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Marketing Your Dreams: Business and Life Lessons from Bill Veeck, Baseball's Promotional Genius

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Before I edited this book - yes, my name is in this book as the editor - I knew who Pat Williams was/is and I knew a little about Bill Veeck. I expected this to be all about baseball and Veeck's oddball promotions. But this book goes way beyond that. Baseball is merely an afterthought; just something to help exemplify ways you can enhance your life. Williams shows you how you can think "outside the box" and expand your ideas to go beyond what's already being done. I found several useful items that I have tried - with some success - to incorporate into my own life. Life is a process. You aren't going to reach the top in one day. But this book is a great tool in helping you make more out of life than you thought possible. This is a comedic, dramatic look at Bill Veeck, his life as well as your life and our places in this world. I hope people will enjoy this book as much as I do.

When I was 10, I wrote Bill Veeck (then owner of the Chicago White Sox) a letter . . . I recall making suggestions as to the club's lineup . . . not only did he write me back, but his response marked the beginning of an occasional series of back-and-forth correspondence that continued until his death . . . . . . he even made my an honorary
White Sox scout and arranged for me to meet one of his real scouts when I attended a Mets game.

Veeck thus became my first guru . . . he was a baseball promoter, perhaps most famous for having sent a midget to bat in a major league game . . . but he was also an innovator, plus quite a guy.

I devoured his autobiography, VEECK AS IN WRECK, when
it was published in 1981 . . . since then, I have attempted to
read everything else I could about him . . . yet somehow I
had missed MARKETING YOUR DREAMS: BASEBALL AND
LIFE LESSONS FROM BILL VEECKs by Pat Willaims; i.e., until this past week.

My one word reaction: WOW! . . . what a great book . . . it
made me appreciate Veeck even more, along with Williams--quite
a sports promoter in his own right . . . I found myself taking
countless notes, always a sign that what I'm reading is
really making quite a dent on me.

There were many memorable passages; among them:
* Because there is a reason why Veeck went
to bed in the middle of the night. And a reason
why he woke up four hours later. And a reason
why he was never dulled by routine, why every
day became an opportunity, and every hour,
every moment of his 71 years, was gilded and
precious.

He did not sleep because he could not sleep.
He was afraid to sleep because sleeping
meant missing something. He was so caught
up in the basest virtues of each day that his
mind couldn't let go.

Said Washington writer Tom Boswell after
Veeck's passed away in 1986, "Cause of
death: Life."

"With the amount of sleep he didn't get," says
longtime Chicago White Sox organist Nancy
Faust, "Bill probably died at 85 instead of 71."

* Veeck once sent away for a mail-order toy. When
it arrived, he learned it had to be assembled. He
spent the entire night before Christmas attempting
to put that infernal toy together for one of his
children. When he sent his check to the manufacturer,
he tore it into tiny pieces, put them into an envelope
and wrote: "I put your toy together. You put my
check together."

No doubt he felt a burden lifted.

The manufacturer had no choice but to accept the
check.

* He called amputees in the hospital to console them.
("Look at it this way," he would say. "One pair of socks
will last you twice as long. And in the winter, only one
foot will get cold.") He told one fan whose leg was wrapped
in a heavy brace, "If I had another leg to give you, I would."
He demonstrated the leg to curious children. He consoled
an amateur softball player who had broken his leg,
slipping the wooden leg off and telling him, "Here. Use mine."

"I only fear two things," he'd say, brandishing the leg. "Fire
and termites."

And though I typically like to include only three passages,
I just had to include this one too:

* Soon after the funeral, Mary Frances was digging
through the house when she discovered a note. They'd
always written to each other for more than three decades;
notes of love and sentimentality and humor. Seems he'd
written this one while waiting to be taken to the hospital
for the last time.

On one side he'd expressed the depth of his love for
Mary Frances. On the other, he'd written, "Tell everyone
it has been lots of fun."

You'll also find this book to be a lot of fun, as well as
inspirational.

Marketing Your Dreams: Business And Life Lessons From Bill Veeck, Baseball's Marketing Genius will prove of immense interest and value both to those who are baseball enthusiasts and those who would like to apply real-life advice and inspiration from a supremely successful entrepreneur who chose the field of marketing baseball to the American public. Very highly recommended, "user friendly" reading, Marketing Your Dreams blends sound "how to" information with real life examples, and in doing so presents the reader with a wealth of marketing approaches, attitudes, ideas, examples and experiences that can be transferred and adapted to any entrepreneurial endeavor in or out of professional sports.

The author, Pat Williams, an administrator with the Orlando Magic of the NBA, has chosen former baseball owner Bill Veeck as his example in what you can do to improve yourself. Veeck was a self-educated man who was a voracious reader of books and used promotions to sell his product, in his case tickets to his team's baseball games. Important tips are given for people to follow in expressing interest in another person and what they have to say along with steps to follow in being an effective public speaker. Veeck was a person who had time for everyone he came in contact with and enjoyed his life to the fullest. He was a very down-to-earth individual who enjoyed tweaking baseball's establishment of stuffed shirts. The book is filled with great quotations and stories of those who were befriended by Veeck during his ownership of major league teams in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Chicago. His training ground was with the Milwaukee Brewers, then a minor league team of which he was the owner. I have read and enjoyed all the Veeck books: Veeck As In Wreck, The Hustler's Handbook, Thirty Tons A Day, and Bill Veeck: A Baseball Legend in addition to this latest effort by Pat Williams. We continue to influence people after we die through those whose lives we touched when we were alive. Even though Bill Veeck is no longer with us, he can help you improve yourself by reading this book. It will be entertaining as well.

I was cleaning out the basement last week, weeding out the too many books, when I stumbled on "Marketing Your Dreams: Business and Life Lessons from Bill Veeck" that I bought new and originally read in 2001.
Wanting a distraction from cleaning, I sat down to scan the book again and could not put it down. What a great reminder of the character of Bill Veeck and his tenets of business and personal interaction. On virtually every page there is some nugget of wisdom, either from Veeck or someone else, that can provide inspiration in work or life in general.
So the basement cleaning will wait another day - re-reading this Pat Williams book was so worth it. Veeck was way ahead of his time and we can all learn something from this visionary man - thanks to Williams for compiling this.

This book had an awesome message behind it. What a lot of people aren't doing these days is going for their dreams and what a lot of people are doing is giving up. This speech influenced me so much and probably other people too. I recomend this to pre teens and teens and adults as well because they can relate to Bill Veeck.

At the beganing of the novel I couldn't really get into the read, but as I continued reading I found out some of the people that met Bill Veeck always had something good to say about him, as far as his work and some of his business partners our conserned.