's coach, Don Shula, though the winningest coach in NFL history, was also the worst big-game coach in the league's history.) 

The reason analysts didn't realize that the Jets were better was because there was no interleague play, nothing to base judgment on. But we had plenty to base judgment on in the 2007 season, and there was absolutely no question that the New England Patriots were better than the New York Giants. In fact, over the course of the regular season, the Patriots might have been the most dominant NFL team ever, outscoring their opponents by 315 points, while the Giants, who scored just 22 more points than their opponents, scarcely looked like one of the top 10 leagues in the league.

Understand, I'm a Giants fans, but by all rights they should have been thrashed by the Patriots. The only things the Giants had going for them were a better pass rush and a more creative blitz in the playoffs than they had during the regular season -- but I don't know why it would be better in the postseason.

Which brings us full circle to Super Bowl 43.  If you're looking for a Cinderella team, there are some similarities between last year's Giants and this year's Cardinals, but one big difference: The underdog Giants had the hot pass rush going into the playoffs.  But this year it's the favorite -- the Steelers, by seven according to most oddsmakers - that is much more effective in rushing the quarterback. The Steelers ranked 2^nd in the league with 51 sacks, while the Cardinals were tied for 14^th with 31. 

Kurt Warner is probably the most underrated quarterback ever and may be the best in the game now, Peyton Manning notwithstanding, and he has three great receivers to throw to, but absolutely nothing else about the Arizona Cardinals inspires confidence. His counterpart, Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger, did not have a good season, or at least playing behind the Steelers' battered and injured blockers he didn't look very good.  But, like Warner, he already has one Super Bowl ring, and he doesn't need to be great in order for the Steelers to win.

In a big game, you look for the things that have been constant all season, and the one constant on either team has been the Pittsburgh defense, which gave up the fewest points in the league. The Steelers' coverage and blitz packages are designed by the dean of NFL defensive coordinators, 51-year veteran Dick LeBeau. Neither team is likely to get much on the ground (though the Steelers will make more rushing attempts, if only because that's their style), but the game will be won by the team that plays the best pass defense, and that's probably going to be the Steelers, who intercepted 20 passes over the season to the Cardinal's 13. And you have to expect that LeBeau will design something that will make Warner pay a price in sacks and interceptions for the 300-plus yards he's almost certainly going to get in the air.

No matter what happened in the playoffs, I refuse to believe that the Steelers or the Cardinals are better than the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers or Indianapolis Colts, but they're the teams in Tampa this weekend.  Neither the Steelers or Cardinals are all that good, but somebody's got to win, and in what looks to be a low scoring, mistake-filled contest, it will probably be the Steelers, 17-13.  But that's mostly a hunch.

Which is tougher?

"Life in the New York restaurant scene--hands down," said the 5-foot-8, 200 pound, 31-year-old redshirt restaurateur, looking rather Usher-esque in a white suit and shades, during a boozy relaunch party Wednesday for his 2,200-square-foot eponymously named eatery, Zereoue, at 13 East 37th Street.

Originally opened in 2006, in the former Frere Jacques space, Mr. Zereoue's West African and French fusion restaurant has twice closed down for some needed retooling; most recently, a complete overhaul. "The painting, the lighting—everything," he said of the scope of the improvements, which ran into "tens of thousands of dollars," as he recently told Forbes magazine.

"It's not coming in and just sitting down in the back and saying, 'I'm the boss,'" said Mr. Zereoue, who's been known to also lend a hand in the kitchen. "No, you have to make sure everyone's doing their jobs. You have to make sure everyone's happy. You have to make sure everything's accounted for. You have to deal with vendors. It's a lot of work."

It certainly helps to have a famous name -- especially a guy once known as "Famous Amos" -- backing the joint. But Mr. Zereoue said he tries to downplay his days as a baller as much as possible.

"If people ask, I'll talk about it," he told The Observer. "We’re just trying to make it about the food and the ambiance and the culture, aside from the football thing. There’s no pictures upstairs of me scoring touchdowns or anything."

