A.J. Brown read his book during a playoff game. The story behind the book is even more unusual

Jim Murphy had lived three lives when he moved to the desert. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he knew he wanted to be alone.

He had already been a minor-league outfielder for the Cubs, a graduate student with big ideas, a minor-league coach for the Texas Rangers, but then, in 2003, he gave away half his things and headed for Tucson, Ariz., where he began what he terms “a life of solitude.”

It was quiet, sparse and isolating. His first year, he did not realize it was New Year’s Eve until he heard a loud noise, walked outside and saw fireworks.

“I was a career minor-league baseball player and grad student,” Murphy says. “Those are like the two poorest people.”

The days were long and lonely. They were also clarifying. Haunted by a baseball career that never launched and a life put on hold, Murphy, then 36, became consumed with a question: How can a baseball player stand at the plate in Game 7 of the World Series and find, as Murphy terms it, “peace and confidence”?

Murphy called one sports psychologist. And then another. He soon fell down a rabbit hole that lasted five years and, between his living expenses and the travel for interviews, left him $90,000 in debt. “I’ve never had a nervous breakdown,” he says. “But I assume it was pretty close.” The result was “Inner Excellence,” published in 2009, a 300-page tome about training your mind for extraordinary performance.

For many years, the book was a modest success, a hit with golf instructors and life coaches, a text on which Murphy could build a career as a mental skills guru for golfers like Henrik Stenson and Hunter Mahan. But that changed on Sunday night, when Eagles receiver A.J. Brown was spotted reading the book on the sidelines during his team’s playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers.

AJ Brown is reading a book on the sideline? 📚😂

📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/jQGv8smD9N

— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) January 13, 2025

Brown told reporters the book gives him “a sense of peace.” It’s believed he came across it thanks to Eagles defensive tackle Moro Ojomo, who received it from a chaplain at the University of Texas, who happened to know Murphy. But the story of how “Inner Excellence” became a viral sensation in Philly is less interesting than how it became a book in the first place.

“Jim has an amazing story,” said Carson Foster, a professional swimmer who trains at the University of Texas and works with Murphy. “It’s really his own story that was the basis for ‘Inner Excellence.’”

“It has legs for the people who read it,” added Mahan, who reached No. 4 in the world in 2012. “Maybe you don’t get it right away because you’re too trapped in yourself, but down the road, man, I feel like all those lessons and all those things in the book are really powerful when you really let them in.”

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One day in the early 2000s, Bucky Jacobsen, a minor-league baseball player with the Seattle Mariners, met a man at a baseball training facility in Tucson. In Jacobsen’s memory, it wasn’t clear if the man worked at the facility, or if he worked anywhere at all. But his name was Jim Murphy, and as they began to talk, his story felt familiar.

Born in the Pacific Northwest, Murphy had played baseball at Portland State and spent three seasons as an outfielder in the Cubs system. He had hit just .236 in 879 career at-bats, and a vision issue helped end his career. He had then returned to graduate school with the goal of being a high school baseball coach. But what he really wanted was to help young players who were struggling.

“He was kind of on a quest,” Jacobsen says now.

In practical terms, Jacobsen became Murphy’s first client. In reality, they didn’t use that term. It didn’t feel like a doctor-patient relationship. It wasn’t formal. Instead, they just started talking.

“Being a professional athlete, you know that you’re good, but you’re constantly scared of not being good enough,” Jacobsen says. “And I think that inner turmoil stops 99 percent of athletes. And he kind of opened up my eyes.”

At that point, Jacobsen was a 27-year-old who had played seven seasons in the minors, never reaching the major leagues. He was in his third organization. Murphy asked Jacobsen to start writing down scripts and affirmations. You’re one of the best power hitters in the world. You’re one of the best power hitters in the world. 

“There were multiple things he said that ended up being little tipping points,” Jacobsen says. “Little light bulbs.”

Little did Jacobsen know at the time, but he was giving Murphy something, too: proof of concept. The next season, in 2004, Jacobsen reached the majors and hit nine homers in 42 games, becoming a momentary folk hero in Seattle. Murphy wondered if he was onto something.

