Analogy. Im also very pleased to welcome you to this event tonight to the main local event. This event is one of many wonderful events brought to you through our partnership with pittsburgh arts and lectures to the library arts and lectures have been presenting events like this one for many years for broad ranges of audiences. We are always pleased for a very nice positive response to these events and we would invite you to next time bring a friend or two, help us promote these and keep them going. Also i want to remind you that the library is open until 8 00 p. M. Tonight so you can head over and get your library card after this event. I would like to recognize classic lines books and more. They will be selling books this evening, the playing through the whistle book and i want to make you aware that s. L. Price will be sending the book immediately after the event this evening. As i mentioned earlier i am new to working at the main library but one of my first experiences was hearing about ms. Stephanie from, all with the staff at the library speaks extremely highly of her. We have a longstanding relationship with her being at pittsburgh arts and library. Ive never met her for this evening so i have the greatest nation i will give you the great pleasure if youll allow me to introduce her and she will tell you about the remainder of the evening. [applause] thank you, jen. We have a great audience for s. L. Price. Playing through the whistle is compassionate, truly compassionate, exploration of steel, football and american town is the fourth book for s. L. Price Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated. Along with more than three dozen cover stories for Sports Illustrated he has also written for vanity fair, New York Times, Time Magazine and the africanamerican. Assignments have propelled them across the u. S. That we are happy to have them spending so much time western pennsylvania and canada as well as columbia argentina cuba where he wrote a book about cuba, Sports Jamaica kenya france brazil australia greece japan korea and china. He has covered 10 Olympic Games two world cups and countless grand slam tennis championships. He is interviewed president s george w. Bush and bill clinton and played barack obama oneonone at an iowa ymca. The reviews for this book have been raving and going through the New York Times whatever price writes about sports he hits it over the fence and i got to take into the field wall today. Sports commentator for npr i paid to read a grocery list of skypers stock price right usa today, price is one of the finest writers on sports anywhere. Earlier today we went over to a sports history class of his and he shared that he stumbled upon aliquippa and in it he found a microcosm. Quote aliquippa didnt just produce great Football Players. Aliquippa is where america happened. Please give a warm welcome to s. L. Price. [applause] wow. That was quite the welcome. I dont think ive ever heard me describe certainly in my own home that way. You know whats funny because this is i think being described as a lecture and you were here for a historic event because ive never really given anything known as a lecture before except to my kids and they have never listened even though im paying for their food and their rent and everything else. So if you dont listen i certainly will understand it. First of all thank you all for coming. This is a subject that is incredibly and oddly important to me. I think aliquippa is a special place and i think if anybody is from that area or from aliquippa specifically they would understand what im talking about. Black friday bill clinton became the fourth u. S. President to visit aliquippa by my account. I believe barack obama did spend some time getting some ice cream during the campaign but in the bounds of aliquippa i believe there are only four president s who visited. First was jfk in 1962. Two days later he got the news that the russians had put missiles into cuba and the entire cuban missile crisis began. Im not saying theres any coincidence there. Jimmy carter came and gave a town hall in george bush visited, george w. I think thats significant obviously that bill clinton visited and not get to that in a second but on the same day aliquippa played hopewell high for the First Time Since 1997 and aliquippa is noteworthy to me. Aliquippa relationship with hopewell was interesting. People know the tony dorsett obviously is from, well he is from the Hopewell School district in play for hopewell. They love to claim him as their on and in some ways they should because he grew up more a hopewell kid than a aliquippa kid. Anyway two things happening were significant to me and i will start with and what they mean by that is this is a town that 9500 people at this point and getting smaller. At its peak it was only 27, 28,000 maybe 30 thousand people but it was a town that was not by any means a large city and get there or something and the president s are testament to this, theres something incredibly is special about aliquippa. I first went up there in the fall of 2010. An editor at Sports Illustrated named mark who i believe his grandfather worked with the union in aliquippa and he said see if you are interested. They are producing incredible Football Players to win championships and the town is clearly dealing with the forces of the mills shutting down and obviously 25 years previously, sorry 15 years previously, go up and see what you think it so i went up and i wrote was essentially the longest piece i have ever written for Sports Illustrated. It was nearly 10,000 words and it was a specific story about how aliquippa is produced great Football Players. Mike ditka, tony dorsett to some extent Darrelle Revis ti lung, sean gilbert and a slew of division i players and just incredible and athletes in general. So i wrote a story about that and how they were still i was a limited story in the sense that it was about