ANDERSON — Sports Illustrated released a new book this year that will tell an updated story about local legend James “Radio” Kennedy.

The book, “Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories,” was written by Gary Smith, who wrote an article about Kennedy in Sports Illustrated magazine in 1996.

Smith, a senior writer for SI, said that he included Kennedy’s story in the book because he felt many people had not read the story in the magazine. He said that his experience following Kennedy around was filled with laughter and he even invited Kennedy over his house a few times.

“It was great to see the effect he had on all of the kids at the school,” Smith said on Monday. “Everybody seemed to respond to him.”

The legend of Kennedy, now 61, first began when he arrived at a T.L. Hanna High School junior varsity football practice in 1964. The 18-year-old, who had special needs, could not read, write or speak but he always carried a transistor radio and loved football.

Harold Jones, who was an assistant junior varsity football coach, befriended him along with junior varsity coach Dennis Patterson. Kennedy helped out with the team at practice at during homes games.

“We took care of him and made sure he didn’t get into trouble,” Jones said. “Then he started being accepted by the students and then the community.”

Kennedy started going to the school in the 1970 to help the football coaches in the gym, write notes to teachers and sit in on classes. He is still an 11th grader at the school to this day. A life-sized bronze statue of him was recently moved from a local art center to the school’s football stadium.

In “Going Deep,” Smith starts his story this way: “We begin way over there, out on the margin. We begin with a dirty, disheveled 18-year-old boy roaring down a hill on a grocery cart, screaming like a banshee, holding a transistor radio to his ear.

“No one ever plays with him, for he can barely speak and never understands the rules. He can’t read or write a word.

“… All of which might explain why his grocery cart keeps taking him to a football field at McCants Junior High School in Anderson, S.C. It’s autumn 1964. … The boy on the margin is commanding his own team, one that only he can see, through a series of calisthenics and drills, doing his best to mimic the coaches’ body language, signals and commands.

“… Radio turned 50 two months ago. … He bounded through the corridors of T.L. Hanna High collecting his birthday gifts, waving and slapping fives and hugging kids and wiggling his rear end as the students chanted, ‘Go, Radio, you got it!’”

“ ‘He is the best-known figure in high school football in Upstate South Carolina,’ ” said former Hanna coach Jim Fraser in the book.

Columbia Pictures released the movie “Radio” based on Kennedy’s story in 2003; it starred actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

Sheila Hilton, principal of T.L. Hanna, said she is a 1975 graduate of the school and she remembers seeing Kennedy when she was a student. She said that his involvement in the football program helped him learn to be more communicative.

Hilton said that she still receives correspondence from people all across the world who have been touched by Kennedy’s story after seeing the movie “Radio.” She said he is the most famous person who was every associated with the high school and he is still making an impact.

“Decades later he allows us to model for our students what love and caring can be for somebody,” Hilton said. “I don’t know that they could have any better lesson.”

The story, “Someone to Lean On,” is one of 20 stories in the book, which is published by Sports Illustrated Books.