Unplugged with Brandon Steiner

Brandon Steiner chats with author and freelance sportswriter Jason Turbow, set to release his third book "They Bled Blue" about the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers. About Jason: Jason Turbow is the author of They Bled Blue (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2019); Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); and The Baseball Codes (Pantheon, 2010). He's written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated, among other publications. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. About They Bled Blue: In the Halberstam tradition of capturing a season through its unforgettable figures, They Bled Blue is a sprawling, mad tale of excess and exuberance, the likes of which could only have occurred in that place, at that time. That it culminated in an unlikely World Series win—during a campaign split by the longest player strike in baseball history—is not even the most interesting thing about this team. The Dodgers were led by the garrulous Tommy Lasorda—part manager, part cheerleader—who unyieldingly proclaimed devotion to the franchise through monologues about bleeding Dodger blue and worshiping the “Big Dodger in the Sky,” and whose office hosted a regular stream of Hollywood celebrities. Steve Garvey, the All-American, All-Star first baseman, had anchored the most durable infield in major league history, and, along with Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey, was glaringly aware that 1981 would represent the end of their run together. The season’s real story, however, was one that nobody expected at the outset: a chubby lefthander nearly straight out of Mexico, twenty years old with a wild delivery and a screwball as his flippin’ out pitch. The Dodgers had been trying for decades to find a Hispanic star to activate the local Mexican population; Fernando Valenzuela was the first to succeed, and it didn’t take long for Fernandomania to sweep far beyond the boundaries of Chavez Ravine. They Bled Blue is the rollicking yarn of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ crazy 1981 season. Purchase a copy today: https://www.amazon.com/They-Bled-Blue-Fernandomania-Strike-Season/dp/1328715531

Brandon Steiner is joined by sports marketing pioneer Rick Horrow, author of "The Sport Business Handbook". About Rick: Rick Horrow, JD, is a leading expert in the business of sport and has orchestrated over 100 deals worth more than $20 billion. The CEO of Horrow Sports Ventures (HSV), he has served as a sport business analyst for Fox Sports, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, NBC, National Public Broadcasting, and the BBC. As the leading commentator on sport business and as a well-connected entrepreneur, he has access to many of the top names in sport, including commissioners, owners, general managers, coaches, and athletes. His clients have included some of the biggest organizations and companies in the world of sport and business: NFL, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, PGA, Great White Shark Enterprises, Cisco Systems, Golden Bear International, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, LPGA, and MLS. He has also been managing editor of sports business for the U.S. Library of Congress. Horrow is nicknamed the Sports Professor, thanks to his time spent as a visiting expert on sport law at Harvard Law School, where he earned his degree. About 'The Sport Business Handbook': If you love sports and are fascinated by business dealings in this trillion-dollar global industry, then this is the anthology you've been waiting for. The Sport Business Handbook: Insights From 100+ Leaders Who Shaped 50 Years of the Industry provides insider perspectives from more than 100 of the biggest names in the sport business industry. Plentiful examples and stories, including insiders' views of major sports deals, make this book a bible of information for those looking to begin or advance a career in the field or for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes intricacies of sport business. Purchase a copy today: https://stnr.co/2Er9eR4

Bill Pennington is a reporter for the New York Times and has been writing about sports for twenty-five years. A former syndicated sports columnist, Pennington is a ten-time finalist and five-time winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors' national writing contest. He lives with his wife, Joyce, and three children in Warwick, New York. Bill joined the show to discuss his new book "Chumps to Champs", which explains how the worst teams in Yankees history led to the '90's dynasty. Purchase a copy here of "Chumps to Champs": https://stnr.co/2DYkkfW

Ron Karr is a speaker, marketing consultant and author based in New Jersey. For 36+ years, Karr has excelled at sales and leadership positions, for which he is recognized as the leading "Sales Success Expert" and has appeared as a guest on national TV including FOX , Bloomberg, C-Suite Network and others. He is an in-Demand Global Keynote Speaker, and Highly Acclaimed Author of Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way. He was elected as the president of National Speakers Association for 2013-14 and he is the president of Karr Associates, Inc. Karr is a National Board Member of the NSA and a past president of the New York City Chapter of NSA. In 1995, the New York Tri-State Chapter presented him with the Golden Mike Award.

Bob Klapisch has covered baseball for the New York Post, New York Daily News, and Bergen Record as well as ESPN, FOX Sports and USA Today. His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal. Klapisch has won several Top-5 awards in the prestigious Associated Press Sports Editors contest and appears regularly on MLB Network. A graduate of Columbia University, where he played varsity baseball, Klapisch continues to pitch in the semi-professional Metropolitan League in Bergen County. He and his family live in Westwood, NJ. Klapisch joined the show to discuss his new book, "Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees ," which he wrote with Paul Solotaroff. It's a riveting look at what is really said and done behind closed doors with the New York Yankees, the most famous and wealthiest sports franchise in the world

Tyler Kepner started covering baseball as a teenager, interviewing players for a homemade magazine that was featured in The New York Times in 1989. He attended Vanderbilt University on the Grantland Rice/Fred Russell sportswriting scholarship, then covered the Angels for the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise and the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He joined The New York Times in 2000, covering the Mets for two seasons, the Yankees for eight, and serving as the national baseball writer since 2010. ABOUT K: A HISTORY OF BASEBALL IN TEN PITCHES From the New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history including twenty-two Hall of Famers–from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw–K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.

