A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

n the distance he saw the town of Capernaum just as it was . Jesus looked much l

ike the Flemish paintings of him , lean , `` tall with dark hair , unblemished s

kin and a self-possession both natural and imposing . '' He rose , directed Pric

e to undress , then led the naked man into the waters of Galilee . Now , existin

g both with and outside of his body , the author could see the purple marks on h

is back . Again and again Jesus poured handfuls of water over him . There was di

alogue : `` Your sins are forgiven . '' `` Am I also to be cured ? '' `` That to

o . '' From the moment Price 's mind returned to the here and now , he has belie

ved this event to be neither dream nor vision but `` an external gift .. . of an

 alternate time and place in which to live through a crucial act . '' For Price 

, this experience had a tactile reality . It happened . Even the skeptical reade

r shivers in wild surmise . The man who emerges from these pages is feisty , gri

tty , angry , sometimes snobbish and , notwithstanding , most appealing . He mak

es no effort to portray himself as a saint or a martyr . The clerk at the hospit

al is `` sullen . '' The cardiac fitness participants are imagined as `` a squad

 of garrulous heart-attack survivors in designer sweat suits . '' Many of the ``

 true practical saints '' who offer to help him are `` boring as root canals . '

' It is the radiation oncologist , cast as the villain , who bears the brunt of 

Price 's anger and resentment . He has `` all the visible concern of a steel che

ese-grater '' ; he `` never offered to tell me ... '' ; he is `` the frozen onco

logist . '' And here another physician must demur . Was it not this very doctor 

, among others , whose judgment and therapy brought about the cure of his patien

t ? Surely , that he is not also gifted with charm or bedside manner might be fo

rgiven ? Some doctors , particularly those whose work brings them daily into con

tact with the gravely ill and whose treatments themselves augment the suffering 

, may function better when they withhold or even stifle pity , compassion , aest

hetic response than when they allow these feelings full sway . Certainly there a

re great doctors who are also haughty , cold , materialistic and insensitive ; j

ust as there are great artists who fall short of expectations . Beethoven , Wagn

er and Richard Strauss were bigoted , angry , domineering . Schopenhauer and Ros

sini were scornful and misanthropic . Da Vinci and Goethe were detached , aloof 

and condescending . And then there was Robert Frost . It is in the final section

 of the book that Price rises above the dreadful years and reaches out to his ne

w life . It is a life full of satisfactions , work , friends and even erotic lov

e . `` Reynolds Price , '' he told himself , `` is dead . '' And asked himself :

 `` Who can you be ? '' The answer is : a writer and a teacher as before , only 

now with the patience and watchfulness born of suffering , and the blessing of w

hole days of focused energy undiluted by the distractions of the able-bodied . I

n the years since his illness , Reynolds Price has written 14 books . His last a

dvice to the afflicted is to finish grieving for the former self , to reach out 

hungrily to the new and to find work that sustains the spirit . In writing `` A 

Whole New Life '' Reynolds Price has come , in the words of Adrienne Rich , `` t

o see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail . '' There can be 

no sweeter use made of adversity than this act of generosity that comes in the f

orm of a book .

 The crisis that has been rapidly building over North Korea 's suspected nuclear

 weapons program seems for now to have abated . Inspectors from the Internationa

l Atomic Energy Agency have been sent to Pyongyang to see what they can learn ab

out the refueling of a key reactor that is now under way . Washington , welcomin

g this and other recent signs hinting at a more cooperative attitude by the Nort

h , says that it 's ready to reopen high-level contacts with Kim Il Sung 's regi

me . So for the moment at least the United States doesn't have to worry about tr

ying to muster international support for economic sanctions against a country th

at , at a minimum , seems to have done all it can to encourage the belief that i

t has been violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty . How long that moment

 will last is up to Pyongyang . The key question is whether North Korea will let

 IAEA inspectors examine several hundred specifically chosen fuel rods from its 

five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon , north of Pyongyang . By analyzing certain ro