"Well," he reconsidered, "downstairs we do."

Mr. Gannascoli, who at 47 is still a large man even after losing 160 pounds, removed the plants from the back of the Mercedes and hung them carefully off the branches of a tree on the front lawn. He was stepping gingerly after undergoing hip surgery five weeks earlier. He proudly pointed out some yard work: a mosaic-tiled bird bath and, plunked down in the grass, a large boulder that he thinks looks like a bear. Looking at the boulder, he paused and said, “How long till they write ‘fag’ on it?”

For these days, Mr. Gannascoli is known to Sopranos watchers as “Gay Vito” (or even GaVito, in certain exotic circles). Vito’s reluctant coming-out story line has locked up more Monday-morning chatter than all of Bill Paxton’s polygamist wives and Desperate Housewives shenanigans combined. He is, simply put, a sensation.

There’s something about the sight of Mr. Gannascoli dancing gleefully in a biker’s cap in a leather bar, or going on the lam to a gay Shangri-La (in this case, “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire) and falling in love with the handsome mustached cook from the diner—“Johnny Cakes”—that have given TV viewers that rare feeling that they are watching something new. In the hyper-masculine world of organized crime, with its intricately nuanced male taboos—it’s O.K. to get misty-eyed at your daughter’s wedding, but it’s not O.K. to cry if the Feds are bundling you back to prison—Sopranos creator David Chase has introduced a character whose outsized vulnerability will surely force a defining choice for the gentler, back-from-a-coma Tony Soprano.

Sure, there have been plenty of gay characters on television before: wacky Jack from Will & Grace, or David, the fussy undertaker with the hot cop boyfriend on Six Feet Under. But the plight of Gay Vito has stirred up similar feelings to those viewers felt when they first tuned in on Sunday nights in 1999 to see a Prozac-popping Mafia boss spill his guts to his therapist. Now, seven years later, it’s a different big guy with a wife and kids—this one with a natural eye for antiques—that allows Mr. Chase to devilishly tickle the big underbelly of male bravado.

Mr. Gannascoli’s character, Vito Spatafore, was revealed as a closeted gay man when, at the end of last season, viewers spied his head come bobbing up from the lap of a security guard. The scene was more shocking than the stream of murders that pepper the show.

“I was on the wrong end of that blowjob,” Mr. Gannascoli laughed. He remembered when he first found out his character’s new sexual orientation. “They told me, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not dying … but you are blowin’ a guy.’ I was like, ‘Get the fuck outta here—stop breakin’ balls!’”

IN FACT, IT WAS MR. GANNASCOLI who had initially brought up the idea of a gay mobster to the show’s writers during the filming of season three, after he’d read Murder Machine by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci, about an openly gay member of the Gambino crime family who was allowed to live because he was a good earner. The writers didn’t bite, but then, in 2003, newspapers reported that “Johnny Boy” D’Amato—a mob boss of the New Jersey DeCavalcante family—had been murdered because he was having sex with men. The writers contacted Mr. Gannascoli. “Then they were like, ‘What’s the name of that book?’ And I knew they were thinking about it,” he said.

When the cast gathered for the read-through of the episode in which Mr. Gannascoli would be fellating the security guard, his fellow cast members were a bit edgy.

“[Tony] Sirico [Paulie Walnuts] said, ‘Man, I wouldn’t do it.’ And Jimmy [Gandolfini] was like, ‘You want me to talk to Chase? You don’t have to do this,’” said Mr. Gannascoli. “I thought about it, because I had seen the character different. I thought he’d be in self-denial, self-loathing, sadistic: a cross between Mike Tyson and Liberace. I thought I’d get blown and then kick the shit out of the guy.”

But approaching David Chase wasn’t really an option. “I approached one of the writers—I don’t think I’d have the balls to do it to David,” said Mr. Gannascoli. “He’s really nice, but he’d look at me like, Why are you talking to me?”

