Owning a Piece of the Minors is by and about a man who lived his dream and acquired a baseball team. When Jerry Klinkowitz joined the group that ran the Waterloo, Iowa, Diamonds in the 1970s, ownership of a minor league baseball franchise conferred little mystique. Neglected for a half century, minor league baseball was at best obscure. Yet in the purchase of fantasy, what difference if your desire is out of style?
Klinkowitz continued his work with the Diamonds through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. In Owning a Piece of the Minors, he maps out his personal journey through baseball and probes his fluctuating fortunes and those of his team as he evolves from a fan to a team executive and, most important, to a writer writing about baseball. This baseball story begins with a nine-year-old Klinkowitz who is elated when Milwaukee lures the Braves from Boston; this story of a love affair with baseball might have died—and in fact suffered a ten-year hiatus—when the apostate Braves fled to Atlanta in 1965.
Klinkowitz rediscovered the joy of being at the baseball park when, as a middle-aged professor, he took his own children to the Waterloo Diamonds games. Gradually his involvement with the Diamonds grew deeper until he owned the team. His immersion into team activities was complete, from shagging batting practice and working the beer bar to struggling with the Cleveland Indians and then the San Diego Padres as minor league affiliates to accommodate baseball's resurgence.
Klinkowitz writes of loss—first the Braves and later the Diamonds; of writing baseball fiction; of attending the 1982 World Series back in Milwaukee; of the great old ballparks around the country, including Wrigley, Fenway, and old Comiskey Park; of fictional and factual accounts of how the Diamonds franchise was lost; of friendships among season ticket holders in "Box 28"; and of Mildred Boyenga, the club president and Baseball Woman of the Year. A first-rate stylist, Klinkowitz shows the problems and perks and, most rewarding, the priceless relationships made possible in the world of baseball.

Owning a Piece of the Minors (Writing Baseball)

Biographies & Memoirs

Klinkowitz, Jerome

Veeck, Mike

Professionals & Academics

Southern Illinois University Press

Maverick marketing whiz Mike Veeck presents his simple, no-fail formula for business success: make work fun and you'll create a culture where the best people will want to work and customers will want to spend their money. Mike Veeck runs six minor-league baseball teams, and for each of them he's drafted a business plan that begins with three simple words: "Fun is good." The fun-is-good philosophy not only has worked to make an evening at one of his ballparks--full of laughs, zany promotions, and free giveaways--enjoyable for everyone; it has transformed a half-dozen money-losing or start-up teams into a thriving $25 million business. In this book Veeck, son of legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck, shows why an injection of fun, creativity, and passion is so essential to business success. We learn: o Why customer service, the lifeblood of any business, suffers when employees aren't having fun at work o How just a few people with the fun-is-good attitude can transform an entire workplace o What companies should look for when hiring people and how employees can forge a fun-is-good career path. Throughout, the book is peppered with vignettes, where we hear firsthand from people who have benefited professionally and personally from the fun-is-good philosophy and how they have applied it specifically to their own industries and careers.

Fun Is Good: How To Create Joy & Passion in Your Workplace & Career

Business & Money

Williams, Pete

Business Culture

Rodale Books

Make work fun and you'll create a culture of creativity where the best people will want to work and customers will want to spend their money. That is maverick marketing whiz Mike Veeck's Fun Is Good philosophy in a nutshell. And in this book, he demonstrates how it has worked, not only to make an evening at one of his minor league ballparks—full of laughs, zany promotions, and free giveaways—enjoyable for everyone, but also how it can turn any organization into a thriving one.

Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in Your Workplace and Career

A fun workplace creates a culture of creativity where people want to workand customers want to do business. Thats the simple philosophy of sports executive and seminar leader Mike Veeck, who has used this approach to turn six minor-league baseball teams into major multi-million-dollar businesses. Veecks three-word mottofun is goodholds the key to empowering our people, our workplaces and ourselves. He demonstrates how a sense of joy and humor can turn a company around or push a stalled career into overdrive. Drawing on his own experience and the success stories of clients and other people who have benefited from his philosophy,Veeck reveals how fun, creativity and passion can bring out the best in an organization or individual, and explains: Why customer service suffers when employees arent having fun at workand why that matters How a few people with the Fun is Good attitude can transform a workplace What companies should look for when hiring How anyone can forge a Fun is Good career V

Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy & Passion in Your Workplace & Career (Your Coach in a Box)

Job Hunting & Careers

Gildan Media

Maverick marketing whiz Mike Veeck is ready to share his simple, fail-proof formula for business success: Make work fun and you’ll create a culture of creativity that attracts the best employees and encourages customers to spend their money. Veeck stresses the need to reexamine the way business is conducted, from employer-employee relationships to customer service. The Fun Is Good philosophy has worked to make enjoyable evenings for all at Veeck’s ballparks but has also transformed a half-dozen struggling or start-up teams into a thriving $25 million business. Peppered with firsthand accounts from businesspeople who have benefited from Veeck’s philosophy, Fun Is Good is an innovative, off-the-beaten-track approach to getting the most out of your work life, in and outside the office.

Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in your Workplace and Career

Management & Leadership

Advantage Media Group

There’s never been a book like this. It will make you laugh, and open up new thinking that’s made millions. It has a video inside. It makes stupid into the new smart. Your rivals will be so off put by the title, that they’ll never stoop to read it. This gets you in the clear to leap, and they won’t even know what hit them.

Another Boring, Derivative, Piece of Crap Business Book: MakeThe First Basic Leap In Work in 100 Years, Laughing All The Way

Fahden, Allen

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