Paperback
$19.95 / Perfectbound
ISBN: 9781608441341
172 pages
Hardcover
$39.95 / Perfectbound
ISBN: 9781608441440
172 pages
Also available at fine
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Excerpt from the Book
Preface
Very few of you have heard of me. I’m not Dan Snyder, Ted Turner or George Steinbrenner. But, I too, owned a professional sports franchise – the dream of every middle-aged boy whose playing days are over or never were! I rubbed shoulders with the great; with Fortune 500 high rollers; five hundred executives who wanted to be; with politicians and crapshooters; with real heroes in the world of sports and pseudo heroes of the media; with unsung marketing geniuses and wealthy, powerful entrepreneurs.
Like the title of a schoolmate’s best-seller, “In Search of Excellence,” I have strived to achieve the dream and know full well the cost of the pursuit of excellence. I know how fast you have to run to catch the AMERICAN DREAM – how sweet it tastes, to chewon it, and how easy it is snatched away.
No, my name is hardly a household word. Idon’t make decisions for millions or decide the fate of nations. Having risen too slowly,and fallen too fast, I am still dreaming, trying to determine my own fate and destiny, andyes, still searching for my elusive fantasies. Telling my story is one of my dreams. This is not the memoir of a mover and shaker, reminiscing in his twilight Garden of Eden, butrather, a Brief, offered to the court of public opinion. It is presented to all common menby a still proud American man very much involved in the struggle for understanding himself, still facing major challenges, and still dreaming.
I’m a shirtsleeve kind of guy, the son of German immigrant parents, and a butcher bytrade. I am neither the best, nor the worst, neither the brightest nor the dumbest, often complex and too often simple. But, I expect todie trying, to keep dreaming new visions. Like many of us, I have believed that what one can imagine, one can achieve. For a brief shining moment, I grabbed my dream’s tail and pulled myself onto its sleek opulent back. I sharewith you the splendid vistas seen from that lofty perch, and to provide you with a view of its underbelly when you find that dream stampeding over you.
This is a story of a working man’s desire to be awarded a professional sports franchise in the Major Indoor Soccer League by figuringout how to initially get it funded with other people’s money. And, after funding, to marketit successfully against other established and popular sports leagues, only to see how quickly it vanished. Abraham Lincoln once said “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” My story may not need to be told so much as I need to tell it! But, there are two overriding reasons why you might find my homily interesting – We all need dreams and you could easily be me!
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