Not long ago Keith Daniels and Steve O'Neill were visiting a Madison business to ask them to sponsor a hole or contribute an auction item for the annual Harmony Bar Golf Scramble to benefit the Goodman Atwood Community Center.

Daniels made the pitch while O'Neill stood nearby. At one point, the business owner nodded at O'Neill and asked Daniels, "Who's your mute friend?"

This was likely the first time in 50 years that anyone has accused O'Neill of not talking enough.

O'Neill said: "I'm his muscle."

I think of them as the Odd Couple. Get them together and they can provide enough comedy to make Neil Simon jealous. But it is also worth noting, in this era when bars seem to get an unending ration of hassle and grief, that in the past decade these two have helped raise more than $100,000 for the Atwood Center.

This year's event is June 29 at the Bridges Golf Course, and it will conclude as it always has since it began in 1997 -- with food and beverage at the Harmony, one of the city's great bars, and an East Side icon.

Daniels is the proprietor, has been since 1990, and O'Neill, well, no one is exactly sure what O'Neill does, besides playing cards at the Harmony every afternoon and running the golf outing. His first title was commissioner, but that was deemed insufficiently reverential. O'Neill is now known as the czar of the Harmony outing.

The bar and the Atwood Center have a long relationship, dating back to when Daniels purchased the Harmony, which is at 2201 Atwood Ave., and began sponsoring the center's softball team.

For a decade before Daniels bought it, the Harmony had been an uninspired watering hole named Lee's Tavern. But for the 30 years before that, it was the Karabis Bar, a family-run place that featured good food. Daniels went back to that model, added live music, and soon the Harmony was humming.

O'Neill moved to Madison about the time Daniels bought the Harmony. Asked how the two met, O'Neill replied, "I moved into the neighborhood and he owned a bar. How could we not meet?"

O'Neill has since become a Harmony fixture. Some years ago, Daniels decided to close the bar for the last two weeks in August. When it reopened, someone asked O'Neill how he had handled it.

"The first day," he said, "I bought a six-pack, sat on the steps and cried."

O'Neill's stature as an East Side character has grown to the extent that he takes neighborhood causes personally. Last spring, there was a partially sunken sailboat in Lake Monona off Olbrich Park that was becoming an embarrassment. For weeks, O'Neill pestered various politicians and bureaucrats to get it removed, without success.

Finally, O'Neill went to the media, and that got results. It also prompted these memorable words from a friend: "For someone who doesn't do anything, you sure get your name in the paper a lot."

Last spring, Daniels got his name in the Miami Herald when a pitcher for the Florida Marlins gave him the finger at Miller Park. Daniels has season tickets directly adjacent to the visiting team dugout. Over the years, this has resulted in a certain amount of interaction with players. One year, on his birthday. Daniels talked Arizona Diamondbacks coach Brett Butler into giving him an autographed baseball.

Last June, Daniels found himself unimpressed with the pitching performance of the Marlins' Scott Olsen. After Olsen was chased from the mound in the sixth inning of an 8-5 Brewers win, Daniels waited until Olsen reached the dugout steps and then said, "You're a bum."

Olsen then gave Daniels "the bird" as he walked down the steps. The exchange was witnessed by a Miami Herald reporter, who wrote about it.

Daniels' two seats by the dugout are part of one of the more intriguing auction items during next Sunday's Harmony outing. It's called a "Brewers tailgate package" and along with Daniels' excellent seats, the winning bidder gets a $25 gift certificate to Jacobson Brothers and a Penzey's grilling spice gift box.

There are a limited number of spots still available for this year's event. The winning foursome last year included Isthmus owners Vince and Linda O'Hern and Jeff Hosking, a strong player and father of the junior champion Max Hosking.

There was a fourth player in the winning group, but you won't find his name on the trophy. He entered at the last minute and somehow it developed that he never paid his entry fee. Well, you can stiff the Harmony, and you can stiff Daniels and O'Neill, but you can't stiff the Atwood Center.

O'Neill obtained the man's cell phone number and called him two weeks straight at 5:30 a.m.

"He paid," the czar said.

Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.