The blowjob proceeded as planned, and suddenly Mr. Gannascoli’s character broke out of the shadowy pack of husky-shouldered background mooks (previously his character was best known for carrying out the hit on Meadow’s boyfriend, Jackie Aprile Jr.). Early this season, the stage for tragedy was set when Vito was spotted by mobsters as he gallivanted in full leather regalia in a gay bar. (“It’s a joke!” he shouted to them when he realized he’d been spotted, and thus most likely marked for elimination.)

Before shooting resumed for the current season, Mr. Chase called Mr. Gannascoli to find out how much weight he had lost (through a combination of surgery, pills and Celebrity Fit Club) so as to work it into the script. “He said, ‘Get ready, it’s going to be a big year,’” Mr. Gannascoli said. “I lost my breath, you know? To have this big of a role on the greatest show … ever. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

And so viewers grew cozily attached to Vito as he left his wife and fell in love with Johnny Cakes, as documented by scenes of them kissing and grappling, shirtless, in a field next to their parked Harleys. Mr. Gannascoli gamely went with the intimate scenes, though, he noted, “It didn’t help when his fucking moustache was in my mouth.”

Mr. Gannascoli made an appearance during the first season, playing a guy named Gino at a bakery, before the producers decided to bring him back as Vito Spatafore. But the journey getting there was a long one. Born in 1959 in Brooklyn to Italian-American parents, his mother—who passed away when he was 19—was a seamstress and his father a jeweler. Both stressed the importance of education (“You see those guys on the corner—you stay away from them”). Dutifully, Mr. Gannascoli went to Lafayette High School and then two years at St. John’s College, in an attempt to follow in his lawyer brother’s footsteps. “I did well my first year,” he said. “Second year, I sort of wandered …. ” Around the time of the wandering, he has admitted to hustling Quaaludes. Falling into restaurant work, Mr. Gannascoli started doing prep work at the restaurant in Lord & Taylor, and went to New Orleans to cook for a year and a half. He returned to New York at age 24 and settled into being a full-time chef in Brooklyn, when an actor friend named Tim Kelleher suggested that he audition for a play he was producing. Mr. Gannascoli got the part and started selling ice cream out of a cart on Wall Street while studying with acting coach Bob Patterson. But when things didn’t seem to pan out, he opened a restaurant in Bay Ridge. He smoked, drank and gambled. To pay off his debts, he worked as a food fence, which he described as “Brooklyn guys, they get a truck that has food on it and they knew who could move it. I was a guy who could move it.”

ONE FOOTBALL SUNDAY IN 1990, Mr. Gannascoli lost $60,000 on a game between the Houston Oilers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, when the back-up Oilers quarterback helped upset favored Pittsburgh. “I owe Cody Carlson my career,” he joked. He sold his restaurant to pay the debt and went out to L.A. to try his hand at acting. “I was border-line suicidal,” he said. “I don’t think I’d ever do it, but I went to church and I was like, ‘God, you got to show me the way.’ I felt like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life—just at the end of my rope.” He did one-act plays in downtown Los Angeles—“all fucking horrible”—until a guy in his neighborhood agreed to represent him. He only lasted a week in the face of Mr. Gannascoli’s enthusiasm. “I’d be up at 6 a.m., drinking fucking Big Gulps and 32 ounces of coffee, smoking cigarettes and wired up and knocking on this guy’s door, being like, ‘I’m ready to go!’ He would just be waking up and be like, ‘Ready to go where?’”

Undaunted, Mr. Gannascoli came up with a new plan: He started to steal the breakdowns—the sheets from casting agents spelling out what they were looking for—from his former agent’s front stoop. He’d run to Kinko’s, then return the originals to the stoop. He started calling around town, pretending to be a talent manager by the name of James Hoving (“I think Hoving was a curator of one of the museums, and it sort of stuck in my head. It sounded cool”) who was trying to get his “client,” Joe Gannascoli, to be seen. He started to get himself roles—his first, Money for Nothing, starred John Cusack, Philip Seymour Hoffman and future cast mate James Gandolfini.

