Extra innings

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 apparent-sometimes alarmingly-in Ezor's adventures beginning in his down-at-the heels hometown of Paterson, New Jersey across the Hudson River-Ezor's Mississippi-from Yankee Stadium. These stories inevitably involve escape-to something rather than from something or someone-into 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.