Sports lifer. Road warrior. Straight shooter. In this no‑holds‑barred conversation, veteran sports marketer, former minor‑league ballplayer, and acclaimed author Bob Wilber opens up about a wildly unconventional career that somehow connects the Detroit Tigers minor-league system, Converse sneaker deals, indoor soccer barns, and nitro Funny Car mayhem.

Wilber takes us inside a childhood spent in dugouts and press boxes as the son of longtime Major League catcher, coach, and scout Del Wilber, and a trailblazing mother who broke barriers in the St. Louis Cardinals’ front office. From there, we follow him onto college diamonds and through the harsh realities of chasing – and losing – the big‑league dream.

The story hardly slows down. Wilber walks through his pivot into sports marketing and front‑office life, selling corporate America on emerging properties and trying to keep the MISL's St. Louis Storm, NPSL's Kansas City Attack, and CISL's Indianapolis Twisters alive in the boom‑and‑bust world of indoor soccer. Then he details his second (third?) act in motorsports, running NHRA Funny Car teams and becoming one of drag racing’s most distinctive PR voices and storytellers.

Along the way, Wilber talks candidly about burnout, constant travel, reinvention, and why he finally stepped away to write his autobiographical “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts: A Life of Sports, Marketing, and Mayhem".

If you care about the business behind the games – the hustle, the politics, the strain on real life – this conversation is a masterclass in how sports really work once the lights go off and the fans go home!

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Bats, Balls & Burnouts: A Life of Sports, Marketing and Mayhem - buy book

On August 20, 2019, the city of St. Louis, MO was officially awarded the 28th franchise in Major League Soccer, with an anticipated inaugural season beginning in 2022. And while the club begins its efforts to get its team name, new downtown stadium and initial soccer operations in place, we take some time this week to reflect on the city’s deep and rich soccer history – perhaps unmatched by any locale in the United States.

Dave Lange (Soccer Made in St. Louis: A History of the Game in America’s First Soccer Capital) joins the ‘cast to trace the undeniably symbiotic relationship between the Gateway City and the Beautiful Game – as well as its impact on the development of the sport (especially professionally) across America.

As we root for the new St. Louis MLS team (our name suggestion: Gateway FC!) to meaningfully recognize and incorporate this important past, Lange helps tide us over in the interim as he discusses:

The St. Louis transplant who help launch both the USA’s first governing body for the sport, as well as its first professional league (the American Soccer League) during the Roaring Twenties;
The deep-rooted amateur, scholastic and collegiate landscape that kept the city at the center of the nation’s soccer development (including occasional US national team flashes of brilliance);
The seminal, but oft-forgotten St. Louis Stars of the 1967 NPSL and 1968-77 NASL;
How “soc-hoc” evolved into a professional indoor soccer explosion in the 1980s & 90s with St. Louis (Steamers, Storm, Ambush) as its epicenter; AND
The “invisible hand” of Anheuser Busch executive Denny Long.

PLUS: There “Ain’t No Stoppin’” our tribute to the MISL’s iconic St. Louis Steamers!