Sports Beat

The forthcoming autobiography from Boris (Boom Boom) Becker has been serialized in the German newspaper Bild and is shining a revealing light on that country's troubled tennis demigod. The book, whose title roughly translates as Wait a Second, Stay a While, due out in Europe this week, details lurid indiscretions, including the then married Becker's fling with a Russian model in a restaurant linen closet (the dalliance led to the birth of a daughter), as well as extensive use of sleeping pills during the three-time Wimbledon champ's career. Becker, 35, also recounts a panic attack while stuck in an elevator with Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. The Three Tenors broke into Ave Maria, nearly moving Becker to tears. "I didn't join in," he writes. "I said nothing but just worried about my own small life. I didn't want to break down completely."

? Serena Williams skipped last week's season-ending WTA event in Santa Monica (she's rehabbing her left knee), but she was healthy enough to choreograph a pretournament fashion show at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel—and also to flash her gams along the catwalk. Serena and sister Venus modeled their own designs, including a line from Serena's label, Aneres ( Serena backward). "There's plenty of time after my tennis to definitely go full-time fashion, when I have arthritis and all that fun stuff," Venus said. Other models included Jennifer Capriati, who was cheered on by Matthew Perry.

?Kings swingman Doug Christie and his wife, Jackie, are the NBA's most lovey-dovey couple. They use an elaborate set of signals to communicate during games, and last year Jackie nearly swung her handbag at Rick Fox when Doug was in a brawl with the Lakers. Now the two are designing purses together. "I have a large collection of [hand] bags—but something was missing," says Jackie. "I wanted something different, romantic and fun. I want every woman carrying our handbags or wearing our clothes to feel beautiful and special, to feel like a princess in her own modern-day fairy tale." Says Doug: "I have some designs I've drawn and she has designs and asks my opinion. We just try to be creative and artistic."

?U.S. Open champ Andy Roddick is getting some serious crossover exposure. He hosted Saturday Night Live last week; he and pop-singing girlfriend Mandy Moore are in "Got Milk?" ads; and now he's shopping a reality show called The Tour, which will follow him around the world as he plays tennis. Moore, alas, wants no part of it. "My personal life is behind closed doors," she said. "I like watching other people, though."

...Last Thursday, Deion Sanders told Carson Daly that ESPN's seamy Playmakers "is good. It's good. I'm telling you, I've been inside the locker rooms for 12 years—baseball, football—and it's the closest thing out there." Two days earlier, Gatorade, which spends a reported $20 million a year in NFL sponsorship, had begun pulling its ads from the show, saying "We grew increasingly uncomfortable with [Playmakers'] content. We felt the show was in conflict with what we stand for as a brand."

...Something All Our Own, an exhibit of more than 45 pieces of African-American art from the collection of Magic forward Grant Hill, opened Nov. 2 at the Orlando Museum of Art. The exhibit, which includes paintings by Romare Bearden and sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett, travels to seven cities over the next two years.