“Rodney spent most of his childhood outside, playing sports. Each building, and block, had its own baseball, football, and basketball teams”(16).

“he approached a man who sold joints in his building. Rodney asked if he could help out, and the man agreed, apparently figuring that he would make more money in the long run with and apprentice”(16-17).

Rodney became a star pitcher for the Malcolm X. Shabazz Bulldogs in his sophomore year.

“Rodney’s fastball was clocked in the low nineties, and he became a key part of the starting rotation”(20).

“Clara, thinking he was there to repent, saw him and cried, “Praise the Lord.” Rodney knelt to pray, telling himself, I gotta change, I gotta change. From then on, Rodney told me, he never did any hard drugs”(21).

“He managed to keep his adult criminal record clean until he was nineteen, when he was arrested with a small packet of cocaine as he drove back from New York. The following year he was caught with coke in Newark. In both cases, he was sentenced to probation”(22).

“Just as he cleared the van, the gun blasted one more time. Rodney felt a burn in his lower back”(28). And later it says “The bad news is he got hit in the spine and it shattered and it doesn’t look like he’ll walk again”(30).

“For weeks, Rodney had been combing the neighborhood for recruits, but now it was late March, a couple of weeks before the start of the 2008 Little League season”(55).

“The Eagles were still in many ways a pack of misfits, but they were his misfits. His team. His responsibility”(92).

“He’d considered calling time-out and pulling them off the field. But the Eagles had made him feel like he did when he was a kid falling in love with the game”(101).