What Murphy and Jacobsen discussed became the first stages of “Inner Excellence.” The book would eventually come to include four daily goals:

1. Do the best with what you have each day

2. Be present

3. Be grateful

4. Be focused on routines and what you can control

But the core of the text, according to Murphy, stems from two realizations he had during his sojourn in the desert. The first is Murphy’s belief that self-centeredness is the biggest challenge in performance.

“It leads to fear because your subconscious is running your life and it knows all your mistakes and all your weaknesses,” Murphy said. “And the more you think about yourself, the more you’re going to be reminded. So you try to feel better about yourself by getting more achievements or by telling people you’re great, and that only puts more pressure on yourself.

“Because most of life is out of your control.”

The second part comes from Murphy’s best attempt to explain the concept of mental toughness. To Murphy, the concept is ill-defined. Because in five years of writing and research, he came to believe something simple:

“Your heart is the key to your life,” he says.

Murphy knows it may sound counterintuitive. When people think of sports psychology, they think of the mind. But Murphy wants the athletes he works with to think of the process differently.

“When I say heart, I mean your spirit and your will,” Murphy says. “It’s the deepest part of you, your heart and subconscious, working together to run your life.

“And when you squeeze, what’s in your heart comes out. So what we want is when you squeeze, or when you’re under pressure, what comes out is inner peace and inner strength. Mental toughness.”

It was the kind of epiphany that might cause some to roll their eyes. The mental skills industry is full of books giving athletes a roadmap to success. But Murphy was steadfast. He believed he could help. He wanted to help. So he finished the book and found a publisher, an imprint that focused on educational texts.

The only question was if anyone would read it.

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When “Inner Excellence” hit bookshelves in 2009, Murphy had one problem. In an industry that thrives on self-promotion, he didn’t like marketing. He almost never posts about clients on social media. His business is largely done by word of mouth.

One of Murphy’s first big breaks came when a golf caddie from Dublin, Ireland, called. He wondered if Murphy would work with his boss, Henrik Stenson, the Swedish golfer and future winner of the Open Championship. Murphy made more inroads in the golf world. Swing instructor Sean Foley introduced the book to his client, Hunter Mahan. Matt Killen, a putting coach who has worked with Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods, told The Athletic that he keeps “a stack of ‘Inner Excellence’ books in my office that I hand out to students.”

When Mahan started working with Murphy, it took some time to adjust. The world of golf is ruthlessly competitive. Murphy was calm, soothing and positive. It felt a little …different.

“It would be sometimes annoying,” Mahan said. “Like sometimes you wanted to be mad. I think he just saw the world in such a beautiful way, and I don’t think I fully appreciated it at the time because I wanted so many things.”

For Mahan, the proof of “Inner Excellence” came at the World Golf Championships Match Play in 2012, when he made a run to the final match, where he faced Rory McIlroy. Mahan had won on the PGA Tour before, but his career was still on the rise. McIlroy was one of the best players in the world. Before the final match, Murphy and Mahan spoke. Murphy told him to be present and engaged in his routine, to forget about McIlroy and focus on the course and himself.

It may sound simple, Mahan says, but it put him in the right headspace. He won the match.

“Man, he creates an energy that if you let it, it is very nourishing,” Mahan said. “Because he’s not this competitive person that you think you need in your life. He’s the person that you really, really need in life … that you don’t know you do. There’s such a calming effect to talking to him and understanding what you’re doing.”

For most of the last decade, Murphy has worked in the shadows. He’s continued to work with golfers. His stable also includes NHL players, swimmers and others who remain unnamed. A revised edition of “Inner Excellence” came out in 2020. That’s the version Brown was reading.

Murphy has never worked with Brown. But he sees value in the practice of reading during a game, if for no other reason than to provide a mental reset. He had another client — NHL player Kevin Connauton — who would attempt a mental rewind after each shift, visualizing the moments that did not go well.

The viral nature of Sunday’s NFL playoff game sent “Inner Excellence” skyrocketing up the Amazon sales charts and thrust its author into the spotlight. Brown’s copy is dog-eared and highlighted.

More than two decades after Murphy’s only athletic career washed out and he came up with a rough idea for a book, “Inner Excellence” was doing what he had always hoped: In a pressure moment, it was helping an athlete.

“My life never would have been as extraordinary as it has been,” Murphy said, “had I been a major-league superstar.”

(Top photo: Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)

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