Fame

IT ONLY seemed like Phil Jasner covered the 76ers forever. In fact, he once wrote about the Big 5. And he did it with the same passion he brought to the NBA. Friday, Jasner will be inducted into the Big 5 Hall of Fame at a Palestra luncheon. "It's an incredible honor, well-deserved," said Andy Jasner, Phil's son. "I don't like to use the term overdue, but it probably is, even though people remember him for his Sixers coverage and rightfully so because that's what he did for the last 30 years of his life.

Baseball players urged that Marvin Miller be put in the Hall of Fame as they spoke Monday night during a memorial for him in New York. The speakers praised the former baseball union head, who helped players gain free agency in the 1970s and created the path to multimillion-dollar salaries. Miller died in November at 95. Miller has been rejected five times by various Hall of Fame committees considering executives. Jim Bouton , who entered the majors in 1962, complained that Bowie Kuhn , baseball's commissioner from 1969 to '84, is in the Hall while Miller has been kept out. "I think Bowie Kuhn was 0 for 67" against Miller, Bouton said.

HAPPY FERNANDEZ once had some choice advice for women brave enough to run for political office: "Keep a clear head, a big, warm heart, but have real tough layers of alligator hide. " It was hard to picture Happy Fernandez with alligator hide, but as for a clear head and big, warm heart, she was the champ. She might have been feeling the sting a little when she gave that advice in 1999, having just lost her try for mayor of Philadelphia - the first and only high-profile woman to go for that office.

CLEVELAND - Greg Harris has been in his new job only since Jan. 1, so forgive him if his office is still a work in progress. Chuck Berry's "Carol" - a 45 he bought as a teenager, growing up in Bucks County - is pinned to a bulletin board, next to a picture of the late Phillies relief pitcher Tug McGraw. An image of Joe Strummer of the Clash in silhouette lies flat on his desk. Leaning against the wall is a poster for Rock Around the Clock , the 1956 movie staring Bill Haley & the Comets that promises to tell "The Whole Story of Rock and Roll!"

WHEN DR. JOSEPH Mattioli was in charge at Pocono Raceway, you could hear his booming voice from Stroudsburg to Wilkes-Barre. Nothing was accomplished at the racetrack without "Doc's" approval. Two years ago, the former Philadelphia dentist turned over the daily operation of the raceway to his grandsons, Brandon and Nick Igdalsky. Mattioli died last January at age 86. On Saturday, he will be inducted posthumously into the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C. Also in the induction class are popular former NASCAR executive Jim Hunter and longtime broadcaster and track owner Ken Squier.

Her blouse open to reveal a skimpy bra, Megan Fox strikes a dangerously hot pose on the cover of Esquire. Yet inside the talk is of God. And glossolalia. "It feels like a lot of energy coming through the top of your head," Fox, 26, says of her experiences speaking in tongues. It began when she was 8. "Your whole body is filled with this electric current," she says. "Words are coming out of your mouth, and you can't control it. The idea is that it's a language that only God understands.

If there were a hall of fame for Supreme Court justices, Hugo Black would likely be selected the first time his name came up for a vote. That's even though this great liberal jurist of the 20th century once joined the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama to give himself a political advantage. Black resigned when he ran for U.S. Senate in 1926 because the affiliation was no longer useful. There's no direct correlation, but, in a sense, Black used the Klan the same way some Major League baseball players used steroids - and before that amphetamines - to give themselves a competitive advantage.

There is one little problem with the heroic stand taken by the Baseball Writers' Association of America to keep the Hall of Fame steroid-free. It came too late. You can be virtually certain that there already are Hall of Famers who used performance-enhancing drugs. You can be even more positive that PED users will be enshrined in the future. And guess what: There are just as surely PED users in the football, basketball, and hockey halls of fame. The difference is in the quasi-mystical shroud under which the BBWAA votes, as if the organization were considering candidates for sainthood.

The only living member who will be honored in July by the Baseball Hall of Fame is a writer - former Daily News scribe Paul Hagen. That is somehow appropriate, considering that the writers are at the forefront of a debate that extends beyond the walls of the Cooperstown, N.Y., museum. "This is the most star-studded ballot in 75 years, and we didn't elect anybody on it," ESPN.com's Jayson Stark said. "It just shows you what a mess Hall of Fame voting has become. " For the first time since 1996, the Baseball Writers' Association of America did not elect anyone Wednesday.