The Hall Of Fakes

The Golden Richards saga (page 138) is only the latest in the rich tradition of pretenders passing themselves off as pro athletes.

?Last year an as-yet-unidentified man posed as Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel to obtain a $16,000 line of credit at a New Jersey Home Depot. Employees later became suspicious when they noticed the applicant had misspelled Destin, Fla., where Wuerffel lives. Apparently the fact that the man was slender and black—Wuerffel is 6'1", 212 pounds and white—didn't raise similar doubts.

?Christopher Camp, 21, last year addressed a Florida elementary school assembly as Marlins pitcher Bill Jones. Teachers were perplexed when " Jones" could not answer basic questions about the club, and they discovered the next day that there was no such Marlin. "He seemed a little dense," said principal Joel Armstrong, "but that's not unusual with some ballplayers."

?William McMullen, a high school football coach in Rochester, Mass., passed himself off as Notre Dame All-America halfback Nick Eddy, including to his wife and son, for 20 years before the real Eddy got wind of the impostor in 1999 and blew the whistle. Said McMullen, who created the alter ego during an interview for a job at a manufacturing plant, "I took a left turn when I should have taken a right turn."

?Kevin Winn, 24, posed as Red Sox catcher John Marzano during a 1990 casting call for the film Other People's Money. Winn signed autographs and regaled the crowd with insider stories about the Sox, including an account of outfielder Dwight Evans crying on Marzano's shoulder the day he was released by Boston.

?In the late '80s and early '90s British career criminal Jonathan Kern sometimes took the identity of former Formula One driver Jonathan Palmer to duck charges at hotels and obtain fancy courtesy cars. Said Elizabeth Grzeszczyk, a Connecticut woman who was romantically involved with "Palmer" before learning the truth, "I noticed he wasn't a very good driver."