Tom Gordon gets a starring role

The last person to find out that Stephen King had named his latest thriller, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, after the all-star reliever for the Boston Red Sox was...Tom Gordon. ''Stephen sent me a copy in October, but I didn't find it until January,'' explains Gordon. ''I was looking through my locker and I saw this box from King. I thought he just wanted an autograph.'' Gordon finally met King, a lifelong Red Sox fan, this spring. ''People don't expect it, but we have a lot in common,'' says Gordon. ''The only rough patch was when I took him to lunch in my hometown and this lady kept insisting he was Steven Spielberg.''