CORAOPOLIS, PA — It was the summer of 1968, and Ed Stack, 13 years old at the time, hated working for his dad, Richard Stack, the founder of Dick's Sporting Goods. Back then, the business was just a single bait and tackle shop in Binghamton, New York. And during that miserable summer, as he explains in his new book, Ed couldn't have predicted that he would go on to scale his father's business, much against his father's will, to a chain of more than 700 stores. Ed would go on to take over the company from his dad in 1984, when he was then 29 years old. He would take the company public in 2002. And — again something Ed and his father both couldn't have ever predicted — Ed would spark a national debate when he took a bold stance on assault-style firearms in February of 2018, following a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Shortly after that shooting, Dick's Sporting Goods pulled high-capacity magazines from stores and halted the sale of firearms to anyone under 21 years old. Then, eight months later, as a test, the company pulled all guns from 10 stores. That went over so well, Stack said, that for roughly the past two months it's had guns removed from another 125 stores. Now, the entire hunting category, including Dick's Sporting Goods' Field & Stream business, is under "strategic review."

If we had a chance to it all over again, we wouldn't change a thing. Meeting the families in Parkland ... the one thing I promised them when I left was we would keep the conversation going. Ed Stack Dick's Sporting Goods CEO

Stack's tumultuous upbringing including plenty of bickering with his father, the highs and lows of scaling the business, and his background as an athlete were enough to convince the CEO to write "It's How We Play The Game: Build a Business. Take a Stand. Make a Difference," which is set to hit shelves on Oct. 8. "I have thought about writing a book for a while," Stack said in an interview from Dick's Sporting Goods' headquarters, right outside of Pittsburgh, earlier this month. "A little more than a year ago, I [finally] said, 'I am just going to do this.'" The CEO, now 64, listed three primary reasons for wanting to share his thoughts with the world. One is, he wanted to help entrepreneurs, Stack explained, "to be able to understand if you do this, your business is not always going to go in a straight line. There will be ups and downs. Good days and bad days. If you really believe in it, you've got to stick with it." He cites one example detailed in his book where, in 1996, Dick's Sporting Goods was out of cash. The situation was so dire, there were talks the company could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Until GE Capital swooped in at the 11th hour and loaned Stack enough to keep the business up and running. "The day we met with GE Capital ranks among our best days, in retrospect," Stack writes in his book. Second, Stack explained he wanted to use the book to highlight what's going on in youth sports nationwide, as Dick's Sporting Goods has its own program called "Sports Matter," where it's pledged millions of dollars toward helping more kids participate in sports. More and more public schools' after-school sports programs are evaporating as funding dries up, the CEO said. "Kids need a place to go. Kids need to find their self esteem. ... A number of kids won't find [self esteem] in the classroom. They find their self esteem because they can shoot a basketball or sing in the school play." Lastly, and perhaps what really pushed Stack to finish his book, is the recent stance the CEO has taken on gun control, following a wave of deadly shootings in the U.S. "If we had a chance to it all over again, we wouldn't change a thing," he said. "Meeting the families in Parkland ... the one thing I promised them when I left was we would keep the conversation going." Stepping back, Stack's new book also details how the sporting goods business has managed to stay afloat all these years, as Sports Authority and others have gone out of business, and as Amazon's ascent hasn't slowed. Stack uses the book to discuss how Dick's Sporting Goods has maintained key brand partnerships, like with Nike and Under Armour, how it's bucked the trend of store closures and grown out key categories, like baseball.

'I think we will eventually get there'