The day Todd Bowles was almost attacked while coming home from football practice, he was 8, maybe 9.

The boys were older and bigger, he said, and they had chains. When they jumped in front of Bowles in Elizabeth, N.J., his friends scattered, but he could not. Left to fend for himself, Bowles escaped when someone yelled at the boys to stop, and the police escorted him home.

No one in his family wanted him to go play again the next day, but he did anyway. He left the apartment carrying a baseball bat, just in case, and took the same route to the field and the same route back.

More than a decade later, when Bowles was a student at Temple, he was accosted again. Walking with his girlfriend in West Philadelphia, Bowles was approached by a man, he said, eager to pick a fight. So Bowles obliged.

Upon returning to his dormitory that night, Bowles told his friends what had happened. At the end of the story, he laughed.