Steve Williams, newly enshrined in the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, is permanently grateful to Mr. Frank Magliari.

"I owe so much that man; it's Mr. M. who really got me going," Williams said, chatting it up while he signed autographs just outside the Grand Ballroom of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Indianapolis, where the annual Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies had concluded minutes earlier last Saturday night.

"Mr. M. showed me I could be a runner; he helped me find my sport."

It became a discovery for the ages.

Not long after Mr. M. found him, Steve Williams found he had extraordinary talent, a talent that would take him to a "fairy-tale world" of record-setting adventures as the fastest man on the planet.

Scene One: the late 1960s on East 225th Street in the Wakefield section of the North Bronx.

Frank Magliari was the director of the NYC Parks Department playground on 225th — actually between 225th and 226th — who was surely never overpaid but enriched nevertheless by the number of young lives he touched.

"He (Magliari) saw I was pretty fast," said Williams. "He wasn't a professional coach. He just told me, 'start fast, keep going, and don't let anybody get ahead of you.' And that's just what I did.

"He gave me that confidence."

This was amazing stuff, actually, by a boy who couldn't even walk for a tough seven-month period, while he mended from surgery to correct malformed legs. "As soon as those casts came off, though, I started running," he said.

His Dad had high hopes of him becoming the first great African-American quarterback. But football was never his love, track was.

From these playground exploits, one thing surely led to another and another… and more yet.

When he caught TV glimpses of Bob Hayes sprinting to glory at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, he never thought he could do similar things — Hayes was compact and all-power. But when he saw Tommie Smith's great races at the 1968 Mexico City Games, it was pure inspiration — "Tommie was a skinny guy like me."

It was the intensity of Hayes, though, that he never forget.

"I want to be as fierce as Bob Hayes," he told himself.

Steve Williams, a born (Nov. 13, 1953), raised and still-oh-proud Bronxite — he's a Chicagoan now but his parents still reside on the Bronx's East 228th Street at Laconia Avenue — went from P.S. 21, also on 225th, to Evander Childs High School, due south on Gun Hill Road.

It was at Evander — the school that has forever been known by the first name of its namesake, a noted NYC school principal; and never by Childs, his surname — that Williams gained his first track acclaim.

Guided now by Evander coach Duke Marshall, he quickly made his mark in the New York Public School Athletic League ranks. At first, as Marshall once explained, only in the long sprints, 220 and 440, because his unusually long stride practically caused him to fall off the highly-banked Evander gymnasium indoor track. As a result, he did most of his winter practicing in the school's hallways. Not until his senior year did he start running 100s.

Marshall had another key role in Williams' life — "he kept me on the straight and narrow."

His travels would start soon after his Evander years.

Next stop was El Paso, where he was recruited by Coach Wayne Vanderburg to the UTEP Miners' power-packed international squad. The spring of 1972 saw Williams blaze into the headlines with freshman performances of 9.3 (100 yards), 20.2 (220) and 45.7 (440). The Munich Olympics beckoned — until injuries knocked him out of the first round of the Olympic Trials 200.

He transferred to San Diego State and it was there, under Coach Dick Hill in 1973, that he first reached the pinnacle of the sport. He gained No. 1 world rankings with his year-best times of 10.15 for the 100 meters and 20.33 200. One big 1973 highlight — running down the Soviet Union's great Valeriy Borzov (the 100-200 king of the 1972 Munich Olympics) on the anchor leg of the 4x100 relay at the USA-Soviet dual meet in Minsk.

He was ranked as number-one again in 1974 with his hand-timed 9.9 100 while adding a 20.2 200. His 1975 season was huge, too, perhaps his best ever, and he led the world in the 200 while ranked second in the 100.

But the 1976 Olympic Trials would prove as disappointing as the '72 Trials. It all came unglued at the National AAU Championships preceding the Trials. He managed to get through the first round of the Trials 100 before limping off the track in the quarterfinals, and never made it to the starting line for the first round of the 200.

Williams returned to full health — and brilliance — in 1977 and 1978, regaining his number-one world ranking with his 10.07 best in '78.

Perhaps his greatest meet was the first edition of the IAAF's World Cup, in 1977, staged in Dusseldorf, Germany. Not only did he win the 100 but, with teammates Bill Collins, Steve Riddick and Cliff Wiley, anchored Team USA (coached by Steve Simmons) to  a world-record 38.03 triumph in the 4x100 relay.

