WEST SIDE STORY HARDSCRABBLE CHICAGO HOME IS WHERE AGUIRRE’S HEART IS
https://www.mitchalbom.com/west-side-storyhardscrabble-chicago-home-is-where-aguirres-heart-is/ BY MITCH ALBOM | NOV 21, 2008 | DETROIT FREE PRESS | 0 COMMENTS CHICAGO — Pressure is a funny word. There is the pressure a sports team feels when it needs to win a playoff game, like the pressure the Pistons are feeling, celebrated, famous pressure that inspires big stories on the 11 o’clock news. And then there is another kind of pressure . More subtle. More powerful. It affects athletes every day, but it never makes the news, never makes headlines. You might not know about it at all unless you go to see it, unless you drive down the streets where Mark Aguirre is driving now, past the boarded-up houses and the old churches and the weeds that poke up wild amid the asphalt. Home. “ Right there is the first place I became aware of Isiah as a basketball player ,” Aguirre says, pointing out the car window at a cream-colored recreation building. “ We played in the ‘Bitty’ league together. We w