I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to play the game for eight years and the people around me were fantastic, everybody in the Carolina Panthers organization treated me well, they taught me a lot.
Oakland had a lot of pride attached to the Panthers. A lot of people were connected to it in some kind of way and a lot of people who weren't Panthers supported the Panthers. You'd see Huey P. Newton around, and people would be like, 'That's Huey right there.'
I was fortunate to be around a couple of coaches who took me under their wing and taught me how to train, how to work and how to prepare myself for a game. They gave me so much, and I saw the passion they had for the game and for teaching it. What I learned from them led me to want to become a teacher and coach.
Indiana really treated me well. The organization, the GM, the president were pretty cool with me.
If it's a shot for me, if I can make a play, create for someone else, I'll do that. A lot of times you run a play, everybody's watching, everybody's locked in, everybody's pulling over, and it just makes the game tougher for me.
My father wasn't a hard guy. He was a well-liked guy. He had a lot of compassion about things in life. There were rules, but there was also flexibility within those rules. He didn't push me when it came to golf: he just taught me the right way to play the game.
My dad was the force behind me early on. He was just infatuated with baseball. He was the one that basically taught me how to play the game. He gave a lot of his time working out with me, practicing and taking me to a lot of different games. It was hard work between both of us.
My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music.
It was about 105 degrees in Chicago. And that's a time when everybody gets tired. I came into the clubhouse, and everybody was sitting around, and I said, 'Beautiful day. Let's play two!' And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. There were a couple of writers around, and they wrote that, and it stayed with me.
I would say a lot of it came from a lot of different drills that Coach Fleck put me through. That's my man. He taught me a lot, a lot, a lot about receiver play. And he taught me a lot about catching the ball and just hand placement.
The beach game taught me great lessons about how to elevate the play of my teammate, or teammates, and how to anticipate and expect the ball so much more than the indoor game ever could. It taught me - even forced me - to be a much better all-around player. That allowed me to help our USA Olympic Team in many more ways than I ever could have otherwise.
One person who has taught me a lot and inspired me a lot was Peter Falk. I was fortunate enough to have worked with him in this movie called 'Vig.' He brought my work to a place where it literally shouldn't have been for another two or three years.
I feel very fortunate for audiences to have been so gracious as to allow me to do pretty much any role that I felt I could do. They let me play a president. They let me play a lawyer. They let me play a hit man. They let me play a father. They let me play Howard Saint.
Sometimes people have sympathized with me because long years of my life were spent in jail and in exile. Well, those years ... were a mixed experience. I hated them because they separated me from the dearest thing in the world-the struggle of my people for rebirth. At the same time, they were a blessing because I had what is so rare in this world-the opportunity of thinking about basic issues, the opportunity of examining afresh the beliefs I held.
I was always taught that Latin, Caribbean people were cousins to me, as well as blues was a cousin to me, as well as Africans were direct relatives to me. It was all a part of my language.
I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina's governor awarded me the highest award for the arts in the state. I was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. I have lived and worked among the folks in Sumter, South Carolina, for so many years. South Carolina has been home, and to be honest, it was easier for me to define myself as a South Carolinian than even as an American.
My dad speaks a lot of sense and keeps me grounded. He'll watch me play and, if I've done well, he'll have a quiet word with me and say, 'Well done.' If I've had a not-so-good game, he'll let me know about it.