JOHNNY BENCH and Mark Goodman have a number of things in common: they are both from the Southwest, they are both one-eighth Choctaw Indian, and they both had baseball in the blood early. At that point their careers divide for a while. Goodman, his knee battered in high school athletics, quit the game as a Cornell freshman. He took a degree in philosophy, tended bar for a time, and after working for United Press International came to TIME in 1966 as a reporter. He has since written for the Sport, Show Business, Cinema and Nation sections. Bench, less of a rolling stone, found steady work with the Cincinnati Reds. This week, however, the two find something to share once again -- Bench as the subject of TIME'S cover story, Goodman as its author.

Goodman first saw Bench play in Shea Stadium against the Mets. Though a New York fan (Goodman wrote the 1969 cover story on the Mets while they were in second place, and is convinced that it boosted them to the world championship that fall),he was deeply impressed by the Reds' catcher. "This season," says Goodman, "has what is probably the best lineup of catchers since the 1950s. And Bench is the best of the best. Barring injuries or flukes, he will certainly have the price of admission to the Hall of Fame one day."

Preparing to write this week's cover story, Goodman drew on his observations of Bench on the field and of the game generally. The fact that he plays an occasional but enthusiastic leftfield for TIME'S softball team may or may not have helped; the team bears a certain resemblance to the Mets in their earliest days. For a close-up view of the Bench personality these days, Goodman relied on Correspondent Karsten Prager, who traveled with the catcher last week.

Prager caught up with Bench in San Francisco before a game with the Giants. The two met during batting practice, again on the Reds' chartered plane en route to San Diego, and finally talked at length in Bench's hotel room. The last interview was interrupted briefly when Bench pulled out a pair of binoculars to examine the San Diego landscape, particularly the stretch around the pool. "Besides Bench's other attributes," reports Prager, "his vision is 20-10."

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