Larry Miller: You know this guy?

Miller, whose dealerships sell 60,000 cars a year now, tells the tithing story for a reason, of course. "That was the beginning, absolutely," says Miller. "When I had that meeting (with his boss), it forced me out of a situation where I thought I would be indefinitely. There were forces at work that sent me back to Utah."

A few years later, Miller had a dream that he says was remarkable in its clarity. He was in a high-ceiling room with open skylights, and there was a knock at the door. He took a white package wrapped with white ribbon that lay on a table, and gave it to someone at the door. Moments later, there was another knock. This time there were more white packages on the table. He took them to the person at the door. The scene repeated itself over and over, and each time he gave away a box he discovered it had been replaced by many more boxes on the table until eventually they filled the entire room. "Where are these coming from?" he asked Gail. "The only thing I can figure is they're coming through the skylights."

Finished with this story, Miller lets it settle on his listener before concluding, "I have been so fortunate in my life, not just in material ways. So much so that I wonder why me?"

The thrill of the hunt

How could one man drive himself so hard for so long at the expense of everything else? Think of it: 14-hour days, six days a week, for nearly 20 years. "That's a good question, but I don't know the answer," he says. "I can only offer clues."

Here's one: When Miller was a boy, he played marbles. Not playground marbles, but serious marbles — marble tournaments. To prepare himself for competition, he hiked up Capitol Hill to the police rifle range and gathered up large, brass shell casings. Hundreds of them. He arranged the shells upright in 10 rows the width of his room, the farthest row being some 30 feet away, and shot them with marbles until he had knocked down all of them. It took accuracy and power to knock shells down from that distance, especially since the marble had to go over or through other shells to get to the back rows. Every day for three years he fired marbles at the shells. He won the school marble championship and advanced as far as the finals of the city championship.

It was the same for softball. Those daily practices allowed him to become an adult-level pitcher at 16. He pitched in his first world tournament at 24. He played at the highest levels of softball for 18 years before retiring in 1985. By then he had pitched in 1,081 games and collected 819 victories.

"I can't define why I'm like that," says Miller. "It seems to me some of the characteristics are inherent. I always had them. I guess it's the thrill of success. The thrill of the hunt."