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Bob Wilber grew up aspiring to follow in his father’s baseball footsteps, and while he was able to secure a full college scholarship and later spend parts of six years in professional ball, as a player, coach, and scout, his mother’s writing, communications, and public relations skills were what eventually defined his career. After a successful and adventurous sports-marketing trek through the sports-apparel business, agency work, and professional indoor soccer, he saw his first drag race as he closed in on his 40th birthday. Little did he know that he’d go on to spend 20 consecutive years as a team manager and PR representative for Del Worsham and then Tim Wilkerson, two of the most popular Funny Car drivers on the NHRA tour. At the conclusion of the 2015 season, Bob ended his drag racing run in order to take on an important personal assignment. Over the course of 2016 he wrote his autobiography, entitled “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” It was released in late May, 2017 and is available on Amazon.com and other major online book retailers, in both printed and digital formats. For the last year, Bob has been writing a new book, in the “historical fiction” genre. It’s entitled “How Far?” and was published on January 22, 2022. It is available on Amazon.com. Bob’s website was launched on February 10, 2022. Visit Bob’s Site to learn more about his life and his books.

From Step 1 to Step 2

February 4th, 2016

The Kickstarter campaign is over, and I actually miss the stress and the thrill of it. Our final numbers were incredible, as the alert chime started to pull me back to the computer hour after hour. In the end, we attracted 99 backers and 112% of the goal, and to me both of those numbers are beyond heartwarming. They’re stunning and mind-boggling. And as for coming up one short of 100 backers, I posted a tweet on that by saying “Final count 99 backers. If 99 was a good enough number for Wayne Gretzky, it’s good enough for me.” It’s actually more than good enough for me.

The Finish Line Came Early

January 28th, 2016

Six and a half weeks ago, on December 14 (I had to look that up) I launched my Kickstarter campaign to see if it would be possible to cover a portion of the hard costs that come with self-publishing. And, I hadn’t even started officially writing “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” yet at the time. The first hurdle, for me, was getting over my trepidation about even doing a crowdfunding deal. Once I got past that by realizing that while my wife Barbara is the most amazing and supportive person in the world, by allowing me to walk away from my 20-year NHRA career to take on the challenge of writing my book, she did not necessarily sign up for me to cease having any income while also spending years worth of savings to get the thing printed. The next question was “How much can we raise?”

Born To Run

January 21st, 2016

I was actually not born to run. As I’ve been writing about lately in my book “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” I grew up as a pretty sickly kid, to the point where the fact I actually did grow up (and grow out of a bunch of maladies) was kind of surprising, especially in retrospect. I guess you could say I was born to sniffle, wheeze, hack, and cough. What a calling!

TPGF Fellow: Liam Gibney

January 15th, 2016

The following story was submitted by Liam K Gibney, a 2016 fellow of The Perfect Game Foundation® Name: Liam K Gibney School: The Albany Academy (16′) Job or Internship: Columbia University, Masters of Science in Sports Management Internship How did working with The Perfect Game Foundation® help you? Working with The Perfect Game Foundation® helped […]

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