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Home > Blogs > Upon Further Review > Archives > 2008 > July > 23 > Entry
Johnny Bench will motivate you
Suddenly, he was more Dr. Phil than Johnny Bench.
“I have tons of vowels,” Bench said while discussing his new motivational book, Catch Every Ball, which stresses creating motivation words using vowels. “I use my vowels as they appear on johnnybench.com. There’s no ‘I’ in team, I do that for approach of speaking to groups, usually individuals who work in companies. Then Integrity and people being able to trust you. E is for Effort or Excellent, Exceptional, O is Outside of what everybody else is. When I speak, I’m not just going by A its attitude, I may go to I and talk about doing that, part of being Exceptional player, another E. It just goes ‘round and ‘round, about why you speak and what you’re speaking about. maybe this is an even better one for you.
Wait, didn’t this guy crouch behind a plate for a living? When did he get so … so … serious?
“You may want to change it the next day,” Bench said. “I’m going to be Extraordinary today. I have to be Exceptional in this meeting. Are you Approachable? Do you make an Impression. All vowels of success.”
It was a 20-minute phone conversation the other day that turned beliefs about Bench and pointed me to his book, a thin and interesting volume clocking in at 119 pages and mixing personal history with life lessons.
For those of you who don’t think Bench would have a lot to say in this area, though, the first chapter is for you. It’s titled, “Why Listen to Johnny Bench?” He says it himself in the book:
I don’t have a Ph.D. I don’t even have a college education. I was a catcher. You have to be dumb as a box of rocks to be a catcher. Who wants to spend his entire working life in the dirt, wearing heavy clothing? Catchers don’t know anything.
Bench doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he said his strategy has been to get close to some very smart and famous people — Bob Knight, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Arnold Palmer, Sparky Anderson — and listen to what they say:
I listened to Frank Sinatra speak of the importance of being on time. Everything you take from someone can be replaced. Everything but time.
Case it point. Bench was scheduled to call me at 10:30 a.m., and the phone vibrated at 10:30 on the button.
The number was “Restricted,” of course. But Bench’s advice in this entertaining book is not.
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