Riding Eagles’ Super Bowl wave, ‘Inner Excellence’ author Jim Murphy to open ‘headquarters’ in Kensington

Jim Murphy didn’t have a jacket fit for the snowstorm that would soon hit Lincoln Financial Field so he stopped by the stadium store in January before heading to his seat for the Eagles’ playoff game. Murphy — whose book Inner Excellence went viral a week earlier when TV cameras caught Eagles receiver A.J. Brown reading it on the sidelines — found a waterproof jacket to purchase.

And that’s when he realized how popular he had suddenly become in Philly.

“This Eagles fan comes running up to me and says ‘I’m going to buy that for you,’” Murphy said. “I said ‘No, it’s really expensive. You don’t have to do that.’ He said ‘No, I have to.’ I was like ‘Man, OK. Thank you so much.’”

The throwback Birds jacket — wool with leather sleeves — cost $250 and kept Murphy warm as the Eagles beat the Rams and continued marching toward an eventual Super Bowl title. Murphy’s self-published book, which was released 15 years earlier, surged as it found an audience thanks to Brown.

» READ MORE: Moro Ojomo gave ‘Inner Excellence’ to A.J. Brown. The lesser-known Eagle has his own motivational story.

Inner Excellence topped The New York Times bestseller list a week before the Eagles won Super Bowl LIX, sold more than 200,000 copies in three weeks, and was acquired in March by a publisher. The book will be rereleased worldwide Tuesday by Grand Central Publishing as Murphy continues to ride the Super Bowl wave nearly three months after the confetti dropped.

Now Murphy, 58, will be spending more time in Philadelphia, the city where a stranger bought his jacket and football fans helped his book become a bestseller.

The author is working with Shane Claiborne, a Philadelphia-based activist, to open an “Inner Excellence headquarters” in Kensington. Murphy plans to have a studio where people can come and learn about the teachings of Inner Excellence, which are intended to “train your heart and mind for extraordinary performance and the best possible life.”

“We want to support the families and youth there and teach them Inner Excellence and teach them what A.J. Brown has been learning,” said Murphy, who was in Kensington last week with Claiborne. “I want to bring Inner Excellence to this neighborhood.”

Murphy dreamed of being a major-league baseball manager when he studied coaching science in graduate school at the University of British Columbia after his minor-league playing career fizzled out.

He used his dissertation as a way to network, interviewing 39 managers and executives about what makes a championship team. Murphy met during 1998’s spring training with the architect of the 2008 champion Phillies, Pat Gillick, who was then running the Orioles. He ended the interview by asking Gillick if he could recommend anyone else.

Gillick said he could put Murphy in touch with Davey Johnson, who was the American League Manager of the Year the previous season with the Orioles but was fired following a dispute with the owner.

» READ MORE: ‘Inner Excellence’ spotted on Broad Street as Eagles fans celebrate the NFC championship win

“Pat starts to give me his number and then instead he just grabs his phone and puts it on speaker phone,” Murphy said. “His wife answers and then puts Davey on. Johnson didn’t seem confident. I couldn’t believe my ears. He was like ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Maybe I’ll get into real estate.’ I was like, ‘Are you joking?’ It made me realize that everyone was human.”

Murphy later visited Johnson at his home and Johnson wrote the foreword when the project became Murphy’s first book. All the interviews helped Murphy land a job after graduation with the Texas Rangers as a minor-league coach with the Savannah Sand Gnats, the team’s single-A affiliate at the time. It was a dream job but Murphy soon found out it wasn’t for him.

“It ended up being a box that I couldn’t fit in,” Murphy said. “I didn’t realize this initially. I just thought I was a total failure. But now I see that God had much bigger plans for me. I thought I was meant to be a superstar athlete. Then when I got injured and lost that, I thought I was meant to be a superstar coach. Then that didn’t work and I had nothing.

“I went to the desert to see what I could devote my life to and what I was willing to live and die for. That’s where Inner Excellence was born.”