ds the IAEA could tell how long they had been in the reactor , and that in turn 

would indicate whether other fuel rods had earlier been secretly removed . There

 's a suspicion , heightened in the last few days by the claims in Tokyo of a No

rth Korean defector who once worked at the Yongbyon reprocessing plant , that 26

 pounds of plutonium were secretly extracted from spent fuel rods in 1988 . That

 supports the CIA 's suspicion that the North has produced enough plutonium for 

a couple of nuclear devices . The United States is ready it wouldn't be too much

 to say eager to move toward normal relations with North Korea and so help stabi

lize Northeast Asia . Rightly , though , it conditions such a move on Pyongyang 

's readiness to meet its responsibilities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty . S

outh Korea supports the American effort . If North Korea goes along , it could s

ee its diplomatic and economic isolation end . If it balks , new pressures would

 fall on its weak economy . Enlightened self-interest makes the choice clear . T

he question is whether a regime that has for decades zealously preached the virt

ues of inward-looking self-reliance is able finally to recognize where its true 

long-term interests lie .

 Step by step , President Clinton seems to be maneuvering himself into a positio

n on Haiti where his only option may be military intervention . If that is the p

resident 's intention , it should be reversed forthwith . He must know that two-

thirds of the American people oppose such a step ; that with the first American 

casualties there will be a clamor for withdrawal of U.S. forces ; that the last 

time Marines marched ashore in Haiti , in 1915 , they were there 19 years , and 

after taking 126 combat and non-combat casualties left behind a trained and oppr

essive military . The ideal solution evidently sought by Clinton is sufficient i

nternational pressure to force the Haitian generals now in control into exile . 

There is a precedent : In 1986 , the United States was able to send dictator Jea

n Claude `` Baby Doc '' Duvalier packing . But there is another precedent : his 

father , Francois `` Papa Doc '' Duvalier , successfully defied a U.S. show of f

orce in 1963 . By tightening the embargo on Haiti over last weekend , the world 

community decided in effect to increase the suffering of the Haitian people in o

rder to liberate them . Food and medicine are the exception . But as jobs and pr

ivate-sector imports of vital commodities disappear , aid organizations warn tha

t hunger and death will increase . Some of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristi

de 's more fervent supporters , both foreign and domestic , are willing to have 

the poorest people in the hemisphere 's poorest country pay this price . The sit

uation could force President Clinton 's hand . Having taken on a certain respons

ibility for worsening the plight of the Haitian people and having drawn only def

iance from Haiti 's military government , he may find himself with little choice

 other than to order the Marines ashore . Some 650 aboard the USS Wasp are movin

g into position . What then ? Will U.S. citizens be taken hostage in a desperate

 counter-move by the present government ? Will Haitian forces crumble at the fir

st sight of the Marines , as their leaders flee to luxurious exile ? Will Father

 Aristide 's revenge-minded followers then turn on the soldiers that remain ? Or

 will a form of civil war break out , part ethnic and part class-based , that wi

ll make a mockery of quick-solution scenarios ? And even if U.S. forces stay the

 course , under the facade of a multinational intervention , just what will thei

r mission be ? To feed the masses ? That 's the easy part , as humanitarian succ

esses in Somalia illustrate . To crack down on violence-minded factions ? That '

s a much tougher role , one the U.S. could not sustain in Somalia . To rebuild t

he Haitian government and and economy ? That 's a task the U.S. never really att

empted in Somalia , that it flunked the last time out in Haiti and that it is un

likely to assume again , given the budget squeeze and public opinion . So Clinto

n is boxed in by the Haiti crisis , and so is our country . Any solution other t

han the quick capitulation of the present military government offers little but 

pain and foreboding .

