Athletes Facts

The greatest finswimmer alive watched a trolleybus carrying 92 passengers plunge into a reservoir in Yerevan. He dove in 20 times through shattered glass in near-zero visibility, pulling people from the wreck one by one. 20 survived. His lungs were permanently destroyed. He never competed again. The Soviet government suppressed the story for 6 years. He named his shoe company Second Breath.

Geena Davis picked up a bow at 41 after watching the 1996 Olympics. She had no background in competitive sports. She practiced up to six hours a day. Two years later, she made the semifinals of the U.S. Olympic trials for Sydney 2000. About 300 women competed for a team spot.

Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos as a catcher in the 1995 MLB Draft. The scout ranked him a late second-round talent but placed him in round 18 - they knew his Michigan football scholarship made him impossible to sign. Brady chose football and won seven Super Bowls. Asked where baseball would have led, Brady said: "I would be selling insurance."

Kurt Russell was a pro baseball player before he was a movie star. He spent three years in the minor leagues. In 1973, he was hitting .563 in just six games at Double-A with the California Angels. A baserunner came in high and hit him hard at second base, tearing his rotator cuff. His baseball days were over. Hollywood got him back for good.

For 16 seasons, a Yankees center fielder chased down fly balls and won four World Series rings. That was Bernie Williams, whose number 51 now hangs in Monument Park. He also earned a Latin Grammy nomination and, at 47, a Bachelor of Music degree. He has since performed with the New York Philharmonic. Every August, he still trades his glove for a guitar at a Hudson Valley winery.

The five who come over the wall at a NASCAR pit stop are not the shop's mechanics. Teams scout college football for players too small for the NFL. Hendrick Motorsports invited 52 to a June tryout and expected to hire one to five. Four tires and a full tank in about ten seconds. Somewhere on pit road Sunday is a linebacker who never got an NFL call, still chasing a championship.