Excerpted fromOne and the Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I’ve Learned About Everyone’s Struggle to Be Singular, by Abigail Pogrebin. Copyright © 2009 by Abigail Pogrebin. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Tiki Barber, retired running back for the New York Giants, knows that he wouldn’t be so famous if he weren’t an identical twin whose brother, Ronde, is a star cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

[#image: /photos/54cc0313ba5e6f1344ae2f23]“Without even trying, people will take an extra look,” says Tiki, sitting in his office at NBC News, where he is now a correspondent for the Today show. Dapperly dressed in a striped pink-and-white shirt with cuff links, Barber is syrup-voiced and affable. “No twins have been as successful in professional football as we have. In sports, or any kind of endeavor, part of the reason you do it is for recognition; we got that notice by default, just because there’s two of us.” I tell him his and Ronde’s looks don’t hurt (they were People magazine’s “Sexiest Athletes” in 2001, and Tiki made the International Best-Dressed List in 2001, in 2007, and again this year).

“Yeah,” he says, smiling that brilliant Barber smile. “We take care of ourselves. We got a good education, we don’t get in trouble, and for many years we were both at the peak of our respective careers.” When I meet Tiki’s brother, Ronde, a month later in Florida, he’s in his 12th year with Tampa Bay. He saunters up to the family restaurant he’s recommended, dressed casually in jeans, a long-sleeved multicolored T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. Both brothers are suave, obviously strong, and short for professional athletes—five 10. Both also appear guarded—a remnant, perhaps, of extreme childhood shyness, which they independently describe as paralyzing.

“We were very shy, to the point where, if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t look at you, much less talk to you.” Tiki smiles. “So Ronde was my comfort, you know? We were always right next to each other because it made us feel comfortable. My mom used to say that we had this ‘twinspeak.’ All it really was, was mumbling and talking very low and intimating certain things; he understood what I was saying, because we had the same thoughts.”

“We wouldn’t talk to anybody,” Ronde confirms. Which is not to suggest they’re bashful today. “There’s one thing I know about myself and Tiki: we have a very distinctive charm about us,” says Ronde. “I don’t pretend that’s not the case. I feel like I can charm anybody. I’ve said more than once, ‘If I didn’t have a successful twin as a running back for the New York Giants, how many people would really know about me?’ There is not a city in America that I can go in and people not think that I’m Tiki.”

Tiki doesn’t correct strangers when they call him Ronde. “Unless people ask if they’re mistaken, I let them think they got it right. They’ll call out, ‘Hey, Ronde, what’s up?’ I say, ‘Good!’ Unless it’s someone who I know knows Ronde. Then I’ll correct them. Otherwise, if they have no clue, I won’t.”

I ask Tiki if, in the annals of football history, he or Ronde will be remembered as the bigger star. He pauses. “This is what Ronde likes to say, and it’s very true: ‘Tiki is the less talented, more popular twin.’ As far as pure accomplishments, far and away, he’s better than me. He’s always been a better athlete than me. But I was always faster, stronger, and I played the glory position. So people knew who I was, simply because I was a running back. I did an interview with Ronde for Football Night in America three weeks ago, and the last question I asked him was ‘Are you where you are because of me?’ And he basically replied, ‘If I wasn’t your brother, I’d still have been a great cornerback, but I wouldn’t have gotten any recognition. Because there are a ton of great cornerbacks that nobody knows.’ So I say to him, ‘You owe it all to me!’”

Ronde says, “I’m more diverse athletically. Tiki could never run hurdles; he’s not coordinated enough. That sounds funny to say about a world-class athlete, but things are very specific with him, especially in his athletic ability. He couldn’t play basketball.”

And Ronde can?

“No, I can’t either.” He laughs. “But he really couldn’t. I’d say I’m more agile. Put it that way.”

What about strength?

“He was always stronger, always faster. He got all the good genes, man.”

