Jeter and Girardi Deliver Brief Speeches on the Victory Parade

"It has been too long, hasn't it?" That were the first words Derek Jeter addressed to the crowd at the end of the victory parade of the Yankees. This kind of celebration always finishes with the stars' speeches. And today we could listen to the team's manager, Joe Girardi, and the captain, Derek Jeter, among others. Sportsmen are used to talk in front TV cameras, specially in the US.

However, delivering a speech in front of thousands of people is much more impressive. Girardi and Jeter speeches were, above and beyond all other consideration, brief. But, after all, bearing in mind the scenario, they did pretty well (minute 2 of the video).



The most famous speech of the Yankees history, and one of the most moving allocution ever,did not take place during a celebration. In fact, it was a farewell speech. Lou Gehrig, considered the best player of the XX century, was diagnosed with a rare form of a degenerative disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which nowadays is called Lou Gehrig’s disease. He said goodbye to baseball at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. The beginning of his speech was, and is still today, shivering: "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans". I highly recommend reading the full speech.




More inspirational speeches in Onespeech.

Countdown for the Webby Awards and the Hilarious Five-word Speeches

The 14th Annual Webby Awards has open the period to present the works online, in order to distinguish the best websites, Interactive advertising & Media, Online Film & Video and the Mobile Web. The works must be entered by December 18th.

The members of the Academy that organizes the Webby Awards are political journalist as Arianna Huffington, musicians as Beck and David Bowie and Internet inventor Vint Cerf among others. These people took a clever decision. The winners can say thanks, of course, but they are not allowed to mention every single name of their relatives and workmates, neither to explain how surprised they are, how good were the other nominated, etc. Here you don't have to pray for the orchestra to do the dirty job. All the winners of The Webby Awards are advised to prepare a five-words acceptance speech. Not more but not less than five words.

Regarding what past winners have said there is no doubt that the five-word speech is an excellent idea. Here there are some of my favorite five-word speeches:

Branded Content. Clearification: Thanks mom: whoever you are.
Best Sound Design. Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: sound, check, check, one two.
News & Entertainment. Maxim Mobile: There's no screen too small.
Sports. The Reggie Bush Project: Finally a Bush everyone loves.
News. CNN Interactive: Who, What, Where, When, Webby.
Best Actress. Sarah Silverman: Holocaust... did it happen? Yes.
Community. Flickr: Can everyone get closer together?
Dreamgrove. webpage and interactive garden: This computer can also dream
Religion and Spirituality. Comment is free: religion: Thanks, this proves god exists.
Employment. TheLadders: Susan Boyle wasn't available
Cultural Institutions. Guggenheim Museum: Frank Llyod Wright was right.
Best Sound Design. The Curse of Degrassi: Thank you thank you thank.

If you liked these allocutions you can find hundreds of five-words speeches on the Webby Awards website. And don't miss this amazing advertisement!

Bill Cosby Remembers School Years in the Acceptance Speech of Mark Twain Prize

Bill Cosby remembered comically his years as a student when he received the Mark Twain Prize For American Humor at The John F. Kennedy Center. The ceremony took place on October 26, but Bill Cosby’s allocution has been kept hidden until tonight, when it has been broadcasted at PBS. The full program lasted one hour and a half. You can find Mr Cosby talk at 9 minutes to the end.

Few Differences between Victory and Defeat Speeches on the Election Day

It is not another speech. The talk that candidates give after knowing the results of the elections have a great symbolism. That allocution always takes a glance at the work done during the campaign, but above all, has the purpose to look ahead. Obviously, it is pretty different to deliver the talk as a winner or as a looser. But last night, again, winners and losers followed the same pattern: to congratulate the opponent; to thank the supporters, the family and the team of the campaign; to make a promise of keep on working and a joke.

Here you can listen to the firsts words of Mike Bloomberg, Bill Thomson, Chris Christie and Jon Corzine at the end of the election day.

Who Are Those People Behind Bloomberg and Thompson?

Another election campaign has finished. Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson have done their best to gain votes. I guess that there are good and bad campaigh managers. But all of them, in the United States and abroad insist on a shabby performance: to place people behind the candidates while they deliver speeches. In the best of the cases, these men and women hold a poster. The problem is that if the candidate talks quite a lot, and they use to, the picture of the people behind is a little bit ridiculous and forced.

But it can be even worse. I suppose that the campaign teams think that if there is nobody behind the candidate people will think that he is alone. And, following the reasoning of the campaign teams, if a candidate appears on TV with nobody behind, the candidature is dead.

It would be easy to have lot of people sitting in front of the candidate, listening to his message. Why that never happens? Maybe because often there is NOT a lot of people there. In some acts, there are journalists, politicians and nobody else. So it is more reliable to ask to a dozen people if they would be so kind to stay there with their best interesting faces for a while. But they are not actors and actresses and some times you can see in them that they don't give a damn what is happening here. When a mayor or a president inaugurates a monument, a road or whatever, you can have from hardhats to doctors or students behind the speaker. Now and then, it works. But campaign teams can not control everything. The video of a kid getting bored is just one of the most famous examples. Enjoy it.

Jeff Bridges Renews the War Speeches in The Man Who Stare at Goats

The Man Who Stare at Goats, the movie that has been released this week, is as much a comedy as a war movie. And there is no war movie without the speech moment. In this occasion, the responsible for giving the inspirational speeches is a terrific Jeff Bridges (he does it excellently, as well as George Clooney and Ewan McGregor). Bridges plays Bill Django, a colonel of a top secret unit of the US army. A unit of psychic spies. They don’t need weapons to fight the enemy because they use the power of their minds.



So we have a hippy colonel training his troop. And, of course, where others colonels at movies would say "let me see your war face", "piece of shit" or stuff like this, our colonel with psychic powers uses another kind of vocabulary. In the first speech of the movie Bill Django tell to his soldiers:

"You have to dream a new America that no longer has an exploitation view of everyone".

While he is talking he gives to each of the warriors… a flower!

The second statement sounds like an "archetype" war movie speech.

"You will be a psychic weapon, an angel of death, until that time you are nothing. Do you understand?
SIR, YES, SIR".

But suddenly, colonel Bill Django adds:

"I’m just kidding. Let's dance!"

It’s a really funny parody of the Full Metal Jacket speech and similar situations from other movies.











I can not finished a post about war movie speeches without revisiting one of the best film moments ever:



More speeches in movies in onespeech.