Judge a man by how he behaves between the lines. In 1984 I moved to Los Angeles with my girlfriend at the time, whose brother was a UCLA theater grad involved with a gang of young actors called the Actors Gang. If you’re not frightened enough by the idea of young actors who think of themselves as a gang, then you should have seen some of the plays they mounted in small theaters throughout L.A. in those days.

(To be fair, some were quite good, but some others…) Anyway, one day I was invited to play softball with these guys and happily accepted. Most of them were great, including the now much less famous half of Tenacious D, Kyle Gass. But one of the guys, in fact their founder and leader, was Tim Robbins.

His movie career had started to take off. In fact, I think “The Sure Thing” had just come out, but I don’t remember for sure. Either way, Tim clearly knew he was the star of this group and carried himself that way. The game was “pitch to your own team,” where the batting team sends out a pitcher who throws perfect underhand tosses designed to encourage lots of hitting and fast play. But for some reason, every single time Robbins batted, he absolutely refused to swing at the first three pitches. Every single time, he made the pitcher throw at least four perfectly good pitches before he chose one. I remember asking one of the guys, “Why does he do that?” The guy shrugged and said, “Because he can.”