The Barbers’ story is a classic sports fable: hardscrabble youth, a dad who walked out, a resilient mom who raised the boys alone, working three jobs and shuttling them to football practice and wrestling matches. Both boys were obedient, studious, and smart—Tiki made valedictorian—and both showed incredible athletic talent, although their height didn’t bode well for professional sports. Their mother, Geraldine Barber, recalls how the junior-high athletic director phoned to suggest gently that she was setting her sons up for disappointment. “She said, ‘I just want you to think twice about letting your boys play football; you know, they’re kind of small.… ’ For years after that, every time I saw her, she’d say, ‘I know, I know! I was wrong!’”

Geraldine, a compact, sprightly breast-cancer survivor who lives in Virginia, insists that her twins were tenacious and unbowed. “I’ve always known how determined they were from the day they were born. They fought for every breath they took.” Her sons were born five weeks premature—Ronde seven minutes ahead of Tiki—and they spent their first two weeks of life in incubators. “I’d look down at them and Ronde would be sleeping peacefully, while Tiki would be screaming his head off. It was as if Tiki was yelling, ‘I don’t like this; I want to go!’ and Ronde was like, ‘Chill; we’ll get out when we get out.’ And they’ve always kind of been that way.” Their names were chosen accordingly: Jamael Oronde (Ronde) means “firstborn son,” and Atiim Kiambu (Tiki) translates as “fiery-tempered king.”

Geraldine says when she finally took the boys home from the hospital, she’d put them on opposite ends of the crib at bedtime. “When they were old enough, they started scooting and squirming toward each other until they were touching. They just gravitated to each other.”

I don’t use the words “soul mates” anywhere else in this book, but it’s required here; despite the geographic distance, there is no daylight between the Barbers. They admire, appreciate, and need each other; they constantly extol each other’s gifts and characters; and they never argue—in fact, Ronde looks surprised when I tell him that my sister and I sometimes do. “Even now?” he asks, incredulous. “Come on.”

Sitting with each Barber, it occurred to me, They’re the paradigm. They actually have what so many mythologize about twins: an unqualified closeness they both view as primal and untouchable, careers they believe were honed in the crucible of their twinship because they egged each other on, and, at least from an outsider’s perspective, thriving, separate adult family lives. I find myself envying the Barbers as I listen to them, then reminding myself I have what they have, then immediately wondering if I really do.

During the 11 years when both Barbers were playing, they never missed each other’s games—even if that meant watching later on tape—and they spoke on the phone immediately after coming off the field. Today they talk or text daily, but see each other rarely, thanks to separate cities, family commitments (Ronde has two girls, Tiki two boys), and constant work travel. Occasionally they’ll reunite for a charity event or a book promotion. They’ve conceived five children’s books based on their lives (they’re not the actual authors), targeted to boys who might otherwise not be readers.

Though they’re now used to living apart, it was the N.F.L. draft that separated them for the first time. “We spent every waking minute together till then,” says Tiki. The day of the draft in April 1997, Tiki got the first phone call: he was the sixth pick in the second round. Ronde had to wait three more hours to learn his fate: he was the sixth pick in the third round. Geraldine laughs. “A few minutes later, one of Ronde’s phones rang; he answered it, he was listening, and then he kind of sat back and I saw him grin that incredible grin he has when you know he’s up to something—he kind of relaxes. Finally he hung up and said, ‘Well, I’m going to Florida. I’m a Buccaneer.’”

Tiki was paid more than Ronde. He says his Giants signing bonus was $800,000 and tells me Ronde’s was $300,000 to $400,000. In 2001, Tiki signed a six-year, $25.5 million deal and Ronde a six-year, $18.5 million deal with the Buccaneers, with a $2.5 million guarantee. Ronde says he’s never measured incomes. “Before Tiki got married, it was almost like, What he’s got, I got. We shared everything forever. So if it had turned out that I was out of the league after just 2 years and he played for 10, he would have taken care of me. Or vice versa. I just know that to be a fact.”

The thrill of that memorable draft night was tempered by the realization that the brothers would soon be more than a thousand miles apart. “There was anxiety,” Tiki admits. “First, I worried, How am I going to survive in New York City? I’m a country boy. Two: How am I, for the first time in my life, going to be by myself?”

