We recently connected with Bob Brill and have shared our conversation below.
Bob, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
Legacy. What does it really mean? We all either want to die in bed with family and friends around us, or to go out in a blaze of glory saving others. Well, maybe those are the choices I’ve thought about over my life time. As someone who truly plans on living to 120 years old (I know dream on), I’ve thought about the fact that who will be around to remember me. I would like my legacy to be someone who worked hard and achieved a lot of different things creatively on a wide level. As I get older I realize a 25 year old today usually has no clue to when the Berlin Wall came down or the fact that Russian Communism (a threat to the entire world with Mutually Assured Destruction), was a 72 year experiment. As an historian (I like to call myself that) my memory goes back to when I was four years old and my dad brought home a cat for me. Best cat ever and I do not like cats. I’m a dog guy. I love to study baseball players from the 1880’s and early 20th century. I know stats and I love to read about the obscure presidents. My favorite is James K. Polk, my hero was Pittsburgh Pirate second baseman, Bill Mazeroski. Both have great legacies. So I know part of my legacy will be the fact that I never sat around thinking about doing something, but rather just went out and did it. Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes not. But the rest of the legacy will have to be what others say when I’m gone and the problem with that is “I’ll never know.”
Bob, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I started writing jokes for family members to make them laugh when I was five years old. I guess since I got a response it grew my ego and desire to write. At O’Melveny Elementary School in San Fernando, CA, I had to write an essay of “what do you want to be when you grow up?’ It was easy. I wanted to be a major league baseball player, so my plan was to go to Florida during Spring Training and get a tryout. Simple enough. Mrs. Dunne asked me “what about a back-up?” I asked what was a back-up and she explained “what if?” I thought long and hard about that because all I ever wanted to do was play baseball. I thought if I became a play-by-play announcer like Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince, I could stay close to the game I love. Going into radio to do just that became a reality.
Fast forward to Sylmar High School where underneath my graduation photo is says “San Fernando Valley State College, broadcasting.” I had one class at SFVSC (History of Broadcasting with ABC executive Peter Stern) while at the same time going on a four month course in Hollywood to Career Academy School of Broadcasting. I graduated from the latter and left the former and in March 1972 landed my first radio gig in Prescott Arizona for $2 a hour. After four months I was fired, went home and got a job at KVFM in the San Fernando Valley for $1.60 an hour. I will tell you now that one year earlier I was working as a box-boy (bagger) at Country Cousins Market in Sylmar for $1.62 an hour. It was a union gig.
Over the years I went back to small markets to work my way up and gain experience. While in Palm Springs I was offered a chance to do news and fell in love with it. I moved onto El Paso and the news team there, eventually becoming News Director. I went back to doing some disc jockey work, sales, sports and news before coming back to L-A in 1984 with the LA Times, then UPI and eventually ending up at UPI Radio which was the job of a lifetime.
At UPI I was working for a major radio network, comparable to AP. I got to travel the world covering stories capped off by five weeks in Seoul for the 1988 Summer Games. I took a vacation after the games into China and Hong Kong (short lived but what an experience). I went back to China in 2006 on book project and my how the world had changed. A thousand percent different and modernized.
My radio career at UPI was extremely rewarding, covering some of the biggest stories of the latter part of the 20th century. My 10 years there were amazing. The Russian River Floods, Rodney King, the San Francisco Earthquake, five Super Bowls, NBA Finals, World Series, Olympics, the John DeLorean Trial, wow what a life for an historian and I came to be known as a very good reporter. The people I interviewed; Wilt Chamberlain, Hank Aaron, Michael York, Jimmy Stewart, just to name a few and there were hundreds more. Certainly the highlight time of my career.
I’ve been in radio for more than 50 years. Wow, did I just say that? For my 50th anniversary I went to my podcast “Interesting People with Bob Brill” and recorded 31 days of stories of life on the radio. How I saved Ronald Reagan’s life, how I broke the law once as a reporter, raising small children while in the news business. All sorts of interesting stories which you can still listen to including some radio documentaries I did at the time.