It was the first time the four had ever run together as a relay unit — a little smoother baton work and they'd surely have been the first team ever to break 38. Their 38.03 would endure as a world record for six years — until the Carl Lewis-anchored USA team ran 37.86 at the first edition of the World Championships in 1983.

Ready to give the Olympics a third try in 1980, he endured triple dismay. Not really in his old form, he still wound up sixth in 10.36 in the 100 final at those '80 Trials — and with it the expected status of Olympian (as a member of the 4x100 relay pool).

It was a moot point. By President Jimmy Carter's edict, Team USA never did go to those 1980 Moscow Olympics.

He finally hung up his spikes after the 1984 Olympic Trials. For track and field historians, the second heat of the quarterfinal round of the 100at the '84 Trials was all-emotion. As the young Carl Lewis was winning it in 10.14, the now-veteran Williams was bowing out with his fifth-place 10.34.

The baton had truly been passed — and it was now official, they could call him "the greatest sprinter who never ran the Olympics."

A quick look back at Williams' career shows he was a four-time U.S. national champion (100 and 200 in 1973), the 200 (1974) and the indoor 60 yards (1976).

A must-read publication for all stats-minded track fans is the IAAF's "Progression of World Best Performances and Official IAAF World Records."

Williams earned 10 entries in it for his individual exploits, nine of them 100s, the other a "deuce."

They are: 9.1 (hand-timed) for the 100 yards at the 1973 West Coast Relays; 9.19 (automatic timing but wind-aided, twice the same day) for 100 yards at the 1974 NCAA Championships in Austin; 9.9 (hand-timed) for 100 meters at the 1974 USA Nationals in Los Angeles; 9.9 a second time, at the 1975 National AAUs in Eugene, Oregon; 9.9 for the third time, at Siena, Italy, in 1975; 9.9 for the fourth time, at the 1975 ISTAF Meet in Berlin; 9.9, for the fifth time, at the 1976 Florida Relays, and 9.8, but never ratified, at the 1975 at the National AAUs in Eugene.

Plus: 19.9 (hand-timed) for 220 yards at the 1975 Prefontaine Classic.

Williams earned his degree from San Diego State in 1976 (as an English and journalism major) and then headed to the Southeast.

His big 1977-78 seasons came as a member of the Florida Track Club running under the coaching tutelage of Brooks Johnson. Johnson's technique training was a key factor in his running many of his greatest races.

"I never realized how bad I was (form-wise)," he reflected before working with Johnson, "I had been winning by accident."

One witness to an earlier version of Williams' sprint form said "it was a quaint, bobbing style that seemed to have been choreographed by Bo Diddley."

The young man from the North Bronx was a pioneer in many ways. Along with Dwight Stones and others, he was one of the early battlers to "open" his sport to over-the-table rewards and an end to the long years of "shamateurism."

It was his early years as a New York Pioneer, too, that molded him to greatness.

Training with the famed New York Pioneer Club, directed by the late, great Hall of Famer Joseph Yancey Jr. — "the Godfather of New York track and field," to Williams — and Ed Levy, key Yancey aide and later his successor, opened his eyes to his potential as a highest-level competitor.

Those workouts, always full of life-lessons as well as hard running — winters at Manhattan's 369th AAA Armory, home of the famed Harlem Hellfighters Battalion; spring and summers at the Bronx's Macombs Dam Park, across the street from Yankee Stadium, 161st Street and River Avenue — remain high on his list of cherished memories.

The training was always intense — it had to be, with such notables as Bob Beamon, Mel Pender, John Carlos, Vincent Matthews and Norman Tate often on hand.

Now that he's formally a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, located at The Armory Track Center,  he'll join such other sidewalks-of-New York City born-and-bred greats as Beamon, Carlos, Matthews, Larry Ellis, Abel Kiviat and Mae Faggs in the sport's leading American shrine, and he's forever thankful to all who helped him get there.

For sure, he traveled the world over and had more than his share of adventures, on and off the track — "What kind of fairy tale world was that?" he asked. And now he's a Chicago-based businessman and family man.

But his roots will always remain in New York City's only mainland borough.

As he signed his autographs, it was "Steve Williams, Bx. Forever."