Marc Lasry is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder of Avenue Capital Group. Founded in 1995, Avenue is a global investment firm with over $13 billion of assets under management. Avenue maintains its headquarters in New York with offices in London, Luxembourg, Munich and throughout Asia. In 2014, Lasry purchased the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and now serves as a Co-Owner. Prior to founding Avenue, Mr. Lasry co-founded Amroc Investments, LLC and managed capital for Amroc Investments, L.P., the predecessor firm associated with Robert M. Bass Group, Inc. In addition, Mr. Lasry was Co-Director of the Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization Department at Cowen & Company, and previously served as Director of the Private Debt Department at Smith Vasiliou Management Company. Mr. Lasry also held a clerkship for the Honorable Edward Ryan, former Chief Bankruptcy Judge of the Southern District of New York. Mr. Lasry received a B.A. in History from Clark University (1981) and a J.D. from New York Law School (1984).

Rob Shallenberger is recognized globally as a leading authority on planning and execution. He is widely known for sharing his experience as a US fighter pilot to deliver fun, energetic, and highly impactful keynotes and seminars. Based on the National Bestselling book Becoming Your Best: The 12 principles of Highly Successful Leaders – which includes 40 years of research from peak performing companies – Rob will show your participants how to leverage the 12 principles that propel teams and organizations to the top! From the cockpit to the boardroom, Fortune 500 companies around the world have used his valuable lessons learned as a fighter pilot to ignite their teams and leaders and fuel high performance at every level. For years, he has operated and flourished in a hostile and fast moving environment. During his time in the Air Force, Rob was hand-picked to travel the world with Air Force One as an Advance Agent. He doesn't just talk the talk, he has walked the walk and knows what it takes to be successful in the toughest environments. He is the CEO of Becoming Your Best Global Leadership, an award-winning leadership and corporate training company. Rob's keynotes and seminars are focused on helping teams and leaders bring out their very best in every area of their life. He will share new, cutting-edge tools and processes that can have an immediate impact on behavioral change, revenue, net profit, employee turnover, customer retention, and morale.

Warren B. Jobs, a partner at seal Skin Covers, discusses his journey as an entrepreneur and how to build a multi-million dollar business. About Seal Skin Covers: Seal Skin manufactures covers directly for your marine needs. Our business model is unique because we own the entire supply chain allowing us to monitor and guarantee high quality covers at low prices. Seal Skin Covers has been selling high quality marine covers online since 2004. Our team strives to bring you the best quality marine covers with an easy shopping experience. We focus on semi custom covers. Our mission is to provide a great fit at an even better price. Our focus is on helping customers save hundreds of dollars on fully custom covers that are overpriced, un-returnable, hard to install and sometimes made from poor quality fabrics.

Dave is a serial entrepreneur, New York Times best selling author, and global keynote speaker. Dave is the Founder and Chairman of Likeable Local, a social media software company serving thousands of small businesses, as well as the chairman and cofounder of Likeable Media, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing agency for big brands. His newest book, The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want is out now. Following Kerpen’s sponsored wedding which raised over $100,000 including $20K for charity, he and his wife Carrie started and transformed theKBuzz (founded in 2007) into Likeable Media, the only 3-time WOMMY Award winner for excellence from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the US according to INC Magazine for consecutive years. Kerpen is among the most popular writers in LinkedIn’s Influencer program, one of the most-read contributors for Inc.com , and has been featured by CNBC, BBC, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Early Show, the TODAY Show, the New York Times, and more. He has also keynoted at dozens of conferences across the globe including Singapore, Athens, Dubai, San Francisco and Mexico City. Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook and Other Social Networks, was Kerpen’s first New York Times bestselling book. He followed Likeable Social Media with two more bestselling books, Likeable Business and Likeable Leadership. His fourth book, The Art of People, offers 53 bite-sized, easy-to-execute, and often counterintuitive tips, to learn and master the 11 People Skills that will get readers more of what they want at work, at home, and in life.