football. It was about football in the face of great difficulty in great pain and triumph amid that pain. It was a pretty graphic story and some people didnt like it because it may be women to the paying too much for the people that wrote about thanks me and not me but they wanted their story told. They wanted me to understand what it took to make it out and triumph out of aliquippa. So i think anybody who comes from their because you often hear it says aliquippa thing and you would understand. What i mean by that is anybody who grew up in aliquippa and left it never really leaves it behind. You really cant get away from it. It had its hooks in me and i didnt even grow up there. There was something about this place that i thought, theres Something Special going on here that i dont quite understand. Its not just football. Its Henry Mancini winning for Academy Awards in 1916, grammy awards. Henry mancini growing up next to joe with terry whose son joe went on to win for Academy Awards for her lord of the rings and avatar. It was james frank the first black president of the ncaa and jessie stein told his corrupt down the street from and Jesse Steinfeld became Surgeon General and he was fired for his opposition to the tobacco industry. It was, forgive me for this, could it be im falling in love . Does anybody know that song . Dr. Steals, thank you for coming. And i cant tell you what an honor does for me to have got your steals here because in many ways dr. Steals experience told me house Daschle Aliquippa was because first of all he was incredibly honest to me when i spoke about his experience there how did i do in that song . Not bad right . Not rate. It wasnt the spinners but so that what i thought was amazing was in doing my research , so im finding out all these other people who have come from aliquippa and then im finding out if you are excited about the world series last night i spoke to Tito Francona and thats thats terry sun managing the indians last night and terry is from new brighton. Titos with the new brighton for longtime but when i called and he said everyone says im from new brighton but im not. There is this pride of place that continues and that idea of greatness rising out of tragedy, out of pain is something that is obviously appealing to any human being but as a writer its cool. Happened on the football field but also dr. Steals to me that story stuck with me because dr. Steals was teaching in the aliquippa School System at the time of great racial tumult. I dont know if you told me this but i stumbled upon the story were dr. Steals wrote a letter for the paper because he was accused wrongly of starting some raced tumult and fighting in aliquippa for taking some students to a movie called also the anger. He wasnt the person responsible but he defended himself there. Meanwhile a certain time when attention was at its height dr. Steals and his brother who worked in janelle and studied music under great spare in philadelphia sat down and add a realtime attention would write this beautiful song. Could it be im falling in love, which is about well she is still his wife. Happy anniversary. Congratulations. You should be a peer. [applause] but that to me was something about aliquippa. A former basketball player and you know his family story coming from down south is a tough one. Produced great athletes and i know that many towns had labor troubles and problems with management and certainly problems after the mill shut down but to me its the representative of the extreme of what has hit western pennsylvania and i would argue the force that is were cut loose in western pennsylvania in the mid80s when an entire vital working class was cut out of having the foot hole in the American Dream and we are dealing with the oh forces still that were never really properly addressed, and so i think this town and what has happened to it is important. So when i say representative in the extreme, i mean, there were Labor Management tensions elsewhere but had a police state runin in little siberia and a part of them was your family comes over. Lets say you come from ukraine and poland and you want to gather in the community because they forced that because that forced people to be divided a. As a tactic of division obviously the African Americans who came up from the south got the worst jobs and the lower salaries and less chance of advancement. They would pay or intimidate black workers to start fights with whites and then allow to go to jail and let the black worker go free and unsighting more resentiment and more resentiment. Famously or infamously, harry and his police force there kidnapped a guy for passing out union cards and had him sent to an insane asylum. Denounced jane ellen. And the wagner act, the Foundation Stone of Legal Foundation of unionism in america and certified before the supreme court, the test case involved including one of the men, one was a black men, so even then, there was a great representation by blacks. And then the crack epidemic, drugs had been a problem all over america and it hit like a typhoon and you had situations where, for example, tonys nephew was running the biggest crack house in town. His the crack was broken finally by a former quarterback who was attach today dea and state policemen and it is things happen in big and broad extreme strokes for whatever reason and i have to say that remains a mystery to me. At the very least we wanted to say how and what happened but i dont know if ill be able to fully explain why it produces so many great Football Players even more than the norm in western pennsylvania, why so many dramatic things that forced cultural forces that have worked their way in a negative sense through the rest of the culture blossom, today the mayor walker, hes the first africanamerican mayor in history and again football is the is the not just a place of Community Togetherness and expression, but he just its just a