It was a warm spring-training type of day when John Cassis of Wheaton stepped before the crowd and began his warmup.
Confident but not cocky, the former minor leaguer knew this was his game-one of 150 he plays each year. With the keen eye of a superbly trained athlete he sized up the situation, convened all his senses and skills in the moment, then, one after another, knocked hit after hit virtually out of the park. Not bad for a 45-year-old ex-preacher playing the cleanup position in front of a roomful of Catholic nurses.
The place was a meeting room at the Lisle Hilton. It was a Saturday afternoon in April and John Cassis was doing “the thing I do best.” It is the thing he does before every Chicago Bears home game, and had done Easter morning for the White Sox and the New York Yankees prior to their Comiskey Park game.
Cassis was moving and inspiring the nurses to take a new perspective in their lives, to take a fresh point of view back to their jobs. He delivered an hour-long custom-tailored presentation that was chock-full of motivational home runs. In addition to sports teams and nurses, he has spoken before groups from organizations as diverse as Sears, the Mayo Clinic and the CIA.
Before Cassis left the nurses, who were visibly weary from a day-long professional seminar, they laughed several times until their sides ached; cried a little; then, reinvigorated, got up to hug one another, and him. A handsome, personable man with a slightly irreverent delivery style and staccato timing reminiscent of comedian/actor David Steinberg, Cassis won over everyone in a tough audience. He will accept nothing less every time he steps to the speaker’s podium.
Former Bears player Mike Singletary calls Cassis “a detail person. He observes everything that’s going on and relates to his audience without intimidating them.”
Singletary, who has known Cassis since 1983, when Cassis first started as the Bears’ motivational speaker, said, “He makes you feel like there’s someone in the trenches with you. He doesn’t talk at you. It makes a tremendous difference.”
Bears’ director of community development Pat McCaskey notes that Cassis has developed a personal relationship with all the players. McCaskey said that Cassis’ greatest contribution to the Bears’ organization is his ability to put everything into “proper perspective. He emphasizes the priorities: God first, then family, then the job.”
Sporting a gold Super Bowl watch (a gift from the team after its 1986 championship victory), Cassis is clearly proud of his involvement with not only the Bears but many professional athletic organizations. Sports speaking credits include the Cubs, as well as the Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays. Cassis’ brochure quotes former Bears coach Mike Ditka as saying Cassis is “simply one of the best.”
Does Cassis take any credit for the Bears’ championship just two years after he joined the team?
“Nah. But I do know that there’s a chemistry that builds with certain teams. There was the feeling that year that they were invincible; (they had) a sense of supreme confidence,” he recalled.
But Cassis’ favorite memory of that season isn’t the playoffs, or the game, or even the victory, although he does remember receiving an enthusiastic post-game Bear-hug from Singletary that brought tears to Cassis’ eyes. Not because he was moved, but because in Singletary’s excitement he’d forgotten he still sported shoulder pads, the hard edge of which “nailed me right in the collarbone,” Cassis said.
It was in the midst of all the locker room fanfare that Cassis zeroed in on a quiet detail. Second-string player Brian Cabral was sprawled atop the lockers looking down on the chaos. Cabral, who had received the Frito Lay Unsung Hero award for his four unassisted tackles that day, silently observed the revelry.
Cassis asked him if anything was wrong. “You know, this will all be over like that,” Cabral responded, snapping his fingers. He continued, “I’m just savoring the moment.” The essence of Cabral’s message is repeated by Cassis often in his presentations, and if he hadn’t been paying attention to the details he would have missed it.
“Most experiences, the fun things, happen in life if we’re just aware of them,” Cassis said, “I try never to miss anything because I’m bored or too busy.” Thus Cassis talks to a lot of strangers.
“If I have a day-and believe me I have many of them-where I’m traveling all day, I talk to everyone I see,” he said. “If I don’t, then I’ve wasted a whole day. I’m gonna celebrate life, every minute of it.”
That was how Cassis met a man named Ernie. It was on a recent speaking trip to Spokane, Wash. An avid golfer, Cassis set out to play a round during a rare break. As he was about to tee off, a man who looked to be in his 70s approached John and asked if he could join him.
