Bob Wilber

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Bob Wilber

Bob Wilber aimed to follow in his father’s footsteps with his own successful Major League baseball career, but in the end it was a string of communications genes, instilled in him by his talented mother, that steered and defined his career. After earning his degree in TV/Radio Broadcasting from Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, where he also played four years of baseball for a team that competed in two NCAA Div. II World Series, Bob was signed to a free agent contract by the Detroit Tigers in 1978. He played parts of two seasons of minor league baseball with the Tigers, followed by a single season with an Oakland A’s farm club, before joining the Toronto Blue Jays as a Scouting Supervisor and minor league coach.

After four years with the Blue Jays, he entered the sports marketing arena, initially in the sports apparel business with Converse Shoes, and then joined his brother Del at Del Wilber + Associates, managing major sponsorships for IBM, Chrysler, Black & Decker, and other corporate clients, while also developing new sponsorships for USA Baseball, US Rowing, and the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL). He was then named Vice President of the St. Louis Storm franchise in the MISL in 1989, and later was General Manager of the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer club.

He entered the racing world when he was selected to be the General Manager at Heartland Park, a multi-purpose racing facility in Topeka, Kan., in 1991 and soon found his way into management roles at the team level. From 1997 to 2008 he was Team Manager for Funny Car driver Del Worsham, and from 2009 to 2015 he held the same position for Funny Car driver Tim Wilkerson. At the conclusion of the 2015 season, Bob took a break from NHRA public relations work to focus on writing a book. The book, “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” was released in mid-2017. It recounts, in great detail, his entire life in sports and is available at Amazon.com and other major online book retailers.

As part of his PR duties in drag racing Bob wrote an enormously popular blog, at NHRA.com, for more than 10 years. With roughly 10,000 regular readers around the world, it was regarded as the most widely followed blog in the sport of professional drag racing. Now, as he shifts into an authorship/blogger role, he has migrated that fan base here, to the newly renamed “Bob’s Blog” at The Perfect Game Foundation.

"There is no substitute for Excellence – not even success. Success is tricky, perishable and often outside our control; the pursuit of success makes a poor cornerstone, especially for a whole personality. Excellence is dependable, lasting and largely an issue within our own control; pursuit of excellence, in and for itself, is the best of foundations,” The Heart of the Order, by Thomas Boswell (Doubleday, 1989).