Hall of Fame baseball player Reggie Jackson was raised by a single father. In his 1984 autobiography, Jackson describes his dad:
[As a kid] I thought I was special because I was my dad’s son. To this day, my dad is almost a mythical figure to me…you’re lucky if you’ve got a father who always seemed tougher and quicker on his feet than you could ever be. Or would have to be.
“You always have to show initiative, Reggie,” he’d tell me. “You’ve got to have ambition. Or you won’t amount to a hill of beans.”
To this day I’m an early riser. That comes from dad always saying, “Off and on,” meaning “Off your ass and on deck.” He didn’t like us lying around; we had to be productive.