Today as an author (16 books), a film maker (a feature length documentary plus five short films and about 20 scripts) and as a newscaster at the only All News Radio Station in Los Angeles, I sort of switched gears. My latest book should be out in January, an international thriller called “5 Seconds to Die.” I wrote it as a movie but it is a novel certainly.
In the midst of all of this I also started, owned and ran and eventually closed a baseball card store. It has been one of my passions since I was six years old and remains part of my writing and producing life today. I still buy and sell collections and sell on eBay when I have time. I say still a part of in that the first pack of cards I opened as a six year old had a Don Rudolph card (1959 Topps) with Rudolph on the White Sox. On the back is a cartoon of his wife dancing on a table. The caption reads “Don’s wife is a professional dancer.” She was actually one of the highest paid strippers in the country at the time and the subject of my first book “Fan Letters to a Stripper; A Patti Waggin Tale.” It has been optioned for a film, and hopefully it will someday get made.
I also wrote a memoir called “Tales of My Baseball Youth; a child of the sixties.” It is about growing up loving baseball and is a book about relationships, more than sports.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
I’m choosing an easy one here. NFT’s? One of the most stupid things ever invented. To be honest I actually offer them on one of my websites where I created an image. If someone wants to pay me $100, $500, $1000, $10,000 for one of the images – Fine, I’ll take it. But c’mon. You are spending a bundle of money for an image which was created for this and on top of that, can be recreated. You don’t own anything of value. One of the worst ideas ever and since the early craze you just don’t hear much about it anymore. Why? Because it is a dumb idea.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In 1995 I was working part-time in radio but was a real journalist in the trading card and memorabilia world. I was the first to actually tackle the industry with real news, not what I called rah-rah hobby (don’t say anything bad and print what the manufacturers tell you to print). My good friend Tony in San Diego said I should start a Fax Newsletter and publish each week with industry inside stories. I thought it was a great idea and I did. Working out of my bedroom I published twice a week and it became a “must read.” Every manufacturer had multiple billing points, distributors and shop owners took it as well for $40 a month. Faxed from my bedroom to their office, waiting for them when they came in the next morning. It was a hit and after nearly a year I was projecting an income of $50,000 a year. The problem was I needed to expand and to expand I needed to hire and if I hired I had to move it out of my bedroom to an office. Didn’t have enough for that. But I was an icon in the industry. People hated me, feared me, loved me and even threatened my life. Now that’s iconic…lol.
Soon I was offered a job as the Director of Hobby Sales and Media Relations with one of the lower end manufacturers for $75,000 a year with a move to New Jersey. I had a decision to make. Continue what I was doing or move my family to Jersey for a nice paycheck and a new experience. The decision was not easy but practical. I didn’t have responsible the funds to grow my business and I had three children to feed. New Jersey here I come. Then I decided there was a chance of moving from there to one of the sports Commissioner’s offices. Go to work for MLB, NFL or NBA. Wow what a scenario that would be and it became my goal. Despite helping the company become profitable in the only quarter I was responsible for years, I was let go. Lied to by my direct boss (he’s now dead) I was gone and the industry was stunned.
When I went for my interview with them I asked why did a company with a really bad reputation want me with a squeaky clean reputation? “We’re trying to change our image,” was the reply. They did not change their image and my image grew. I ended up setting up my own consulting firm with smaller manufacturers and did well enough to survive for a year before moving on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bobbrill.com, www.bobbrillbooks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebobbrill/?next=%2F&hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobbrillsr/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-brill-439411288/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bobpattiwaggin
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00411A3MY
https://bsky.app/profile/brillpro-author.bsky.social
https://www.ebay.com/str/sportscardskckings
www.shakenthemovie.com
www.majorleaguestripper.com