central narrative thread thats unavoidable and it did you want just belong at the pit or in the football field, walkers sister deidre was killed by Football Player and because of that he was motivated to finally run for office and take office. Its been an extraordinary combination of elements that have made aliquippa. Yeah, aliquippa is good, we are just as good. And im not denying any of that. But i did but there are two things that work when i decided to focus on aliquippa. There were so many names. There are a lot of names that people dont know and i include a lot of names and every once in a while its relieving to the reader and to understand their story because theyve seen them on tv and they recognize. That was helpful. There was something about the up town. It was a place where america happened over and over again and continues to do so. I like i said, it was a place of a place that had great racial trouble in the early 70s starting in the early 60s when there was black cheerleaders in the school for football and basketball and so on but it really hit a head and was not unique in the in the county or even in the nation at large but it really got pretty nasty. I want to but i want to take you back to a couple of things because i cant i cant tell you how much youre dealing with the writer here. Not very good at speaking and not its not my training so im just going read a little bit about a great man named jenoparoli who im going to read this. Its all going to come full circle. Youll finally say this guy is making weird sense. Actually, hold on. Im not going to go to jeno paroli yet. Its good to have a famous name to deal with a little bit, so let me so just Everybody Knows mike, i dont need to make an introduction. He was a little mike and his dad was big mike at the time. But little mike had this and he knew rules, he was constantly breaking the rules anyway seeking out mischief and taking beatings in return. He went to titusville university and he beaned a buddy over the eye. Big mike found out. The belt came out. That was garbage cans, kids glasses open, big mike always found out. Nearly burned the woods down. My dad smoke lucky so i stole a pack and with a couple of my buddies, we were sitting in there and smoke strikes when you were 7 years old and so there goes the woods and there go the woods. That goes into the weeds. The wind is blowing. Firemen came. My dad is sitting there having dinner. What happened to the woods. [laughter] i didnt know that was funny. My mother said you will have to ask your son. That was it. Boy, i got my ass whooped. That was the worst one i ever got. I dont think ive smoked a cigarette sense. Do i smoke cigars. The safest place for such a soul, wasnt meeting a bit of defined parameters is sports. It was a perfect fit. Little mike played with a bottomless furry. They stole a ball autograph by pirates trainer, smacked one in his first and during a pony game after a few walks mike stalked out and made him switch positions and when the shortstop made an error he took the kids place too. Another time playing legion ball, ashton dropped a gamewinning fly ball and little mike chased his brother out of the stadium, ran him down and thrashed him before they got home. I tell you, it was bad, i never felt like i was doing anything wrong. Never, ever. Thats changed, right . I knew others didnt feel the way i felt but i had tunnel vision. I dont know where you get that exert tiff feeling, i dont know where it came from but growing up it started with marbles and i hate today lose at whatever it was. You know why, i expected to win. I didnt ever expect to lose, never. Thats why losing was so hard. That was a new attitude for a town that by the time he entered high school in 53 he had football gloary. The teams would regularly compete for titles. Ashmans style the grid iron call for fist in the face toughness resinated with no single ever go could and winning made it irresistible. Making the High School Team became a badge of honor. Why . That was part of what you were meant to be said jonathan who played a year behind, why would a guy my size, why would a guy my size be a starting division 3 football. Im not that good. I would not come home until i told my father i made first team. Whatever it took, senior year in high school, senior year in college. Thats what had to be done and many of me out there. You didnt dare embarrass your family, your uncle, your friends or your navy base and they didnt care if you got your ass kicked, johnny got his ass kicked. Thats what it took. You still hear that all of the time. The kid is tough, tough player. Thats the difference and some of the other schools and its a big difference. The reason i read that to you is because i feel like didka really did set the tone. He was inventive in many ways by ashton and that sort of manic lagger larger than life theory, youve never met a boring player, boring star player and theyre fascinating to talk to, interesting, larger than life, just a bit crazy. I want to read you one other thing about hope well. This is about jeno paroli. Future oppose master, historian, forever devoted partisan of aliquippa move today hopewell. Paroli had been married and now hes making enough to leave the and ever more cramp, come through island and you could feel daily heave until they day they carve you out in a box. Raccoon and a man could carve out space there and quiet alast. Hadnt they had enough excitement. Moving was the most tangible reward for the most promise people had fought more in world war 24 2 and better life. You could count and raised kids in peace. At least nine other veterans moved to geno street was a threebedroom bungalo and many children would graduate the same year. All the men drove coming in from hopewell or even as far and the father of future kentucky basketball computer commuted as a young man to work in the furnace, he lasted a year, driving later on route 51 point t