by Brooks Mendell | Jul 31, 2025 | Thinking/Analysis, Leading/Managing, Learning, Sports
T-H-I-N-K Often, it’s not until years later, after you’ve had a chance to manage or motivate people, lead a project, start a business, or navigate a challenging series of events that you recognize the power and impact of lessons learned years before from parents,...
by Brooks Mendell | May 31, 2025 | Leading/Managing, Books, Communication Skills, Forestry, Learning, Sports, Thinking/Analysis
As a kid, I learned that the “knee bone connected to the thigh bone” thanks to the School House Rock song “Them Not So Dry Bones.” The lyrics remind us how things “really fit” and “it’s a framework… holding you together.” This idea, that we are combinations of...
by Brooks Mendell | Dec 22, 2024 | Learning, Sports
Beaverball, my book about a season with the MIT baseball team, includes stories about how we sometimes shared a word or fact “of the day” while stretching at the start of practice. At my high school in California, when the baseball and football teams warmed-up, we...
by Brooks Mendell | Nov 20, 2023 | Books, Sports
In September, I was in Corpus Christi, Texas watching a tennis match and taking notes, when a smiling, clear-eyed gentleman in tennis clothes sat next to me. We chatted about the game and tennis strategies, and then introduced ourselves. “I’m Bobby Hagerman, the...
by Brooks Mendell | Aug 27, 2023 | Books, Sports
Books are magical and the most powerful of technologies. The fact that lines of ink on flattened pulp can transmit ideas, information, and inspiration to our minds remains remarkable to me. This post, one in the periodic “Brooks on Books” series (see “Recommendations...
by Brooks Mendell | Jul 30, 2023 | Communication Skills, Leading/Managing, Sports
A friend of mine, a former professional baseball player, recently asked, “who is the best coach you ever had?” I played multiple sports growing up and baseball in college, and this question brought back a double-header of memories, from Coach White teaching us to...
