Book Review: Every Town is a Sports Town

Recently, I was fortunate to receive a preview copy of Every Town is a Sports Town which is a good history book about ESPN. It is about former CEO George Bodenheimer, and how he chose his career path over a couple beers with his Dad, to become employee #130 as a mail clerk.

Back in the day...when I was in grade school I read all kinds of autobiographies, and I loved reading them, I especially enjoyed learning how they got where they are. For ESPN's Bodenheimer, it was being a driver for Dick Vitale that gave him the drive to continue plugging away at his first job out of college. How cool would it be to have Dickie V telling you your Awesome?!

There are some very good nuggets in the book...the first commercial jingle, how Boomer started with the nicknaming of sports figures, the legendary speech of Jimmy V (all royalties to the author goes to the Jimmy V Fund ), and the first meeting with Steve Jobs over the "new" ESPN phone....remember that one?!

The book is more ESPN history than a business book, but it is a very good read because who doesn't want to know how it all began at ESPN? Bodenheimer is the true insider.

Every sports station today can trace its roots to ESPN some way or another. It is truly the leader in sports.

Keep it in the short-grass,

JFB

Here's some Glee!

Jordan Spieth is a BMOC...Holla! Any kid who can skip his graduation because...excuse me...is making the cut for a PGA event, has got the chops. The 200-plus graduating class at Jesuit High might miss him at the ceremony...but can see his "hall pass" all over CBS this weekend as he makes a run at winning the Byron Nelson PGA golf tournament this weekend.

Mark Cuban even has the kid's back...giving him seats to last Wednesday's Mavs game...then tweeting a shout-out to him Saturday.

The Texas born and raised Spieth will attend the holy grail of hormonal-U...University of Texas-Austin next year.

Hook-em horns...dude, you da man!

New Tools for MyDailySlice readers!

I've recently added a couple awesome new tools that will allow you to really get inside the uniqueness of the game of golf.
Two new social network tools: Twitter, and ShareThis, will allow you to follow not only my thoughts, but thoughts of some of the best writers of the sport, as well as the best golfers in the world.

How you say? Well, you can follow me on Twitter...and here's the cool part...you can follow the Twitter-ers that I follow as well...which are pretty unique to the game of golf.

Go on...click my Twitter link to see who I follow...I'll wait.

Pretty cool, huh?! I know that you might not be really interested in my timely diaper changes to my future LPGA star...but I do know you are interested in what Stewart Cink is doing right now!

Now for the second app: ShareThis. You can now read the articles that I read, and have inspired me to post...for well over 3 years now...That's 300 in Second Life years!
I read a lot of great stuff during a week...and some of it gets lost in the noise of everyday life, but now I can feed what I'm reading right to my blog post so you can get inside on some of the uniqueness of golf...the essence of what I find interesting.

You might call my blog with these new apps a mashup of what makes MyDailySlice tick.

This will give you more updates to read, and will truly be what I envisioned when I started my blog so long ago: To be a daily slice of golf.


Thanks for reading. Keep it in the short-grass,

JFB

ESPN/Masters online putting game

Ever wished you could putt the greens of Amen Corner? ESPN and The Masters have teamed-up to give you an online putting game that puts you in the middle of 11, 12 and 13 giving you a virtual rendering of what it would feel like.

No, this isn't Arnie's Amen Corner...as it was labeled in '58, but now thanks to high tech...Arnie's Army can get an up close look at these greens...

...and putt on these hallowed holes.










Scroll down to the bottom of my website, and see if you are good enough to make it through Amen Corner.





Thanks for reading. Keep it in the short-grass,
JFB