 It isn't easy for athletes to be legends anymore . Over-analyzed by cranky spor

tswriters , noisily critiqued by moronic sports talk-radio callers , their gravi

ty-defying feats have been reduced to ESPN highlight-reel fodder . Just ask Barr

y Bonds , whose most enduring media moment remains his nasty on-the-field shouti

ng match with then-manager Jim Leyland . Sports legend derives from larger-than-

life feats , created away from the glare of the spotlight . It belongs to the or

al tradition , tales told and retold , till they take on an appropriately mythic

 stature . Who knows if Babe Ruth really pointed to the right-field bleachers an

d called his shot in the 1932 World Series ? Who actually saw Pete Gray , the St

. Louis Browns ' one-armed outfielder , in action , throwing a runner out at hom

e plate ? How many people got to watch Johnny Vander Meer pitch a no-hitter in t

wo consecutive games ? In baseball , the murkiest of all legends have sprung fro

m the mythic twilight of the Negro Leagues . Thrown together during the sorry da

ys of segregated sport , they showcased the young black gods of baseball , perfo

rming in the same cities often in the same ballparks as major-league players , s

ometimes even wearing the big-leaguers ' discarded uniforms . That 's where you 

'd find Leroy `` Satchel '' Paige , barnstorming across the country in wheezing 

buses , sleeping in fleabag hotels , playing in ramshackle bandboxes across town

 from the storied major-league ballparks . Of all the mythic stars of Negro base

ball , Satchel was mythic-squared . Unhittable in his prime , he once struck out

 22 men in a game , beat Bob Feller 1-0 in a 13-inning exhibition game and was s

o indomitable he threw a no-hitter in the first game of a double-header and then

 pitched relief in the nightcap . After hitting .398 in the Pacific Coast League

 in 1935 , Joe DiMaggio prepared for his rookie season with the New York Yankees

 by facing Paige in a much-ballyhooed exhibition game . The future Hall of Famer

 managed a measly infield hit in four trips to the plate , moving a Yankee scout

 to wire home : `` DiMaggio all we hoped he 'd be : hit Satch one for four . '' 

The legend simmered , soaking up its rich flavor in obscurity . As far as the wh

ite press was concerned , Paige ( who was as celebrated in '30s-era black circle

s as Cab Calloway or Louis Armstrong ) might as well have been pitching in Outer

 Mongolia . When Time magazine finally discovered Paige in 1940 15 years into hi

s career it offered some legendry of its own . Attributing Satchel 's arm streng

th to his boyhood shouldering of 200-pound blocks of ice , the news magazine quo

ted Paige 's old ice-wagon employer as saying : `` That boy et mo ' than the hos

ses . '' Until now , that 's been the Satch story : Print the caricature . But j

udging from `` Don't Look Back , '' Mark Ribowsky 's meticulously researched bio

graphy , there is another , considerably starker and less sentimental side to Pa

ige . Raised in the rough-and-tumble ghetto area of Mobile , Ala. , Paige was a 

restless , lonely man , a black shadow in a white-only world , his soul shrivele

d by a lack of acceptance , both from his family and the realm of big-time sport

 . Before he was 20 , Paige had hit the road , learning his pitching craft on ba

seball 's chitlins circuit . Though Ribowsky is more successful at sketching the

 Negro League milieu than fleshing out Paige 's character , the scrawny , rawbon

ed pitcher emerges as a man of few loyalties , either to friend or team , indiff

erent to family ties , easily seduced by a pretty woman or a fat paycheck . Take

 away his wonderful wit and legendary showmanship and dare we say it Satchel mig

ht be almost as hard to love as Barry Bonds . Resolutely unfaithful to every wom

an in his life , Paige was jealous of teammates ' success , a hard-drinking caro

user , habitually late to even the most important games and disdainful of anythi

ng resembling a training regime . Paige was at least 42 ( some say 44 or even 48

 ) when Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck finally brought him to the big league

s in 1948 , a year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier . Making his fi

rst appearance in relief on July 9 , he was the man who brought black vaudeville

 style to white sport , decades before the high five , the monster jam and the e

nd-zone dance . Paige mystified batters with a carnival assortment of trick pitc

hes . Using a double or even triple windup with a huge leg kick , he 'd throw wh

at he called a Step ' n Pitch-it , a Bat Dodger and finally , his mind-boggling 

Hesitation Pitch , where he held back his right arm even as his front leg swept 

his body forward , releasing the ball almost as an afterthought . The first majo

r-leaguer who tried to hit the Hesitation Pitch lunged and swung before the pitc

h was half-way to the plate , his bat flying 40 feet up the third-base line . Sa

tch was a sensation . By the time he started his first major-league game on Aug.