“It was a tough moment,” Ronde affirms. “I remember when he finally left to drive to New York: I was still in Charlottesville because our training camp wasn’t starting for another week. He got in the car, turned down I-29 at Charlottesville, and was gone.” He pauses. “But I wasn’t emotional.”

Was he trying not to be?

“Probably. But there was nothing that we could do about it. I didn’t get drafted by the Giants; he didn’t get drafted by the Bucs.… At some point—you understand this as a twin—you’ve got to stand on your own.… I was finally forced into it and I had to go make my name for myself. And that’s kind of rewarding.”

Tiki tells me why one day he was finished with football. “This wasn’t about ‘I hate my coach,’ or this or that; this was about quality of life. The year before I retired, when my wife asked me to play with my kids, and I didn’t want to, nor could I, I knew it was time to do something else.… I said, ‘If I’m 52, like Earl Campbell in a wheelchair, who’s going to be cheering for me then?’”

“He didn’t talk about quitting all the time,” Ronde recalls, “but you could just feel it. Same way as when you play Ms. PacMan a thousand times and you’ve beaten it a thousand times and you’re like, All right, either Ms. PacMan 2 is coming out or I’m going to put in Galactica. That’s what it felt like. Not that he was bored by what he was doing, because our sport’s unique: it’s exciting when you play. But I think he was just bored with the routine of that part of his life and he was ready. He knew it wasn’t going to last forever, so he made steps to move on. Whereas I’m more along the lines of ‘It will end someday, and when it does, I’ll decide what to do then.’ Eventually your body just can’t do it anymore and then you have to do something else.”

I ask Ronde if Tiki drove him in a competitive way or a motivational one. “More in a motivational way. I was just excited to see him be successful.… It made it worth doing, above anything else. Even if the game stank and our team stank, it was ‘Hey, we may have lost today, but I’m going to see how Tiki did.’ And that element completely disappeared last year, and in my mind, it was all on me. I had to find a way to adapt to the new structure of it.”

“There is no doubt in my mind,” says Tiki, “that we are both successful because we refused to let the other one down. It was partly ‘I have to keep up with him; he has to keep up with me.’ But it was also ‘Don’t dare be a failure, because then you drag me down.’ So we competed against each other’s successes. And we were always fortunate—actually, it may have been intentional, even subconsciously—that we never did the same thing, but we always had success. It was kind of like, If you’re going to win, I’m going to win. If you’re going to be good, I’ve got to be good.”

I wonder where the wives fit into this duet. Tiki’s striking wife, Ginny, a former publicist who comes from Korean and Vietnamese lineage, has known the Barber twins since college, when she started dating Tiki. (They married in 1999.) Ronde’s equally attractive wife, Claudia, who now works with Diabetic Charitable Services, is of Filipino descent and married Ronde in 2001. All three Barbers I spoke to tiptoe around the question of how the wives handle the twinship. “Let me answer it this way,” says Geraldine. “Do they understand it? I’d say, ‘Not totally.’ Do they respect it? Definitely.”

“When we’re all together, it’s a great foursome,” Ronde says. “But at the end of the day, we all know who’s making the decisions. It will come down to what Tiki and I want to do, because that’s the Relationship. So you figure out the psychodynamics of that … “

Tiki echoes him: “I think our bond is the strongest it’s ever been and the strongest bond that there possibly is. Greater than marriage. I’m closer to Ronde, without a doubt. And that will never change.” I tell each Barber that some twins’ relationships have struck me as a kind of love story and I wonder if they find that’s a fitting analogy. Ronde nods. “We see beyond who we pretend to be. I know who he really is, he knows who I really am, and if you were writing a love story, that’s what it would be. All those romantic ideals—‘conquers all,’ ‘stands the test of time’—yes. That’s certainly the case with us.” Tiki agrees that twinship is “a perfect intimacy.”

“It starts from the zygote splitting and one destined person becoming two,” he continues. “And while we go our separate ways in life and our experiences vary, at the end of the day, we’re still one.”