Let me be Robert Frank with you

Last week, Tom Perrotta was sitting courtside at the Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal Wimbledon final, watching the best tennis he's ever seen. "Bud Collins told me it may have been the best tennis he's ever seen," Perrotta told me. Fat life, eh? Perrotta gets to live in Belmont, write novels ("Election") and screenplays ("Little Children"), then score primo seats for the tennis match of the young century.

There is just one problem. It's not that Tom Perrotta.

The Wimbledon Tom Perrotta is a senior editor for Tennis magazine, who lives in New York and has known about his better-known doppelganger since college. "It was devastating," this Perrotta recalls. "I saw one of his books, and thought, 'Wow, this is what I'd like to be doing, but he's way ahead of me.' " Perrotta the tennis writer receives occasional calls from former students of Perrotta the novelist. When he flashes his credit card at Upper West Side bookstores, staffers flutter. Until they find out who he really is.

The shadow casts both ways. Thanks to the tennis-writing Perrotta, Belmont's Tom Perrotta fields plenty of compliments for his Stakhanovite multitasking. "I get lots of e-mails from people surprised at my ability to be a working novelist and screenwriter, as well as a renowned expert on tennis," he writes in an e-mail. "If the other Tom Perrotta and I were one person, we'd be pretty darned impressive."

So much talent, so few names. Just ask Cornell professor Robert H. Frank and Wall Street Journal wealth columnist Robert Frank, both experts on American affluence. The professor's best-known book is "Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class." The other Robert Frank recently published "Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich."

Perforce, the two men know each other. "I had a person at a conference recently ask me why I seemed to be 'pretty balanced' about the rich in 'Richistan,' but 'in your other books, the reviews suggest you take a negative, almost angry view of the rich,' " the WSJ's Frank says. "I told him that the other books were by the professor and he said, 'Well that explains it!' "

Over at the Huffington Post website, I see that Michael Goldfarb, who used to work for WBUR here, feels obliged to point out that "I am not the Michael Goldfarb who works for the Weekly Standard." Another HuffPost blogger, Dan Brown, notes that he "did not write 'The Da Vinci Code,' and he is OK with that."

Dennis Johnson called me the other day from Los Angeles. No, not my friend the writer and editor Dennis Johnson, who threw himself a humongous party when he read that he had received a Massachusetts Arts Council grant. Oops. That grant actually went to Provincetown's Denis Johnson, author of "Jesus' Son."

This Dennis Johnson works for the National Football League, and called to say that Tom Brady was on vacation and couldn't speak with me. No, not that Tom Brady. This Tom Brady is a senior programmer at NFL Digital Media. When this Tom Brady made dinner reservations in Los Angeles BG (meaning: Before Giselle), the maitre d' would pipe up: "We'll look forward to seeing you and Bridget."

Forget the Brady bunch, what about the Ronaldos? Soccer is hard enough to follow, and harder still when all the great players have the same name! Cristiano Ronaldo was England's Player of the Year at Manchester United; Ronaldo (ne Ronaldo Luis Nazario) won the World Cup for Brazil in 2002, and his countryman Ronaldinho (ne Ronaldo de Assis Moreira) is a mediagenic pitchman for Nike. Right-wing talk show hosts like to say that all three were named after Ronald Reagan, although I believe that is true only for the ManU star.

What's up with Alex Beams? The famous Alex Beam, owner of the Memory Lane automotive museum in Mooresville, N.C., was back in the news last week, when the International Motorsports Hall of Fame questioned the pedigree of a Beam-owned, Dale Earnhardt-driven 1982 Ford Thunderbird at the Hall. I am lining up with Mr. Beam on this one, natch.

We all remember the famous Allegheny Pirates hurler Alex Beam, who pitched two games in the big leagues in 1889, before becoming a mining engineer. Now there is a new Beam tearing up the diamond: Alex Beam, an infielder and sometime designated hitter for the Lady Titans of McDowell High School in Marion, N.C.

I couldn't reach her for this column, but she will be back next year, and so will I.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.