Bob Harlan: From Marquette to a World Series team

Continued from previous week

After six years with Marquette, Bob Harlan beganexploring new career avenues that could potentially provide better for his growing family.

“I worked there six years. I had a wife and two boys at home, and I was making $7,000 a year,” Harlan recalled.

While riding to Chicago for a game with Merle Harmon, who announced Marquette basketball games at that time, as well as the Milwaukee Braves and New York Jets, and went on to call games for the Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, Kansas City As and Kansas City Chiefs as well, Harlan made a shrewd move.

“I said, ‘Merle, if you ever hear of any openings in anything in the pros, could you just give me a quick call and maybe I can check into it?’ And he said, ‘Sure,’” Harlan added.

Shortly after, when the Braves traveled to St. Louis to play the Cardinals, Harmon mentioned his name to then Cardinals Assistant General Manager Dick Wagner.

“About two weeks later, the Cardinals called me. They said that they were moving into a new ballpark in 1966, and they would like to bring in some new personnel to do different things in the public relations and community relations fields,” Harlan recalled.

Wagner and Harlan met at a hotel in Chicago for an interview.

Upon returning home from Chicago, Harlan was asked to fly to St. Louis to meet with Cardinals General Manager Bob Howsam.

Harlan was hired in the fall of 1965 as the team’s director of community relations and the speakers bureau.

Harlan came on while the Cardinals were getting ready to move into Busch Memorial Stadium and stayed there for five years.

“In those years, we won a World Series, lost a World Series, opened a brand new ballpark and hosted an All-Star game — those were just remarkable times to be in St. Louis with (Lou) Brock and (Bob) Gibson and (Roger) Maris and all of those big ball players,” Harlan said.

“It was a great organization; it was a wonderful job, but the thing was, I was never home. I was always either at the ballpark all day or we would go on the road, and I’d have to travel with the team, and I’d be in a hotel or at a ballpark. That was no way to raise your family.”

To be continued