“At first I didn’t want him to because I thought he’d be slow and hold up my game,” Cassis admitted. But on second thought, he decided it might be a fine idea. Each man introduced himself and the game proceeded. The surprise was, Cassis said, “Ernie hit the ball straighter and played faster than I did.”
At one point, Cassis faced a choice of hitting his ball around a grove of tall pine trees or attempting to hit over them. He stood for a while contemplating his decision. Just about the time he resolved that he’d never clear the towering tree tops, Ernie announced that when he was Cassis’ age he hit the ball clean over the tops of those pines.
Cassis’ competitive spirit got the better of him. He assumed a confident pose, took aim and gave it all he had. The ball, of course, smacked a tree trunk about midway to the top and came bouncing feebly back in front of the pair.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Ernie said. “When I was your age, those trees were only so tall.” The old man raised his hand waste-high.
Cassis loves to relate the kind of stories where life experience dishes up humble pie. Maybe it’s because he’s had a few such experiences. Also because he’s trained himself to see and appreciate their messages.
All baby sister Cassie Cassis knows is the family always believed John would become a professional athlete. Her earliest and strongest recollection of her brother was that he was never without a ball in his hands.
“He used to make my sister Sheila throw balls to him constantly,” Cassie remembered. Cassie, who with sister Sheila Waltemathe still lives in the Cassis family hometown of Dayton, Ohio, explained that since Sheila and John were only a year apart in age they were very close. John is the oldest, Sheila is next, and Cassie (for Cassandra) is four years younger than John.
“Oh yes. He used to make me stand for hours in the back yard and pitch a tinfoil ball to him,” Sheila recollected. “And I couldn’t just throw it either. He made me wind up and pitch every time so he could practice hitting.”
The tinfoil ball, Sheila explained, was substituted for an actual hard ball that had broken a window or two. Sometimes it was a whiffle ball, but the tinfoil ball was most convenient for the children.
“John had a gift, a natural ability with any kind of sports. Still does. But the thing that set him apart was that he worked and worked at perfecting his gift,” Sheila noted. When he would pick up a sport he would just naturally excel at it, she said.
Like bowling. During his high school years Cassis began bowling. By senior year he was a national champion junior league runnerup, having bowled a perfect 300 game by the time he was 16.
In college, Cassis competed in an NCAA bowling championship. He recalled that it was during the sixth finals game with 5,000 people watching that he fouled out. “My toe crossed the line,” said Cassis, the sting of that mistake still smarting. “I gave up the game even though I had a chance to become a pro bowler,” he said.
His perfectionist streak was showing.
Striving for perfection has been an issue in Cassis’ life ever since childhood. As a child of an alcoholic father, he admits to struggling with the same feelings of guilt that plague so many others with a similar background. Add to that the fact that Cassis did not follow his father’s footsteps into the family-owned packaging business but went instead into professional baseball.
Upon graduation from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in history (“I crammed a four-year college education into 5 1/2,” he quips), Cassis signed with the California Angels and spent the next two years playing minor league ball. He even put in a stint with the famed Durham Bulls.
“I was a utility infielder who has one claim to fame,” begins his absolute favorite baseball memory. In a blink Cassis takes the listener back 21 years.
It was spring 1972 when John Cassis stepped up to the plate at a California Angels pre-season intra-squad baseball game. He faced a young right-hander just hired by the Angels from the New York Mets. The pitcher nodded acknowledgment of the catcher’s signals.
Cassis shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His eye never leaving the pitcher, Cassis fixed his stance. He was ready. The windup began. The sounds of the pitch were the whoosh of a blazing fastball, and a crack.
John Cassis lay in heap. He was out at home plate.
One of Nolan Ryan’s legendary fastballs had struck and cracked Cassis’ helmet, leaving the young hitter unconscious. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital for treatment and tests. Next morning, Cassis says, headlines in the local newspaper read, “X-RAYS ON CASSIS’ HEAD REVEAL NOTHING!”
Though it was a benchmark in Cassis’ baseball career, a spokesperson for now-Texas Ranger and major league record holder Ryan said the pitcher “does not recall that specific game.” Nonetheless, it makes a great story and a telling one about Cassis’ self-effacing nature.
