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Brian Kilmeade Book Shares Sports Life Lessons Dan Weil
Book:"It's How You Play The Game: The Powerful Sports Moments That Taught Lasting Values to America's Finest"
Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Richard Nixon and George Patton are just a few of the familiar faces who fill the pages of an inspiring new book by Brian Kilmeade, co-host of "Fox & Friends" on the Fox News Channel.
In "It's How You Play The Game: The Powerful Sports Moments That Taught Lasting Values to America's Finest," Kilmeade – who also hosts "Brian & The Judge" on Fox News Radio - describes the sports experiences of 91 famous Americans. They range from athletes like Joe Montana and Arnold Palmer, to business titans including Jeff Immelt and Arthur Blank, current public figures such as William Bennett, and historical icons like Abe Lincoln. [Editor's Note: Get Brian Kilmeade's book "It's How You Play The Game: The Powerful Sports Moments That Taught Lasting Values to America's Finest" at a great price - click here now.]
The lessons Kilmeade seeks to impart through the book are straightforward: Life isn't fair, you often learn more through failure than success, it's not about winning but about how you play the game, how you handle pressure determines how much success you will have. But the lessons come alive through Kilmeade's probing interviews with his live subjects and interesting histories of the deceased ones.
The willingness of Kilmeade's subjects to admit their flaws adds greatly to the book's authenticity. In the very first profile, of NFL star Terry Bradshaw, the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback confesses, "I was always five years behind: five years behind in maturity level, five years behind in relationships, five years behind in college."
Tennis legend Chris Evert, famous for her good manners as a professional, owns up to being a brat when she was first playing the game. Kilmeade begins his piece about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with the wrestling champion's description of seeing himself featured on TV's "Crime Stoppers" – and not as a good guy.
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Rush Limbaugh was particularly open about his bumps in the road. He recounts that he has been fired seven times in the radio business, and his start in sports wasn't particularly successful either. He was cut from his high school baseball team by a friend of his father and then tried unsuccessfully to get his father to call the coach to reverse the decision.
After that Limbaugh joined the football team as a kicker because he hoped to avoid running in practice. And when he ultimately had to run wind sprints, he tried to get away with dogging it in the early rounds. Fortunately, his coach wouldn't let him get away with it, and Limbaugh learned the lesson of working hard.
Basketball hall-of-famer Jerry West said one of the game's main benefits for him growing up was that it allowed him to escape a bad home life.
Former boxer and current grillmeister George Foreman lets readers know that with his father leaving home early and his mom in and out of the hospital with tuberculosis, he was on his own as a child.
Many readers are likely to come away from the book thinking, "If these people can persevere through all their troubles to achieve so much success, there's no reason why I can't do it at a more modest level."
Kilmeade reveals a humorous side of Richard Nixon when he relays a funny story from Nixon author Jonathan Aitkin about the 37th president's days as a bench-warming football player at Whittier College.
During one game, the coach turned to Nixon and said, "What would you have done in that play?" Nixon's response: "Sir, I would've pulled the blanket up just a little tighter around my shoulders."
That coach who kept him on the bench, Chief Newman, became one of Nixon's closest friends, and he credited the coach with helping him revive his sagging spirits after he resigned the presidency in disgrace.
Dick Cheney comes off in the book as surprisingly self-effacing. He acknowledged being an adequate running back in high school. It was only from one of Cheney's high school teammates that Kilmeade learned Cheney was an all-state player in Wyoming.
Cheney too has a sense of humor. He recalls a coach once saying about him: "Cheney, you are a great mudder. You're great in the mud. The only problem is it never rains in Wyoming."
In some ways, Kilmeade's book is a treatise on the human condition. Here's a quote from golfer Ben Crenshaw: "I still can't figure out why I sometimes feel incapable of making a mistake and at other times I'm flat-out fragile. It's the way both life and golf are. I wish I could tell you I've solved this issue, but I haven't - yet."
Kilmeade's inspiration to write the book came largely from George Patton's injury-plagued football career at West Point. He includes touching letters from Patton's dad. Here are excerpts of one after Patton placed fifth in the inaugural pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.
"It is too bad you are not able to be here just now. It would give you a graphic idea of that elusive thing called ‘fame.' I can hardly walk a block in town without meeting an enthusiast who rings my hand and says ‘that son of yours is surely a wonder' or some similar expression . . .
"Great is fame – few enjoy it while alive. You ought to come home before it is forgotten."
Editor's Note: Get Brian Kilmeade's book "It's How You Play The Game: The Powerful Sports Moments That Taught Lasting Values to America's Finest" at a great price - click here now.
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
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