Her bust should have its own bust in Cooperstown. Morganna the

Kissing Bandit had measurements like a first-place hockey record,

60-24-39, and so she required a custom-built brassiere with, as

God is our witness, an I cup. Arrested in Houston in 1985 after

running onto the field and kissing Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan and

shortstop Dickie Thon, she successfully used a "gravity defense,"

claiming in court that physics caused her to fall over an

Astrodome fence and onto the playing surface. "Who's gonna

argue," she asked, "with Isaac Newton?"

Of course, her profile was less Newtonian than Partonian. (And

Morganna was fond of telling anyone who'd listen--including

Johnny Carson--that Dolly was modestly embosomed by comparison.)

She first trespassed on the scene in 1971, at Riverfront Stadium

in Cincinnati, where she gamboled across the field on a friend's

"dirty double dare," she said, and kissed Pete Rose. (In later

years Morganna liked to say that her career began with a bet, and

his ended with one.)

During the quarter century that ensued, fans frequently saw MTKB

bounding from a box seat onto one diamond or another, beneath a

Vesuvius of blonde hair, to give a chaste kiss to a litany of

All-Stars that included Johnny Bench, George Brett (twice), Steve

Garvey and Cal Ripken Jr. She was intercepted by security before

she could smooch Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg in the first

night game at Wrigley Field, in 1988, and spent some time in the

Unfriendly Confines of a Chicago jail. But the truth is, no jail

could hold her--this may have literally been so--and she never

suffered serious legal trouble.

Morganna (the Kissing Bandit) Roberts grew up in Louisville but

was immortalized as neither the Louisville Hugger nor the

Louisville Lip. (That was taken.) She got her nickname from a

Cincinnati sportswriter, but in fact there was no banditry about

her, for few athletes resisted her heavily lipsticked advances.

When she branched out briefly into basketball, planting one on

Charles Barkley in 1989, he found himself staring deeply into her

I's. "[He] kept talking to my cleavage while I kissed him," she

said.

All of which turned MTKB into a C-list celebrity who autographed

glossy photographs of herself with the phrase BREAST WISHES. And

so Morganna is the only individual in this Where Are They Now

issue of whom we might reasonably ask: Where Are They Now?

The erstwhile exotic dancer, who has split with accountant Bill

Cottrell, her husband of more than 25 years, is reportedly 49

(though other sources list her at 55), and lives a quiet

Midwestern life, putting a much-needed buss in Columbus, Ohio.

Beyond that, she's gone Garbo. We haven't seen her kisser since

1999, nor has she done an interview since the turn of the

millennium. She has repeatedly declined interview requests from

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and, reportedly, from Playboy, for whom she

once divested herself of her Brobdingnagian brassiere. But two

years ago she did leave a 4 a.m. message on the voice mail of

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Dan Raley, with whom she also

declined to do an interview. Her message, in part: "I just got

sick of talking about myself and always being the center of

attention." She added, with a depressingly Presleyan finality,

"Morganna has left the building." Pity, because we need

Morganna--more than ever in these troubled times--to enter the

building and to frolic on its field of play.

Baseball has no shortage of diamond-crashers; liquored-up yahoos

at Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field come to mind. A few wannabes

will even give an illicit peck to Derek Jeter, but Morganna

really was pecked--by the San Diego Chicken. And so, while we may

one day see a more bosomy busser (a temptress in a T cup,

perhaps), we shall never again see another Morganna, who remains,

like Ted Williams, the Greatest There Ever Was. Morganna, we

hardly knew ye.

Why, at the top of her game, did she kiss it all goodbye? Was she

puckered out, tuckered out, felled by mononucleosis? Sadly, we

may never know. Baseball's most famous lips are--and may forever

remain--sealed.

B/W PHOTO: CORBIS/BETTMANN (TOP) LIP SERVICE Players (such as Ryan in '85) and fans alike embraced Morganna (espied outside her home earlier this month).

COLOR PHOTO: THOMAS E. WITTE [See caption above]