Cubbies. Blackhawks. Bears. Oh, my. The only thing missing in Dino's Chicago Express is the music of Styx and Chicago on a continuous loop.

Don't ask owner Dino Dakuras to take down the framed Sammy Sosa posters. Steroids might have put an asterisk on pro baseball, but that's not wiping the former Cubs slugger off the wall of his restaurants.

Dino has been a Wildcat, a Pacer and a Panther, but the surgeries during his collegiate baseball career kept him from becoming a Cub.

Baseball has come full circle for the Chicago native, who has lived in Augusta since 1989: He now serves his gyros at Lake Olmstead Stadium during Augusta GreenJackets games.

In his Martinez and Evans restaurants, Greek fare is served along with Chicago-style hot dogs, a combination drawn from his heritage.

There's no taking his heart out of Chicago.

"People like to bust my chops that I've been in Georgia too long and I'm a Southerner. I'm still Greek, though I don't live in Greece," Dino said.

The sports posters on the wall of his restaurants are from his own bedroom. The Illinois license plates hanging behind the checkout counter are from the vehicles of friends and family still in the Windy City. The hockey sticks are from his father, Bill, who played junior hockey in the Blackhawks organization "back in the day."

His self-named eateries have such a following that he posted his television commercials on YouTube.

"It has its regulars; they won't go anywhere else," Dino said, sitting in his Furys Ferry location. "They won't even go to my Evans store."

The quick-serve Greek cuisine is what sets him apart from other restaurants that have the ethnic food.

He already has reached first base with the idea of turning his brand of Greek-Chicago food into a franchise. It won't be called "Dino's" -- that trademark has been taken by a Minnesota restaurateur -- so he's got Papa-N-Son's on deck with an eye toward North Augusta, Savannah and Statesboro, Ga.

The franchises will come with more than his grandmother's recipe for salad dressing -- they will come with his philosophy: charity nights and closed on Sunday to spend time with family and God.

Spartan son

Constandino Dakuras is an only child, born in Elgin, Ill., what is now a western suburb of metro Chicago. He's also a '76er, born to Billy and Sophia Dakuras in November of the nation's bicentennial.

"As Scorpio as they get. Analytical. Controlling," he said.

His wife of three months, Debra, said: "He does have a temper on him, but I wouldn't say he's controlling."

Billy said it wasn't intentional that they had only one child; it happened that way because of his travels for Club Car.

Billy was born in America of Greek parents. Sopia was born in Greece, in the city of Sparta, and then was taken to Canada by her father before the family emigrated to America.

"Imagine a woman in the Spartan army, and that's my mom," Dino said. Before coming to Augusta, she was the vice president of Bonded Corp. in Chicago, working her way from secretary to the executive position.

"When you talk about business and being a warrior, I was blessed with two parents with awesome sense," Dino said.

Billy began his career with E-Z-GO and then became a technical rep for Club Car, rising through its ranks until his sales position moved the family to Augusta in 1988.

Dino was a happy-go-lucky, outgoing kid, Billy said: "He's always had a positive effect on people around him. He was always a leader as a kid. People have always followed him around."

Dino picked up a love of sports from his father, who also competed in hockey and wrestling as a youngster. Billy remembers asking 14-year-old Dino how serious he was about baseball, whether he wanted to try for the pro ranks.

"I told him, if you want to pursue it, you're going to have to work three times harder than anyone else," Billy said.

Dino took the advice and began a regimen of hitting 300 to 500 baseballs a day and bouncing a ball off a wall for two hours a day to practice being a first baseman.

"Once he set his mind to something, he was on it to be the best at what he was going to be -- even from that age," Billy said.

After high school baseball as a Lakeside Panther, Dino went to the University of South Carolina Aiken. After two years of college ball, the coaches fell out of his favor and he stopped.

"I couldn't stand certain things. I felt the coaches didn't have our best interests in mind," Dino explained. "It is the one thing in my life that I quit at."

He also switched majors, from accounting to marketing.

"The only C that I got in college was in Accounting 4. I do not like this. I switched majors the day I took the final test for Accounting 4.

"Marketing was a field where I could spread my wings."

Dino said his father noticed that he wasn't a happy camper and said he also wasn't happy with what he saw in his son.

"After two weeks of being mad at him, I called him up a said, 'Man, you're right,' " Dino said.

He decided to get back into baseball, trying out at 15 schools, but none of them wanted him.

His last gamble was a baseball camp in Florida and a friendship with the guy running it that allowed him to participate -- and the chance to perform in front of college scouts at the end.

"It all goes back to the relationships you make, the impact that they have on you," Dino said.

He got his second chance from Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Fla., which was trying to rebuild its program. They offered him a baseball scholarship -- he was also able to get an academic scholarship -- and he became a B-C Wildcat.

Dino hit .410 in his senior year there, breaking him into the top 50 players in the country. He set some other records at B-C, though he doesn't remember what they are.

"It is in a scrapbook somewhere," he said.

Despite the prowess on the diamond, even playing in the College World Series, there was no professional baseball career waiting for him when he graduated. Surgeries on his legs and shoulder ended that aspiration: "I ran like I had a piano on my back."

Instead, he sold copiers in Daytona for a year.

Express is born

Don't worry about how to properly say gyro, souvlaki and baklava: The menu has a pronunciation guide. Um, "g-eye-roh" isn't it and will get you some funny looks.

The idea for Chicago Express was born from an off-the-cuff remark by a cousin while Dino was sitting in the Greektown section of Chicago after ending a yearlong stint selling copy machines in Florida.