It was a friendship he struck up with Benicio Del Toro, who would direct him as a lead in a 20-minute short film, Submission, co-starring Matthew McConaughey, that would ultimately lead him to grand doyenne Sopranos casting directors Georgianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe.

Part of the genius in The Sopranos’ casting is that audiences get the sense that the actors inhabiting their roles aren’t too far removed from the real deal. (Who wouldn’t feel a bit daunted if they came across Paulie Walnuts in a dark alley?)

“Yeah, New York guys, New Jersey guys …. Italians …. You grew up around it, you see it,” Mr. Gannascoli said carefully. And while James Gandolfini reportedly was told by some well-informed sources that Mafia dons don’t wear shorts to barbecues, so too has Mr. Gannascoli received some feedback.

“I got guys in my neighborhood who now give me dirty looks,” he said. “I had a guy come after me in a club after doing that [blowjob] scene. And he was yelling stuff like ‘You’re a cocksucker!’ and this and that. I was like, ‘Who the fuck is that?’ And they said, ‘That’s so-and-so’s nephew, he just got out.’ I was like, ‘Well, he’s a moron.’”

Mr. Gannascoli was recently asked to serve as grand marshal at an Atlanta Gay Pride parade, and he’s received letters from openly gay and closeted men applauding his portrayal.

“Being in the restaurant business, you’re with a lot of gays,” he shrugged. “I never had no problem with it—I’m sort of a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I had friends that were like, ‘I’m not meeting you there,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, have a fucking drink at the bar, I’ll be out at 12 and we’ll go out. They’re fucking fun guys, what’s the fucking big deal? And you got hot broads hanging out there—you know, the fag hags.’”

He met his wife at a bar in Brooklyn, and after a seven-week courtship became engaged (“She wouldn’t give it up without the ring,” he said), marrying last June. His cast mates all attended, and he was back at work the following Monday. They plan to have children: “As we speak,” he said with a wink. “I gave her a shot this morning.”

And like some of his cast mates, he’s turned to the book business to enlarge his reach. In January, he published A Meal to Die For, a culinary caper of a novel based loosely on his food-fencing days, and a line of pasta sauces and oils of the same name. He has an idea for a sports cooking show, and he wants to still lose another 80 pounds. Pulling up a picture on his computer of himself as a slimmed-down youth, he sighed, “I used to get more ass than a toilet seat.”

The fate of his character hangs precariously in the balance: As of last Sunday’s episode, Vito fled Johnny Cakes and sped through the New Hampshire back roads, swilling vodka and listening to Sinatra, until he smacked into a parked car and promptly shot dead its owner, who’d insisted on calling the cops to file an accident report.

Mr. Gannascoli insists he doesn’t know Vito’s ultimate fate.

“We filmed four different endings for me,” he said. “They wanted to keep it a secret, even from me. I literally have no idea. But real fans don’t really want to know.” He paused. “We go back to shooting in June, and of course I’m hoping I live. I have a fucking mortgage.”

Where were you on Dec. 23, 1972? Stephen Dubner and I were both watching the A.F.C. divisional playoffs on WRGB-NBC. He was in upstate New York, I was in western Massachusetts. His TV was small and black-and-white; mine was small and color. He was 9 and I was 13. He was rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers, I was rooting for the Oakland Raiders-I liked Kenny (the Snake) Stabler and the tiny, nimble Fred Biletnikoff. The game was tight, a defensive battle-not ideal for young boys-but it was capped off by perhaps the strangest, most memorable play in the history of pro football: the "Immaculate Reception," a freaky, last-second, game-winning touchdown that sent the Steelers to the A.F.C. championship and turned Stephen Dubner into a hero-worshipper. (As for me, it confirmed my budding teenage suspicion that the world was random and absurd.)

