How Far?

Bob Wilber

Description

Bob Wilber wrapped up his lengthy professional sports and marketing career in 2016, and immediately wrote and published his autobiography "Bats, Balls, & Burnouts" to great acclaim. For "How Far?" he stretched his writing muscles into an entirely new genre. "How Far?" is historical fiction, and the story surrounds two disparate characters. Wilber wrote "How Far?" as those two characters, in their distinct voices. One is a gifted baseball player from Southern California and the son of artist hippies. The other an undersized hockey player from Roseau, Minnesota, a hotbed of high school hockey in a state where hockey is king. Roseau is a small community just south of the Canadian border and has produced numerous NHL and international hockey stars.


Both characters progress through the challenges they face. Each come from vastly different upbringings. Both reach levels of greatness. And, thanks to one spontaneous moment, they met, became friends, and achieved their individual paths to the pinnacle of their sports. It is an unlikely story, but a very possible one brought to life by Bob Wilber's technique and attention to detail.

There is drama, heartbreak, elation, and more. Life lessons learned. Moments of brilliant brightness as well as the darkness of personal lows. There are also deep dives into the world of amateur and professional sports, down to the tiniest important details. It is a tale of life, told through the lens of elite athletes playing different games while they impact each other's lives.

Sujets

• Sport
• Baseball
• Sports collectifs
• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977252104
• Langue: English

Extrait

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How Far? A Tale of Determination, DNA, and Drama All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2022 Bob Wilber v2.0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 978-1-9772-5210-4
Cover Image by Todd Myers and Bob Wilber
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my incredible wife Barbara, who puts up with me and motivates me every day. Your love and support are absolutely priceless
To my mother, who all through her life instilled in me a love for the written word
To Greg Halling, who has now guided and mentored me through two books. He has made me a better writer and has become an invaluable friend
To all my family and friends who have pushed me, supported me, and cheered me on throughout this process.
Thank you!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
AUTHOR’S EPILOGUE
FOREWORD
I used to see Bob Wilber a lot in press boxes at NHRA drag races.
Topeka. St. Louis. Chicago. Sonoma. Indianapolis. He was always there.
He’d glide in, grab a stat sheet, mix it up with the other PR reps and slip out the door.
Everybody seemed to like the guy. I wanted to like him, too.
But we didn’t speak for years. Not really.
I was a Kansas journalist. When I was managing editor at The Leavenworth Times, the NHRA invited me to Topeka to see a race. Suddenly, I remembered how much I’d loved drag racing as a kid.
My mind exploded in a burst of header flames, and from that day in 1992, I covered every NHRA event at Heartland Park Topeka. It didn’t matter if I lived in Leavenworth, Hays or Hutchinson. I made the drive.
Along the way, I also made lifelong friends. Publicists like the late Joe Sherk, Rick Voegelin and Dave Densmore patiently endured my questions, arranged interviews with their drivers and trusted me to cover the sport with respect it deserved.
Then there was Bob. Always there, but only briefly, on his way back to the pits. We’d nod at each other and say hello, but that was it.
Until one day, I said something too loudly in the press box about people who never seem to learn from their mistakes. For a guy who only showed up at races a couple times a year, I was always saying things too loudly in the press box.
As I headed down to the track, Bob sauntered up beside me.
"You know, in minor league ball, I had this teammate," he said. "Same sort of thing. We’d just look at the guy and say, ‘Can’t be taught.’"
"You played minor league baseball?"
"Yeah, Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s systems. Dad played for the St. Louis Cardinals and then managed or coached until he retired."
As it turned out, the guy had led a fascinating life, which you can read about in his autobiography, "Bats, Balls and Burnouts."
We started making it a point to talk whenever I showed up at a race. Our conversations were never especially profound; we simply enjoyed each other’s company.
Honestly, after The Elkhart Truth was sold and I moved to Ogden, Utah, to run the newsroom at the Standard-Examiner in 2015, I didn’t expect to hear from Bob again. I hadn’t been to a race since the 2013 U.S. Nationals.
But out of the blue, he emailed me in Ogden and asked if I’d edit the book that became "Bats, Balls and Burnouts." I immediately agreed.
It was a journey I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Bob could write. He could always write. His blogs and news releases were sharp, witty and perceptive.
At first, his book read like a string of news releases. Then he got it. He became a storyteller a sharp, witty and perceptive storyteller.
Over the course of a year, as he wrote his autobiography, we became brothers. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time when all we did was nod at each other across the press box in Topeka.
That was two books ago.

