Botti Lives Out His Dream in Beyond the Tether

Botti, in fact, is a husband, father, grandfather, former Army Honor Guard, minor league baseball player and owner of an investment casting manufacturing company, one that has specifically served the aerospace industry as a sub-contractor.

At this point, though, he might be best known as a lifelong storyteller.

That's because at the age of 70, Botti received a gift that would turn his life in another direction.

That gift was a computer, but as commonplace as computers are nowadays, for Botti, it was much more.

Instead, it was a place for him to let his creative juices flow.

Sitting in front of a monitor and laying his hands on what was once an unfamiliar keyboard, Botti quickly found inspiration with hopes of writing a memoriam tribute to his beloved Siberian Husky, Tasha.

What came out of a lifelong friendship would be a 456-page exploration of the relationship between man and dog. That offering earned Botti his first book, Beyond the Tether, since its debut in April 2007.

In it, Botti looks back at his days playing minor league baseball and provides insight into the controversial human-canine bond as well as the inspiration he gained from conducting book research.

Botti's ever-shifting life first began in his hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y., where he finished school and enlisted in the Army before becoming an Honor Guard of the Third Infantry Regiment at Fort Meyers, Va.

That was until an honorary discharge lifted him from his military duties, allowing him to move on to the next phase of his life by signing on to play minor league baseball for three seasons.

Of course, Botti wasn't ready to make baseball his final career path, leaving the diamond after his third year for the factories as a sales engineer in the metals industry.

Eventually, Botti would become a company partner, until climbing the corporate ladder and later serving as the president of his own investment casting manufacturing company.

Now he's captivated audiences with a story about a man and a dog and baseball and life, with a second novel to possibly come, one that mixes mystery with human conflict and strays far away from the premise of Beyond the Tether.

But Botti couldn't really ask for anything better than that.

Now retired and married as the father of three children and six grandchildren in the greater Cleveland area, he's just living out a lifelong dream to write.

After all, who ever said to stop dreaming?