Excerpts

"Beginnings"

Summer 1991 

“He’s gotta stay out here and work!” the father barked.

The mother replied, “Anthony, he’s crying! He’s seven!”

“Stay here,” Anthony Atkinson Sr. said, turning to his son, who shared his name. “You don’t want people talking bad about you at the game, do you? You want to be the best, don’t you?”

The yard fell silent. Everyone knew that answer.

Vivian turned her eyes from Senior to Ant, silently demanding that he do what he wanted to do. And she knew Ant would. They’d talked before. He didn’t have to endure this, she told him. He could quit the minute it became too much. He should do what he wanted; she could deal with his father. Ant promised if he ever needed to quit, he would quit.

“He would be working out little Anthony so hard,” Vivian recalls. “And little Anthony would be crying…I wanted him to work with him, but sometimes he could be so hard. I thought he was being mean to him.”

Ant stood, walked toward the house, toward his mother. Stopped at the porch. Beside his feet was the ball, the thing that had him sweating and bleeding and crying. Beside it were the porch steps, steps to safety, into his mother’s arms, into the house.

His eyes met hers, saying, I love you. And then Ant did what he wanted.

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"Wilson"

[From Chapter 30] 

At the corner of Nash and Pearson streets in Wilson there sits Dick’s Hot Dog Stand, a restaurant that has been a city landmark since it was founded in 1921. Back then, Nash Street was gravel and Pearson Street didn’t exist at all. Neither did Lee Gliarmis, who owns the place now. His father did, though. His name was Socrates, but everyone called him Dick.

The restaurant is a small building made of red bricks. It has parking space for about ten cars—although when at its busiest, cars line the sides of streets nearby—and it aptly personifies the city of Wilson.

Around 9 p.m. one Saturday, as he does most Saturdays around that time, Lee wiped down the last of about two-dozen tables. Around Lee, a mere mortal, are images of men whom sports have made godlike. Filling nearly every inch of wall are autographed pictures of countless sports legends. Some are heroes, some are notorious, and some are just famously comical—“Bob Uecker sat right there, right in this booth,” says Lee, pointing to the corner he just cleaned—but their memory will live on as long as sports last. Stan Musial. Harry Caray. Roy Williams. Jim Thacker. Arnold Palmer. Bones McKinney….and so many more. A storeroom out back holds more autographed pictures than Lee can hang up.

Lee wouldn’t change a thing about his life. He loves Wilson. He loves Dick’s. But this wasn’t his dream. 

(Read the full excerpt here.)

More excerpts coming soon.