Jerry Rice Rich Pilling/MLB Photos via Getty Images It comes with age: Rice needed some time to relax on a recliner during the 2007 All-Star Legends and Celebrity softball game in San Francisco.

At 6’ 6” and 280 pounds, Jerry Lawson -- a Black man -- was extremely far from the stereotypical image of an engineer and inventor in 1970s America, or even today. But then, nothing about ...