Ahead of the Game: The Pat Williams Story

Ahead of the Game: The Pat Williams Story by Pat Williams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Pat Williams is a very talented man and a very wise business man. The first book of his I read was coauthored by his first wife, Jill. The book, Rekindled: How to Keep the Warmth in Marriage was an excellent read on marriage. I was highly disappointed when I learned Pat and Jill was divoroced after they had written the book on marriage. Pat hits the divorce head on in this book giving the story of what happened between him and his wife. Reading between the lines I would say he had another lover, which was his job. This book basically is about Pat's life; I guess you could call it a biography. It has lots of good principles to live by. As one writeup of his life states, "Pat Williams is a basketball Hall-of-Famer, currently serving as co-founder and senior vice president of the NBA's Orlando Magic. As one of America's top motivational speakers, he has addressed thousands of executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and national associations to universities and nonprofits. Clients include AllState, American Express, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Disney, Honeywell, IBM, ING, Lockheed Martin, Nike, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Tyson Foods to name a few. Pat is also the author of over 80 books, his most recent title being COACH WOODEN'S GREATEST SECRET: The power of a lot of little things done well." If you enjoy sports and learning about the people involved you will enjoy this book. Below are a few quotes from this book:

But Veeck was more than just a stunt promoter. He was dead serious about fairness, freedom, and simple human decency. He broke the color barrier in the American League, signing Larry Doby to play for the Cleveland Indians in '47. He received a certain amount of hate mail for that decision, and he personally answered each letter. Typically, he would congratulate the bigoted letter-writers for their wisdom in having selected parents belonging to the majority race. But since not everyone was able to choose parentage and skin color, he continued, he was going to select his players on the basis of personal merit - whether a given player "happened to be black, or blue with pink polka dots.



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