The trip eight years ago that was meant to clear his mind and let him figure out what he wanted to do with his life didn't take long. He stayed in Chicago long enough to research Chicago hot dogs and the food business -- he has cousins who are distributors.

Chicago-style hot dogs is in the family blood.

"My uncle had the hot dog stand," Billy said. "It was only three chairs. He did a tremendous business selling dogs and fries for a quarter."

Billy didn't return to the kitchen, as he did with his uncle in the 1960s -- he was satisfied being the silent partner to his son's enterprise.

Billy said he saw his son's baseball work ethic come to life for the restaurant.

"He's always open to ideas. He'll take good ideas, tweak them and make them better. He's never been close-minded," Billy said. He followed suggestions closely, even when they came from coaches and his sales boss.

Dino took the advice of a book called E-Myth Mastery that said he should set up his business as a franchise from the start, even if he never intended to actually franchise it.

"That way you don't live and die in your business," Dino said, thinking of other restaurant owners who would need to lock the door if they ever left the store.

The cash registers feed into a central database that tracks purchases, food costs and inventory levels. Even though he had one store at the time, Dino created a manual on the preparation of the food, including pictorials on how it should look before it goes out the door.

"I was fired up, ready to go. I thought it would be the easiest thing to do. To get financing and funding, I almost had to give my blood type to the bank," Dino said.

Dino's Chicago Express got running in a former Manhattan Bagel location next to Bi-Lo on Furys Ferry Road.

"This store was here when all that was here on this road for drive-through was KFC," Dino said. "Lost my butt the first year, broke even the second, made a little money the third. Fourth was the Furys Ferry road construction, and it killed me."

To use a baseball expression, he dug in. The road construction lasted longer than it should have.

"It's like getting hit by the pitch. You're not supposed to rub it, just go down to first base," he said. Rubbing the bean means weakness, so he took the downturn in business because of the construction and plugged along. Business recovered and a year ago he opened the Evans location.

Dino said it was typical restaurant performance. "We were killing it. After that 120-day period, the bottom dropped out, just like this store did."

The newness wore off and some other new restaurant captured the public attention.

"Just starting to see it come back there in Evans," he said.

When Georgia Bank & Trust opened a nearby bank branch, Dino went over with an offering of baklava to welcome the staff to the neighborhood.

"I opened his account for him," wife Debra said of their first meeting. Dino passed her his cell phone number when she finally came into the restaurant. A text message later and they began dating.

Dino will be a father in September. The pregnancy was one of the reasons they postponed a honeymoon to Greece.

Dino has been to Greece only once in his life, at age 10, to see his great-grandparents before they died. The family farm there has olive trees and figs. Taking a shower meant pouring water from the well, he recalled.

Dino isn't fluent in Greek, but he admits to knowing all the bad words.

"I know a little. I know when I'm in trouble," Dino said. "Mom and Grandma talk to me in Greek, but I respond in English."

Giving credit

The Wiener Wall is being rebuilt in Martinez. It was a collection of customers' pictures. They came down because the customers were tired of seeing the same old photos. In Evans, there's a digital Wiener Wall, where customers can load their photos into a digital frame with a flash drive.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, some of the restaurant's profits go toward charity.

"We've always had a philosophy that if you give back to the community, the community will take care of you," Billy said. "Dino has been awesome at giving to baseball and soccer teams, feed the kids at Christmas time."

Fundraiser publicity signs are in the store; he doesn't say no.

He did say no early on to being open on Sundays, much for the same reasons Truett Cathy keeps his Chick-fil-A stores closed that day.

"I'm sure we've lost a lot of money by doing that, but my people need a day off, I need a day off. Being a part of family, church and God is important," Dino said. "People don't give enough credit to God. There are people who are more interested in what they can get out of a community instead of what they can give."

What will go out with the franchises are the suggestions for donation nights and catering on the side. Diversification is the key, Dino said, to making a business grow.

Dino said he's got a local foundation in mind to help young people who are trying to get jobs to focus on the proper skills to get hired, get what they can out of the business for personal growth, at the same time helping the business grow.

Dino will be volunteering to speak to students in school.

"We believe that people work with us. Yes, I pay them, but they're my associates. I'm not afraid to get in there to do dishes," he said of his own crews.

Dino eats very little of the food at his own restaurants, primarily because he's eaten so much of it over the last eight years. He does experiment in the kitchen to come up with new combinations.

"I'll take a dog with feta cheese and Greek dressing and call it a Greek dog and try it."

Even though Dino has set up the business to be run in fast food franchise-like fashion, he's not sitting back waiting for the profits to roll in. On the weekends when there are home GreenJackets games, he's at the ballpark selling gyros.

At 31, he's too old for the team, but he's asked the general manager if he could take batting practice with the team once.

The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church's team has been angling to get him involved, Debra said.

Dino is unsure about becoming a softball player since the jobs of business owner and husband have him busy enough.

His father is assisting in the franchising of Dino's. It will be called Papa-N-Son's once they're ready later this year to sell the idea to potential store runners. They've already got some investors lined up.

Billy has no intention of leaving Club Car. Being Papa-N-Son's silent partner suits him.

The success of the franchise idea won't alter the original, Dino said. "Dino's stays Dino's."

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.

CONSTANDINO DAKURAS

BORN: Nov. 16, 1976, in Elgin, Ill.

TITLE: Owner of Dino's Chicago Express and Papa-N-Son's

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in marketing, Bethune-Cookman University

FAMILY: Wife, Debra

HOBBIES: Cubs fan, Bears fan, Blackhawks fan