 3 , 72,562 fans were at Cleveland 's Municipal Stadium , a new attendance recor

d for a major-league night game . Though well past his prime , Paige played part

s of six seasons in the majors and was good enough to be named to the 1952 All-S

tar team . Never a friend to Robinson he had given him the cold shoulder in the 

Negro Leagues he displayed little of Robinson 's credit-to-his-race good citizen

ry . Paige missed trains , broke curfew and carried around a gun a foot and a ha

lf long . His eccentricities won him huge play in the white press , which viewed

 him as post-integration baseball 's answer to Louie Armstrong Satchmo meet Satc

h a happy-go-lucky old coot who rubbed mystery potions on his pitching arm , doz

ed in the bullpen grass and issued such maxims as , `` If your stomach disputes 

you , lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts '' and the immortal phrase ( whi

ch Ribowsky borrows for his book title ) , `` Don't look back . Something might 

be gaining on you . '' These nostrums were strictly for media consumption . In r

eal life , the string-bean pitcher burned the candle at every end . As Ribowsky 

recounts in vivid detail , Paige was far from the only model of impropriety in t

he 1930s-era Negro Leagues . Many of the most prominent teams were owned by gang

sters such as Gasoline Gus Greenlee , who ran the Pittsburgh Crawfords , using t

he team as a legit cover for his numbers racket . Paige was hardly intimidated b

y Greenlee 's mob ties . When a promoter offered him more money to barnstorm thr

ough the Dakotas , Paige abruptly walked out on his new contract with the Crawfo

rds . Aloof and enigmatic all the way to his grave , Paige seems to have defeate

d his biographer 's best efforts to penetrate his inscrutable mask . None of Pai

ge 's offspring would talk to Ribowsky , while the dim memories of his ball-play

ing peers offer little in the way of insight . Eager to provide Paige 's exploit

s with some heft , Ribowsky sometimes aims too high , using quotes from Henry Mi

ller , William Faulkner and ( ! ) Daniel Defoe to open various chapters . Satche

l surely would have loved rubbing elbows with such glittering literati . But the

 lofty sentiments don't get Ribowsky any closer to this flesh-and-blood folk cha

racter . Describing his long and lean physique , Satch once said : `` There was 

a lot to me , but it was all up and down . '' Whatever was inside seems to have 

wafted away , like an unhittable Paige curveball , rising and swooping in the di

m light of an extra-inning game . The book 's evocative subtitle , `` Satchel Pa

ige in the Shadows of Baseball , '' is all too apt . For all Ribowsky 's good ef

forts , the real shadow here is Satchel himself .

