It's simply amazing what the phantasms of a bored mind can create on a lazy Sunday evening. As I sit at the Prout Hall front desk for six hours, eager to field the two or three phone calls that are bound to come eventually, I drift from reading books I have been meaning to get to for months ... to writing letters ... to trying desperately (and usually unsuccessfully) to pick up the Reds' game somewhere on the radio.

But most of all, the long, hot hours of my evening shift are the remarkable spur of a somewhat overactive imagination.

I make an incorrectible error in a memo I'm typing. I rip the sheet from the machine, crumple it into a ball, and suddenly ...

Isiah with the basketball, top of the circle. He looks into the corner and sees Dantley. A.D. fakes inside to Mahorn and flips it back out to Laimbeer for the triple-try ...

My paper wad bounces harmlessly off the rim of the wastebasket which is about eight feet from me. My basketball career ends abruptly -- at least until I crumple up another piece of paper.

Before I can get back to typing, a young woman returns some borrowed ping-pong equipment. She lays the paddles on the counter, and as she walks away, flips the ball in my direction.

As I reach up to catch the ball, the heat is again playing games with my mind ...

Gullickson kicks and fires the three-two. Strawberry swings -- there's a deep drive to left-center field ... Jones is going back, he's at the fence and leaps ...

This time, something goes right -- I catch the ball. However, I am NOT Tracy Jones, and this is NOT a baseball. I manage to crush the small plastic object beyond any reasonable hope of repair.

Gracefulness, you understand, has never been my forte.

These, of course, are utterly preposterous dreams for one who compiled a .181 career batting average in three years of Little League baseball, and rode the bench for six years of CYO basketball. There is no harm, though, engaging in what Bill Shakespeare once called "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

However, it may be still wiser to recall the key line of that very comedy, from a pre-National Hockey League character named Puck: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Anyway, after a few hours of these delusions of athletic grandeur, I glance up at the clock. It's 9:00 -- three hours down, three to go. Plenty of time to get back to reading, and maybe even for creating another vehicle for Midsummer's dreams.

Another famous author (not in Shakespeare's class, but certainly as well-known), Snoopy, has even attached a name to his own vehicle of fantasy, as he calls it "my trusty Sopwith Camel."

A customer stops by and asks to use my pen. Blatantly ignoring policy, I refuse -- my pen is doing what my jump shot and my split-fingered fastball never could do. Snoopy would be proud.

Here's the world-famous journalist ...