It doesn't happen as much as it should, but I've come across a real character -- with character.
The guy was goalie of the decade for Jacksonville University, like anyone cares, a P.R. guy for the Chicago Winds in a football league that disappeared because no one cared, and shadowed Muhammad Ali while carrying $100,000 in a bag -- hoping Ali might care enough about money to wear the Pony shoes he was promoting.
"There's a picture of Bob Hope at the Great Wall of China," said Frank Pace, our real character with character, "and he's in Pony shoes."
Frank Pace has done everything he could to get Jacksonville's Artis Gilmore in the Hall of Fame, continues to work as agent for Rod Carew and early on produced the TV pilot for "Murphy Brown" before producing "Suddenly Susan" and "The George Lopez Show."
He went from Candice Bergen to Brooke Shields to George Lopez and never once let on about the obvious change in scenery he faced every day.
He hopped a plane to L.A. as a college grad because it was snowing in Indiana, and while he had never been to L.A., it wasn't snowing and seemed as good a place as any to get a job.
Later he had it all together in San Diego, a nice advertising firm, large home in Del Mar, just married, a kid on the way and was doing racquetball matches for a new network called the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.
He walked away from all that to give Hollywood a whirl, producing 114 episodes of "Head of the Class" and making a well-received movie about Babe Ruth.
Somewhere in there he was spending time in Russia with Mike Tyson. So many experiences, not to mention -- as he would prefer it -- TV shows that bombed like "Billy" and "Bless This House" with Andrew Dice Clay.
Add to all the accomplishments a humongous list of friends, the result of a lifetime philosophy: "I don't believe in passing through anything. If you make a friend in high school or college or wherever, why isn't that person a friend for life?"
It seems like a life well-lived, and yet beyond his family, I haven't even mentioned what he holds the dearest in life.
He's co-soccer coach for the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy all-girls school, and while whipty-do, he takes no money, prompting Jim Johnson, father of one of the school's former players, to say, "One hundred grand wouldn't pay enough to cover the effort he puts in here."