 CyberSurfing : Potholes , perturbations and predicaments observed on the inform

ation superhighway : A Playboy story titled `` Orgasms Online '' left one virtua

l community more steamed than steamy this spring . The story prominently feature

d the Sausalito , Calif.-based WELL ( for Whole Earth ' Lectronic Link ) among o

ther services . With perhaps 10,000 members , the WELL is minuscule by the stand

ards of commercial on-line services like Prodigy and CompuServe that boast more 

than a million users . But it has influence beyond its size because its hundreds

 of on-line conferences attract an articulate crowd that includes writers , arti

sts and high-tech cognoscenti . For the WELLbeings , as many call themselves , P

layboy perpetrated an awful mischaracterization of their electronic hangout . Al

though there are areas in which sexuality is discussed , the tone tends toward t

he playful . It is also a decidedly more thoughtful place than , say , America O

nline , the randier areas of which resemble nothing so much as a cheap-beer sing

les bar . Along with making angry accusations that author Matthew Childs got the

 story wrong , WELL users said Childs quoted their on-line postings without perm

ission a violation of the etiquette of the WELL , where the phrase `` You Own Yo

ur Own Words '' has an almost mantra-like quality . One user found that her disc

ussion of an on-line love affair gone bad had been transmuted by Playboy into an

 offer to share transcripts of hot modem sessions with an ex-beau an offer she h

ad never made : `` .. . ( Y ) ou are a liar . I never , ever promised anyone , a

nywhere , that I would share ` hot chat ' transcripts or log with them . I don't

 even keep such logs ! What I said , Mr. I 'm A Journalist And Get My Facts Stra

ight Bigshot , is that I would share the name of the cybercad .. . with people w

ho asked in e-mail . `` .. . ( Y ) ou can blow it all out your i/o port , bunky 

. '' Worst of all , they said , the publicity is likely to attract the wrong cro

wd to the WELL namely , horny guys who think that Sausalito is where the action 

is . That 's exactly what happened . One user , Linda Castellani , said in a rec

ent on-line interview that `` there has been an increase in those who were clear

ly brought here by the article with an expectation of meeting women and having h

ot sex . '' Most of the newcomers , however , don't stick around for long . The 

WELL is clubby to many visitors , suffocatingly so . That 's what the buzz-phras

e `` virtual community '' might ultimately come down to : not just who belongs ,

 but who doesn't . It could have been worse . I recall in college an editor at H

ef 's mag asked me to hand out questionnaires for the magazine 's `` Sexiest Col

leges '' survey , a highly scientific endeavor . I declined , but one of my room

mates was willing . He handed it out at a massive bash ; the questionnaires beca

me the party game ; `` can you top this '' fever swept the assembled multitude .

 After the party , another roommate took the remaining questionnaires to a local

 gay bar . Do you even need to ask ? The University of Texas was deemed the sexi

est school in the nation by Playboy . John Schwartz jswatz ( at ) well.sf.ca.us 

GETTING THERE : To visit the WELL , call ( 415 ) 332-4335 ( by low-tech voice ) 

and ask for guidance . If you are already a WELL member : The flame war erupted 

on the Sex Conference , Topic 414 , and spread to other WELL forums from there .

 To find the Sex Conference type : g sex at any OK prompt . To find the topic , 

type r 414 at the next OK prompt . To get an OK prompt from a respond/pass promp

t , type q . -0- Early news of Kurt Cobain 's death began an explosion of commen

tary in the Alternative Rock Forum on America Online . Grieving cries of shock a

nd anguish meshed with poems and messages to Cobain 's wife , Courtney Love , an

d their daughter , Frances . But there were also smatterings of mean-spirited as

saults on Cobain , his wife , his music and lifestyle ; one was a drawing done w

ith keyboard characters that depicted a man with a shotgun in his mouth . Weirdl

y enough , Courtney Love 's estranged father , Hank Harrison , joined in the pos

tings . Using the log-on `` BioDad , '' he described himself in one message as b

eing a `` rich , '' 280-pound man who raises pit bulls , rides motorcycles and g

ardens . ( A spokesman for Love 's record label confirmed that `` BioDad '' is w

ho he says he is . ) In his postings , Harrison said he has been working on a bo

ok about Cobain and Nirvana for two years now , and `` I know things that are so

 unbelievable , I couldn't believe them . '' He fears that his daughter is in da

nger of `` going with Kurt , '' especially if the child , Frances , is taken awa

y again . ( Child protection authorities did this once after Vanity Fair reporte

d she had used heroin while pregnant . ) Harrison posted a copy of the letter he

 sent the White House describing his proposal for a `` Kurt Cobain Foundation fo

r Suicide Prevention '' and asked that he be invited to meet with the president 

and Chelsea to discuss the details . Harrison continues to participate in the fo

rum despite harsh words from a friend of Love 's calling him a liar and a parasi

te . Karen Mason Marrero kmarrero ( at ) aol.com GETTING THERE : Sign onto Ameri

can Online . ( To subscribe to America Online , call this voice line : 800-827-6