Greg Halling Yakima, Washington July 2021

Greg Halling is executive editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic in Yakima, Wash. He started his career as sports editor of the Emporia Gazette, then went on to run newsrooms in Leavenworth, Hays and Hutchinson. His staff at the Elkhart Truth in Elkhart, Indiana, won a National Press Club Award for The Elkhart Project, a year-long collaboration with msnbc.com on the city’s recovery from the Great Recession. He also spent nearly three years as editor of the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah. He has a tattoo on each forearm one honoring Steve Earle, the other Warren Zevon. Which probably tells you everything you need to know about him.
CHAPTER 1

My name is Brooks Bennett. I’ve had an interesting life, and I’ve met a lot of very cool people along the way. One of them, a longtime friend of mine, is Eric Olson. Yeah, that Eric Olson. The hockey player. We’ve known each other since the fall of 1987 when we met on our first day of college. We’ve pushed each other, tested each other, challenged each other, infuriated each other and loved each other. It’s life. It’s like that.
We’re writing this book together, but we’re doing it separately. We’re not even talking about the details, so you might find some things we remember differently, or don’t remember at all. But that’s the fun part. We did discuss an outline, so that our stories would be on something close to the same pace, but we’re leaving the details and the feelings for the writing.
My strange life started in Huntington Beach, California. That was basically what you’d call good fortune, too, because my mom and dad, Carol and Rick, moved to Southern California from Erie, Pennsylvania just a few years before I was born.
Why they did that probably will tell you a lot about me and my upbringing. They both wanted to be hippies (maybe more like pseudo-hippies) and California was the place to be if that’s what you were after. I think you can say they didn’t quite fit in back in Erie, and Dad often told me he never really felt like he was at home there. Whenever he’d say that, my reaction would be to roll my eyes and say, "That’s deep, dude!"
For as long as he could remember, Dad said he felt like Erie was a place he had to get away from. Finishing high school had to come first, but he never lost the feeling that he didn’t just want to leave, he had to leave. It was his dream to live in sunny California and surf whenever he wanted. For him, California was heaven.
How did a dude from Erie get so totally into surfing? My dad was a wanderer from the day he got his driver’s license. I think they call it "wanderlust," right? When he watched surfing competitions on TV the sport blew his mind and, to him, it seemed like the sandy beaches and rolling waves (and the bikinis) were on another planet. At 18, he drove all the way to L.A. to spend the summer there, staying with a total stranger, a friend of a friend of another friend who got out on his board every day.
My dad learned to surf the first day he was there and he was totally shredding by the time he went back home three months later. When he got in his Volkswagen bus to make the long drive back to Erie, he made up his mind that as soon as he got home he was packing up and moving. That didn’t happen, because as soon as he got home he met my mom and she was the one thing more attractive to him than the beach. The longing for the beach never left him, but within a year they were planning a wedding. Within another year, they were husband and wife and on the move. He picked Huntington Beach because of the surf.
It didn’t take much to convince my mom. She was an artist (oils and watercolors), a yoga expert, and the kind of person who was never afraid to take a total leap of faith and then rely on the goodness of others. She was also a heck of an athlete in high school, running distance events on the track team and playing volleyball.
My dad fancied himself as an artist, too. He had messed around with mixed media stuff since his early teens, whether it was parts and pieces glued to canvas or sculptures made of whatever he could find lying around. My folks were made for each other, because neither one ever saw any sort of career in their futures. They’d do whatever it took to keep a roof over their heads, but neither was going to spend 40 hours a week working in banking or insurance. The art, and in my dad’s case the surfing, came first. Living a rich life was way more important than getting rich doing something they didn’t feel any affinity for.
My dad was an incredible athlete, just like my mom. He was good at everything he tried, even the first time he ever played