Extra Innings, a memoir by Atlanta attorney Bobby Ezor, is built on the unexpected twists and unimagined turns of ordinary life. Often hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, Ezor's stories reveal the essence of what he's discovered over the past six decades: there are no wrong turns in life, only opportunities. In Bobby, childhood innocence and curiosity blossom into risk taking and success in adulthood, a pattern apparentsometimes alarminglyin Ezor's adventures beginning in his down-at-the heels hometown of Paterson, New Jersey across the Hudson RiverEzor's Mississippifrom Yankee Stadium. These stories inevitably involve escapeto something rather than from something or someoneinto fun, friendship, love, rock and roll, sports and commitment. A wide-eyed, six-year-old with a forever absent, workaholic father and a mother who whipsaws between smothering him and ignoring him, he watches his idol Mickey Mantle, stride a stage once dominated by the immortals Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and DiMaggio--and wishes he were there.
About the Author
Vincent Coppola is an award-winning journalist who has written for Newsweek, Talk, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, Worth and Atlanta magazines. He's written four nonfiction books, Tommy Malone, Trial Lawyer; The Sicilian Judge, Anthony Alaimo, an American Hero; Uneasy Warriors/The Perilous Journey of the Green Berets; The Big Casino: America's Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories; and the groundbreaking Dragons of God/A Journey Through Far-Right America (1996) that presaged the rise of today's Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other violent white supremacist groups. Currently, he's working on Gowanus Crossing, a memoir of the working-class Brooklyn experiences that inspired him to become a writer.