This book is about my father and his peers who grew up poor in rural North Carolina from the early to the late 1900s. The backdrop of these stories is the Carolina Textile Baseball League where James M. Whittington, Sr played from 1926 to 1954 and then further umpired, coached, and mentored many individual ball-players for another 40 years. He became a local legend in North and South Carolina, specifically the Piedmont Region. James Whittington circumstances molded him and his friends as rough men. He lived his life as a tough man but eventually found God and salvation later in life.