I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Anyone alive today who understands the context of life pre cell phones and widespread internet use can probably relate.
The waters of life ran quieter, calmer, and steadier.
That is…until they were disrupted by a thousand screaming fans in a packed high school gymnasium.
Bring One Home is a wonderful example of what memoir can be. It’s a reflective look back at a simpler time in America, while reminding us that the cultural threads binding us together still stretch across generations.
They say one of the highest accolades of good non fiction is that it reads like fiction. Thomas Pelissero presents us with a masterful example of just that. Complete with a bibliography that would make many popular historians blush, Pelissero weaves the craft of story telling into the threads of his extensive research and interviews. As I read Bring One Home, I found myself regularly saying, I wish more memoirs were written like this!
Pelissero takes us through life in Bessemer, Michigan during the post World War II years. Running parallel to the common life experiences of the baby boomer generation in small town America, is the epic journey of the local high school basketball team, the Bessemer Speedboys. We soon discover that the Speedboys’ journey is epic not for wins, but for losses. The once–top-tier program was trapped in a losing streak rarely seen in high school sports.
And therein lies the deeper lessons from Bring One Home. Everyone in sports talks up adversity. Here, we have a true tale of adversity, profound challenges, and failure. Throughout the book we see how the Speedboys, their school, their community, and families respond to failure. You see the grit and determination among the boys on the team, but the one thing that stands out to me is the perseverance. One common trait of people who see themselves onto the other side of failure is that they refuse to give up. They keep showing up. They don’t let the fear of failure win.
Bring One Home revisits a simpler era and reminds us that sports are never just about winning — they are about shaping the hearts and habits of the next generation.
Tomorrow, my dad releases his book “Bring One Home” — a true story centered around the Bessemer Speedboys high school basketball team’s epic losing streak in the 1960s. He’s very proud of it and I’m proud of him. You can read more and order here:https://t.co/BIA63dBWXa pic.twitter.com/t6Ixamrzua
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) October 31, 2025