Dear George, Dear Mary: A Novel of George Washington's First Love A novel about heiress Mary Philipse's relationship with George Washington, based on historical accounts, letters, and personal journals by nine-time New York Emmy Award-winning journalist Mary Calvi. “Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted.” ―George Washington Did unrequited love spark a flame that ignited a cause that became the American Revolution? Never before has this story about George Washington been told. Crafted from hundreds of letters, witness accounts, and journal entries, Dear George, Dear Mary explores George’s relationship with his first love, New York heiress Mary Philipse, the richest belle in Colonial America. From elegant eighteenth-century society to bloody battlefields, the novel creates breathtaking scenes and riveting characters. Dramatic portraits of the two main characters unveil a Washington on the precipice of greatness, using the very words he spoke and wrote, and his ravishing love, whose outward beauty and refinement disguise a complex inner struggle. Dear George, Dear Mary reveals why George Washington had such bitter resentment toward the Brits, established nearly two decades before the American Revolution, and it unveils details of a deception long hidden from the world that led Mary Philipse to be named a traitor, condemned to death and left with nothing. While that may sound like the end, ultimately both Mary and George achieve what they always wanted. About Mary Calvi Award-winning journalist Mary Calvi has provided live breaking news reports on a wide range of stories across the tri-state area. Calvi gained unprecedented access to the FBI’s underwater anti-terrorism team and reported from underwater. She actually found a missing grandmother lost in the Blackout of 2003. She also traveled to Rome to cover the events surrounding Pope John Paul II. Calvi had also provided coverage on the attacks at the World Trade Center, in 2001 and in 1993. Calvi’s credits include six Emmy awards, including two for her live breaking news coverage, and one for an in-depth series on sexual pedophiles, “Predator Next Door.” Calvi has been honored for her writing at the New York Festival’s World Media Awards. She also earned a National ACE Award for Excellence in Journalism, a Clarion Award for Excellence in Reporting, and the ACIM Award for Excellence in Community Service. She joined WCBS-TV in 2002 from News 12 Westchester where she served as anchor and assistant news director. She also worked with News 12 Long Island and served as a national correspondent for USA Networks. She began her career in New York in radio. Calvi graduated magna cum laude from the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University with a degree in journalism. A native of Westchester County, Calvi lives in her hometown with her husband and their three children.

She grew up at sporting events and around professional athletes who were clients of her father, David Falk, a pioneer of the sports agent industry. At a very young age, Daina fell in love with game day and the sports fan experience. So much so, in fact, that she only did one college application—it was Duke University or bust. Her goal: to be a Cameron Crazy. While at Duke, Daina traveled extensively and studied cooking. After college, she was still obsessed with sports and sports fandom so she worked for teams and produced and hosted network segments around major sporting events. But she kept coming back to the idea of the sports fan's experience and how it lacked an arbiter of taste—a curator à la Martha Stewart. Always wanting to be authentic and wake up everyday excited to go work, Daina decided to create a platform for the tailgaters, homegaters, sports- bar-goers and sporting event attendees of the world. Thus, Hungry Fan® was born. As the founder and face of Hungry Fan®, Daina can often be seen hosting events, TV shows and segments or promoting her cookbook. She has appeared on shows such as Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Today Show; and she hosted Toughest Tailgate, which highlight NFL tailgating traditions, on CBS Sports. She has done celebrity chef appearances for teams such as the New York Giants and Yankees. And her first cookbook hit bookshelves in August 2016 and was a bestseller on Amazon.com in Tailgate Cooking. Published by Oxmoor House (of Time Inc.), the game day cookbook features Daina's own Fangating™recipes and those she collected from Olympians and professional athletes such as Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Andre Agassi, Boomer Esiason and Robert Griffin III.

Tom See is Live Nation's President of Venues (and a former Steiner Sports intern). He chatted with Brandon Steiner about transforming concerts into VIP experiences. "Dynamic executive, highly experienced in sales, marketing, product development and operations. Repeated success in driving multi-million dollar revenue increases via strategic and analytical leadership. Developed numerous programs that have eliminated costs, improved cash flow and generated additional revenue for top-tier organizations. Respected leader, innovator of new products, solid strategist, key resource, problem-solver and a challenger of the status quo."

Randy Garn is the Chief Revenue Officer / Principal at Hero Partners. Randy is a New York Times Best selling author and a passionate entrepreneur. He loves growing companies through proven strategic methods and enjoys the process of understanding a companies core strengths. Randy is a serial entrepreneur. He was one of the founding partners of Prosper Inc. and has worked closely with some of the world's most renowned educators, speakers, and thought leaders. In addition to Prosper, he has founded several other companies that have become industry leaders in marketing, online acquisition and product development. One of these companies, Adcafe.com, has more than 2 million subscribers and is growing. He was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young, was a Top 40 under 40 Entrepreneur, and has received various awards in social and charitable involvement. Randy is an alumnus of Brigham Young University, a graduate of the Owner President Management Program at Harvard University, and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School. Randy lives in Utah with his wife Charlotte and their four beautiful daughters and two sons. He has a passion for the outdoors and is an avid fly fisherman.

Dr. Bruce Bloom is my health guru. I think he quite literally saved my life with the advise he has given me, and the changes he has helped me make in the way I eat, sleep, workout...everything!