“A sense of humor about ourselves shows a sense of our humanity,” Cassis is fond of saying.
Bob Landrebe, Cassis’ former boss at Wheaton’s World Relief Corp., attests to his humanity. “He’s a unique combination of a person who has a lot of drive and a tremendous interest in other people,” He said.
“John has the ability to make people feel encouraged by his own mistakes and the stories he tells. He’s a gifted individual,” Landrebe said.
Of Cassis’ athletic prowess, Landrebe declared that he always makes sure he’s “on the same side as John. I’ve learned who I should and shouldn’t compete with. So I never compete with John.” He added that if you “put anything in John’s hand-a bat, a racket, a club-if it has something to do with a ball, he can do great things with it.”
After Cassis’ father died at the age of 57, the young man decided to give up baseball. He enrolled in Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in suburban Boston. “I didn’t want to be a minister. It was a spiritual journey that I went on because I needed God in my life,” Cassis explained.
While in the seminary, Cassis supported his wife, Judy, and their daughter Katie by working as a youth pastor on Boston’s rough north shore. John and Judy had met while students at the University of Cincinnati. They married a year-and-a-half after they met.
“I would have followed him anywhere,” Judy said, even though times were tough. She acknowledges that “he really didn’t know why he was going into the seminary. I was just happy that he dropped baseball because of all the traveling.”
Upon graduation, Cassis was called to minister to a small Evangelical Covenant church in Colorado. “I remember thinking, `I’m not the type at all. Oh no. This won’t work out.’ But I went out there anyway because (the people recruiting from the church) were pushy,” he said.
The family stayed five years “because there was a peace about it,” he said. During that time, according to Cassis, the congregation grew quite large. “He used to tell great stories from the pulpit,” Judy recalled.
From Colorado, Cassis moved to Wheaton, where he took a job as director of special projects, raising money for World Relief. It was during his tenure at World Relief (1981-82) that he began receiving requests for outside speaking jobs after people were attracted to his humorous speaking style. “You don’t plan a career like this. It just happens,” Cassis explained.
“The criteria that determines if you’re suited to a business like this is if you’re good. Otherwise people don’t ask you back,” he said. Thus he would schedule speaking engagements to raise money for World Relief, then on his own time schedule independent speaking dates.
“When I had about six months’ worth of speaking dates arranged in advance, I decided to take the plunge, quit my job and do this full time,” Cassis said. It was scary, he recalled, because there was no safety net.
Cassis only advertised by word of mouth. “Groups would hear me speak and ask if I could do three hours,” he said. Even though he’d only previously spoken for an hour at a time, he figured, “I’ve got three kids and they’re small and they want food. So I’d say, ‘Sure. I can talk for 3 hours.’ “
Admitting it was a giant leap of faith, Judy, now a Wheaton kindergarten teacher who was then unemployed, said, “We never had a lot of money anyway, so it didn’t seem that big of a risk.” A display of Judy’s faith in John is the fact that she knew he could succeed because “people are drawn to him. He has an easy way with them.”
Neither Sheila nor Cassie is surprised at her older brother’s success. Both attest he inherited their father’s good looks, charm and ready wit. “It sure took him a long time to decide what he wanted to do, though,” Cassie said in typical baby-sister style.
John Cassis solo has grown into The Cassis Group, which features John and associate Erica Glynn-Nelson, also a motivational speaker. The two specialize in topics ranging from inspiration, leadership and team building to catching a second wind, all delivered with big doses of humor. Cassis said the risk has paid off: “The financial return has way exceeded my expectations.”
Glynn-Nelson is impressed with John’s energy and his ability to draw inspiration from daily experience. By several accounts a devoted and enthusiastic father, Cassis also draws from what he refers to as “the most humbling experience of my life”: parenting. Additionally, he reads a lot, he says.
Wherever inspiration comes from (Cassis boasts a stash of more than 1,100 stories and illustrations), it’s certain that at least part of the success of Cassis’ message lays in timing and delivery-skills honed on the playing field but used in the field of this speaker’s dreams, where every time at bat he can face the likes of Nolan Ryan and smack ’em over the fence.