Mr. Dubner's rich description of the Immaculate Reception, which began as a desperation pass from the Steelers' quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, and unfurled in a manner that "would have confused even Pythagoras," is worth quoting in its entirety: "The ball zipped downfield where it, one Steeler and one Raider met with great force. Neither man, however, came close to catching the ball. It ricocheted free, seemingly destined to land on the turf and kill the Steelers' season. But the ball, instead of falling to the ground, had somehow remained aloft and now traveled in a wobbly arc back towards the line of scrimmage. Suddenly Franco Harris arrived at full gallop and, cradling his hands as if to rescue a baby tossed from a burning tenement, caught the ball at his shoetops. Never losing stride, he headed for the end zone, shoulders rising and falling in grand fashion, arms and legs pumping fluidly, a Giacometti come to life." You can probably guess two things from the style of the telling: that Franco Harris was about to become an important factor in young Stephen Dubner's imaginative life (rescuing babies from burning buildings! Running like a statue come to life, a male Galatea!), and that when he grew up, Mr. Dubner became a magazine writer. (Extra points if you spotted the signature tics of The New York Times Magazine : here a pulp metaphor, there a highbrow flourish.) (As for me, I became a critic.)

Franco Harris, a rookie in 1972, became a hero to all of Pittsburgh, a town in desperate need, and to Stephen Dubner, a boy in desperate need. Nearly a year to the day after the Immaculate Reception, Mr. Dubner's father died, leaving behind his wife, eight children and no money. Stephen, the youngest Dubner, began having a recurring dream about Mr. Harris. He became infatuated. He cataloged the things he and his hero had in common. He tried unsuccessfully to change his name to Franco Dubner. He worshipped-but not, Mr. Dubner insists, because of his hero's prowess on the football field: "I didn't worship him for what he did; I worshiped him for who he was."

And who was he, this Immaculate Receiver? A wonderful running back-big but delicate, known for skipping out of bounds to avoid a tackle-and a good man, too. Mr. Dubner writes, "He was, in jock parlance, 'a real class act.'" The son of a black G.I. and his Italian bride, young Franco grew up in New Jersey (nine children in the family), showed exceptional promise at Penn State under Joe Paterno, played brilliantly for the Steelers during their decade of glory, and retired well before he became a superannuated embarrassment. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990. Post-football, he stayed on in Pittsburgh, became a businessman and did nothing to besmirch his reputation as a nice, gentle guy.

And young Stephen Dubner grew up and went to college and forgot about Franco Harris, became a journalist and wrote a book (about how his Catholic parents were actually Jews who converted), and was walking through Times Square (on his way to his job at The New York Times Magazine ) when he saw a photo of Mr. Harris on the cover of Black Enterprise magazine and bam!-the memory of all his youthful hero worship (Franco Dubner!) came flooding back and there it was, all but written, his second book. "I'm interested," he told Mr. Harris within hours of tracking him down, "in the relationship between a hero and a hero-worshiper."

It's perfectly fine, this second book-vivid, cheerful, amusing, only intermittently disturbing and never taxing. There's a feel-good storyline of the healing-journey variety about Mr. Dubner finding himself (his wife has a baby, which makes him a dad), and also a more interesting dark undertow: Mr. Dubner's avid pursuit of his subject is even creepier than he admits (one chapter is called "I Am Not a Stalker"-but he comes awfully close). The fact that Mr. Harris is amiable and decent -about as un-heroic as a meatloaf sandwich-makes for some fine understated comedy.

No, Stephen Dubner is not a stalker. He's something far more dangerous: a journalist. Mr. Harris, though guileless, wasn't fooled for a moment by Mr. Dubner's ardent advances and kept him at a cool distance. True to form, he skipped out of bounds. Professional athletes find out all about journalism the moment they achieve any degree of fame, and at the end of his rookie year, Franco Harris was already a legend. By the time Stephen Dubner came knocking, 30 years after that first media blitz, Mr. Harris could surely have formulated for himself the immortal Janet Malcolm dictum: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." The journalist's agenda will mesh with his subject's only by the wildest coincidence. As it happens, Mr. Dubner's motives, though inevitably self-serving were almost wholly benign. In the end, his victim got off easy: Why should Franco Harris, a Pittsburgh businessman in his 50's, object to the world being told that he's really just a good guy?

Adam Begley is the books editor of The Observer.