How You Play the Game

CHAPTER ONE

Back to the Beginning

Home.

For more than thirty years, Phoenix has been my home. It is where I settled my young family so long ago and labored to build a business, a reputation, and a life.

But there was a time for me before that, a life before Phoenix, and it began in Chicago Heights, a working-class suburb south of Chicago. And today I have returned to Chicago Heights, to my first home. Today I have come full circle.

This is not to suggest that I haven’t returned in three decades. Not at all. Not by a long shot. I still have family here. I still have friends here.

I still have my roots here.

Nonetheless, today—these past few days, ...