RiverDogs’ Mike Veeck back at bat in a Citadel classroom
December 3, 2010
CHARLESTON, SC – December 3, 2010 – Charleston RiverDogs President Mike Veeck is back at bat in the classroom this spring at The Citadel.
Veeck will join the faculty of the Department of Health, Exercise and Sport Science as a visiting professor of sport management starting in January. He will teach an undergraduate course on sport sales and marketing and a graduate level course called “The Art of Selling.”
Veeck’s first stint teaching was as a guest professor at The Citadel in 2008. He said it was an inspiring experience.
“The thing I found so astonishing about it was I expected to go in there and tell a few stories, but I came away thinking ‘Man, I am a lucky guy,’ “ Veeck said. “It was uplifting and fun and I felt so fortunate to have had that experience. I am still in touch with about 10 of my students from that first class.”
The Charleston RiverDogs is a minor league Yankees affiliate team.
Veeck is the part owner of four professional baseball teams as he comes from a baseball family.
Nearly a century ago his grandfather was president of the Chicago Cubs. His father, Bill, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., was the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians, and Chicago White Sox and remains as one of the great promotional innovators in sports history.
Mike Veeck has worked for minor league and professional baseball teams over his career and includes promotional stints with the White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. It is his inherited belief that anything is possible and no idea too silly, and that is how Veeck operates his ball clubs and businesses. Veeck has hired a dog and a pig to deliver baseballs to the umpire, mimes to perform instant replays and has locked fans out of the stadium to set an all-time attendance for the fewest people at a game.
Veeck delivered the May 2009 commencement address to The Citadel Graduate College and afteward the college’s Board of Visitors presented him with an honorary degree of Doctor of Sports Marketing.
“There is no one else we’d rather have teaching our students about sales and promotions in sport than Mike Veeck,” said John Carter, head of the HESS department. “His father and grandfather are legends in major league baseball history, and our students will benefit immeasurably from his wealth of expertise, experience, and ‘fun-is-good,’ hands-on style to becoming a successful principled leader in the sport industry.”
