Ah, reputation -- that quality of a person's life that is earned in their lives and which remains after them when they die. Many of us have a mental scorecard of people to meet, places to see and accomplishments we hope to make in our lifetimes. We might be thinking about assuring our legacy when we are older. When we are younger, it is all about getting notches in the belt. We aim to complete one more goal so we can cross it off life's to do list. These minor victories and adventures become the story of our life's accomplishments. Success is important, but perhaps it is just as important how we play the game.

Summer is used to recharge the battery, and occasionally we take moments to reflect, to see the forest from the trees. What is greatness and what constitutes a fine reputation? Certainly it is to be respected. George Washington lived this motto. Machiavelli would say he would rather possess a reputation to be feared. Shakespeare might say it would be better to be loved.

Recently, I read Leigh Montville's enjoyable book Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero about the iconoclastic heroic figure Ted Williams, the last baseball hitter to hit .400 in a season. Montville captured this legend. Williams was profane. He was the most creative person I ever read about with swears, cusses and oaths. He loved the F-bomb and embellished it with world-class expletives. He always said what was on his mind. He never held anything back. He was a man's man and his own man. He let his hitting speak for him. His motto was, "wait for the right pitch." To the frustration of his manager, coaches and teammates, he lived this motto. Williams was a perfectionist in almost anything he set out to do - whether it be as a fly fisherman (he was among the best) or as a fighter pilot (he flew combat missions as a Marine aviator in two wars at the height of his major league baseball career). Williams refused to wear a tuxedo or a necktie. He once contemplated not accepting a presidential medal at the White House because he might have to wear a tie at the ceremony. Williams was one of those rare people who did not care much about what others thought. He could rail against certain members of the media for their criticism, but at the end he just ignored them.

Williams earned his reputation for greatness mostly because of all the little things he did to help his friends and many of those he helped behind the scenes. Williams visited countless kids in the hospital, sent money and autographed balls and photographs for kids with cancer and others with little hope for a cure. He never sought acclaim for his kindness and caring. In fact, if there was a PR person in the wings, Williams headed for the door. He wanted his deeds to really count in the goodness column and not in the popularity margin. Williams took the baseball swing to the level of high science, but he brought compassion for life to an art form. What he did, he did well. He lived a very full life both in baseball and after his playing days were over.

Which takes me to another person of substance - Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate, physicist and bongo player. I recently attended a new play about this brilliant scientist's last days called "QED" (defined as quantum electrodynamics), but the play was little about physics and all about being engaged as a thinking person. Feynman died of cancer and other health complications at the age of 70, but the message of the play brought forth so clearly that Feynman was a person who was interested in many things but mostly curious about all of nature and all types of people. Feynman was always about telling and persuing the truth and doing what he thought might work, but also being ready to go back and re-think the answer if it was wrong. He apparently had little use for religion, choosing reason and common sense to the mythology and mysteries of faith. He openly admitted how much he did not know and in the play it was portrayed that it was his joy for the unknown that kept him alive.

Most of all, Feynman cared little about what others thought of him (he wrote a book with this title expressing this sentiment). He did not want to be encumbered with conventional thinking or style. Feynman may not have sought out to be an original, but that was what he became. He was assigned to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in his twenties, and when he was not engaged in higher-level computational mathematics for the project, he spent his spare time teaching himself how to pick locks, ultimately breaking into the safe that held all of the secrets to the atom bomb. He did this for fun, but unlocking secrets was his life's quest. Feynman took pranks and practical jokes to an art form. He played the bongos for the entertainment of others. His great well of compassion was best expressed in the play by the love letter he wrote to his wife after she died, signing off on it with the closing: "I apologize for the lack of address on the envelope because I did not know where to send it."

Does the world remember those who dare to be different, those who march to their own drummer? Williams and Feynman show that it does.