Murphy spent two and half years living in solitude in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona where he started to write Inner Excellence. The book was published in 2009 and Brown received it last September. Moro Ojomo, a rookie defensive tackle, read the book in college and thought Brown would like it.

Brown read it on the sidelines throughout the season, but it didn’t become widely known until the playoffs. It suddenly became a thing as fans brought the books to the Linc and someone even dressed as the front cover during a celebration on Broad Street.

The man who helped the Phillies win a World Series boosted Murphy’s first book and his next book became a bestseller thanks to the receiver who helped the Eagles win a Super Bowl.

“He showed the world that you can read even if you don’t have time to read,” Murphy said. “He showed the world how to be your true self no matter what people are going to think. He took that book and said ‘This helps me get centered and focused and perform better but what are people going to think? I don’t know. They’re probably going to judge me.’ He just said, ‘You know what? I’m going to be my true self.’ That’s amazing.”

It had been three months since Brown read his book on the sideline, but it seemed like everyone Murphy met last week in Philly still remembered.

“There’s a bunch of young folks who knew about the book,” said Claiborne, who has been friends with Murphy for 10 years. “They saw A.J. Brown carry it and now they want to know what Jim has to offer, so I’m excited to create spaces where he can share the ideas that have been so helpful to so many people.”

Claiborne grew up in Tennessee, moved to Philadelphia in the 1990s, and founded The Simple Way in 1998. The nonprofit based in Kensington has initiatives for affordable housing, immigration reform, antigun violence, and youth literacy.

They build community gardens in Kensington, give out food, run a flag football league for kids, turn guns into garden tools, stock a children’s library, and transform abandoned houses into homes.

» READ MORE: ‘Inner Excellence’ has gone international, thanks to an Australian football player’s pregame routine

“The stuff that’s difficult is obvious and in your face and in the news all the time,” Claiborne said. “But a lot of neighborhoods that are economically struggling are community rich, resilient in faith and resources. For 25 years, we’ve been building on all that.”

Murphy intended his book for professional athletes, setting out to write “the best book ever written about mental toughness” and find out how athletes remain calm under pressure. But he found the message had a much broader audience, resonating in Kensington just like it does on the sidelines in South Philly.

“This is for all of us,” Murphy said. “We all have the same challenges. We all have the same big dreams and the same big issues. We all want to live a meaningful and fulfilling life with amazing experiences and deep, enriching relationships where we’re learning and growing and making a difference. Who doesn’t want that?

“We also all have the same limiting belief. We have a mind that thinks negative thoughts and gets caught up in self-centeredness that leads us to fear and anxiety and getting attached to what we want but can’t control. We don’t even know if that’s what’s best for us.”

“We’re just trying to navigate this crazy life. And I think Eagles fans have it a lot harder in general than Eagles players. Eagles players have an offseason. They have coaches like myself and a massage therapist where an average Eagles fan doesn’t have any of that. There’s no offseason. They don’t have these coaches and therapists to help them. We all need Inner Excellence.”

Claiborne gave Murphy a tour last week of Kensington as they met community leaders and visited abandoned homes that Claiborne’s organization is rehabbing. There’s plenty of things, Claiborne said, for Murphy to help with along with teaching Inner Excellence. Claiborne said maybe even Brown could stop by a flag football game.

“There’s 400 young people who are being mentored by a grassroots sports league started here in Kensington,” Claiborne said of Timoteo Sports.

» READ MORE: After Eagles’ A.J. Brown read it on the sideline, ‘Inner Excellence’ author lands a book deal

Murphy will be spending more time in Philadelphia, hoping to spread the messages of his book. And he’ll have the right jacket this winter if it snows.

“It was so inspiring,” Murphy said of visiting Kensington. “The need is great. That’s where I want to be, where the need is great. What a gift to be in a place with great need and great passion. I think the people are ready for Inner Excellence in their lives.”