In this episode of the SLN Podcast, guest host Brad Maybe speaks with Jim “The Rookie” Morris. Baseball rat, lefthander, science teacher, baseball coach, oldest rookie to ever start an MLB game for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, author, movie producer, motivational speaker, and dream maker. His book “The Oldest Rookie” was made into the Disney blockbuster, The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid. Jim discusses his failures, overcoming illness, and the difference between killing yourself and not living, all of which is in his latest book called “Dream Makers.”
References
Dream Makers Book
Jim “The Rookie” Morris Website
Podcast Highlights
3:28 – Making speeches through COVID: “Now we’re doing virtual events, I’m doing podcast all the time and I’m adjusting to it.”
4:51 – Taking a different approach during COVID: “For people who want to reinvent themselves, absolutely go for it, because you don’t know what you don’t know.”
5:46 – Advice from grandparents: “And if you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said because the truth doesn’t change.”
7:23 – Just have dreams: “The dream you start chasing may not be the one you end up loving the most.”
8:40 – Surround yourself with positive people: “When you surround yourself with good people who want to not only succeed themselves, but they want you to succeed with them so that you all go up together. Those are the people you need around you.”
9:45 – Using your failure as lessons: “I think every time you fall, it’s when you get up and dust yourself off and you go, all right, I know how not to do it now. So now I’m going to go in this direction and see if this works.”
10:55 – Parents being dream killers: “They’re not looking at the gifts that they have in that child, and we need to show them how to dream and how to hope and how to love. And if we don’t do that, we’re not doing our job.”
15:05 – Don’t argue with a narcissist: “You have to have as little to do with them as possible and not be confrontational because most of the dream killers on my list are narcissistic people. And narcissists are never, ever, ever, ever wrong. And so you’re not gonna win an argument. And so you might as well just go and do whatever, say whatever you had to say and then go do your thing.”
20:12 – Dealing with Parkinson: “The headaches are so bad that leave scarring on your brain that you start going, I’ll be my own doctor here. And I’ll start mixing in vodka and cranberry juice along with my pills. And I’ll see if I can take care of that headache. And just for your audience, we’re not talking about two or three-hour headaches. We’re talking about six-month-long headaches and you can’t get away from it.”
31:45 – The truth of The Rookie: “And this is the first time I’ve seen it in color and I had to quit crying before I could go down and talk to him. I was blown away and I thought that that’s how it happened.”
