Dave Mona’s new book, “Beyond the Sports Huddle,” is written with efficiency, clarity, charm and wit. That’s pretty much the way Mona, a 1964 graduate of the University of Minnesota, has lived his life.
He has done enough during his six-plus decades to pretty much fill two or three lifetimes. So why not author a book, too? He’s done just that with a 286 page publication that is pure Mona, with tales about people he’s known ranging from Kirby Puckett to Hubert Humphrey, from Muhammad Ali to Molly Ivins, with a mass murderer included for intrigue. With points for efficiency, Mona even includes stories he’s written in the past including a piece on baseball card collecting he authored long ago for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Who is Dave Mona? Well, unless you just flew in from across the Pond, you probably know him as a radio personality on WCCO. For 27 years he’s been heard on WCCO Radio’s Sunday Sports Huddle and since 1998 he’s provided color commentary on Gopher football. In 2006 he won Associated Press and Edward R. Murrow writing awards for his pregame vignettes.
Writing and creativity come easy to Mona, who grew up in Minneapolis, the son of South High School basketball coach Lute Mona. Mona was sports editor of the Minnesota Daily where he had a talent for encouraging young (and not so gifted) writers on his staff. In typical multi-tasking fashion, he worked at WCCO TV while a student at the University, serving as a news room dispatcher and assisting with a hilarious late night Saturday show called the Bedtime Nooz starring Dave Moore.
Although most journalists aspire to work at a big city newspaper out of college, few are talented enough and prepared for the assignment. Mona went straight to the Tribune where he worked for five years with two seasons devoted to covering the Minnesota Twins.
Along the way he decided that 100 days or so away from home was too much. He made his way into the public relations profession and later became the founder and current chairman of Weber Shandwick, the region’s largest PR firm.
In addition to Weber Shandwick, all he’s done over the years is raise a nice family with wife Linda, own and operate the Field of Dreams sports memorabilia stores, personally collect over a million baseball cards, assist many community organizations with his leadership and marketing savvy including the Minneapolis chamber and the University of Minnesota athletic department, emcee and speak at many events, and provide enough sports insights on WCCO Radio to keep your average Minnesotan sounding sports savvy around the office water cooler.
He’s done it all with energy, intelligence and a high likeability factor, making it look so easy. Dave Mona is Minnesota nice.
And always the quick wit with willingness to tell stories, anecdotes from long ago and today. The book is full of them including a number of paragraphs devoted to Molly Ivins, the tall and outspoken Texan who worked with Mona at the Tribune before going on to a famed writing career where she bashed a lot of people including Bill Clinton whose character was described as “weaker than bus station chili.”
Mona remembers in the book, too, that Ivins came to Minneapolis without an overcoat. A few weeks later she corrected that and paraded into the newsroom wearing a floor-length reddish-orange coat that matched her reddish hair. Mona writes that assistant managing editor Frank Premack shouted, “My God, it looks like a bad paint job on the Foshay Tower.”
Mona has a series of book signings including on Thursday, August 19 at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Galleria, 3225 W. 69th Street, Edina.
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