Jim Campanis Jr.: Born into Baseball

 The Campanis family has built a remarkable legacy in baseball, spanning three generations and nearly 85 years.  In this conversation, we take a closer look at the life and baseball career of Jim Campanis Jr, son of Jim Sr. and grandson of Al.

Al Campanis started his baseball career in 1940 as a shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although his playing career was brief, it was his management roles that truly defined his legacy. He became a key player in the Dodgers organization, serving as the director of player development and later as general manager. Al was known for spotting talent,  he was integral in the signing and development of Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, and Fernando Valenzuela.  However, a controversial statement during a television interview led to backlash and his resignation in 1987. 

Following in his father's footsteps, Jim Campanis has lived a life baseball. He played professionally for twelve seasons, reaching the Majors in seven,  and later became a respected member of the Dodgers' front office and the Los Angeles baseball community. 

Born into baseball, Jim Campanis Jr. stands as the most recent torchbearer of the Campanis legacy in baseball. Drawing on the strong foundation established by his father and grandfather, he forged his own path in the sport. Jim was a star at the University of Southern California. He's second to Mark McGwire on USC's single-season home run list and still holds the school record for RBI in a season. Following his junior season in 1988, Jim was selected to represent his country on Team USA, but was also selected by the Seattle Mariners in the third round of the MLB draft. 

The Mariners talked Jim Jr. out of representing his country at the Olympics in favor of beginning his pro career. He would play five-injury plagued seasons in the Mariners' minor league system before finishing off his career in 1994 with one season in the Angels' organization. Jim would later post stories of his childhood emersed in the game of baseball, as well as stories from his own playing days, on his social media accounts. For years, commenters told him he should write a book. In 2016, he would finally publish Born into Baseball.

Born into Baseball is available here: https://amzn.to/4kfJNU8

This episode is available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you find your podcasts.


Summary:
In this engaging conversation, Jim Campanis Jr. shares his unique journey through the world of baseball, growing up in a family deeply rooted in the sport. From his early experiences at his father's and grandfather's games to his own professional career, Jim reflects on the challenges and triumphs he faced, including the pressures of rebuilding his family's legacy. He discusses his time at USC, the struggles of professional baseball, and the importance of mental performance techniques like visualization and managing anxiety. 

Transcript

Jeff Perro (00:35)
Hello everybody, this is Jeff Perro welcome to another episode of Catch Up with JP. Our guest today is Mr. Jim Campanis Jr.

Jim was a third generation professional baseball player. His grandfather Al was the shortstop for the Dodgers when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

He would later serve as scouting director for the Dodgers and would be the GM of the team for almost 20 years. Jim Senior played professional baseball for 15 years, spending parts of six years in the big leagues. he worked for the Dodgers after retiring as a player as well. Lastly, Jim Junior was catcher on team USA in 1988 and spent seven years in professional baseball.

He's the author of the book, Born into Baseball. Everybody, let's welcome Mr. Jim Campanis Jr. to the show.

Jeff Perro (01:19)
So Jim, your book, Born in the Baseball, actual accurate description of your life. When you were born, yes, I love it. When you were born, your grandfather was the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and your father, Jim, was also a player. How is that? That's every boy's dream to grow up around the game like that.

Jim Campanis (01:29)
You

Yeah, actually.

Yeah, actually, you know, it was a funny story. So I was born in 1967 in August and my dad was a player for the Dodgers. And he got able to get in that bat as a pinch hitter in a Dodger game on that Sunday. It was a day game. And the manager, Walt Alston said, Hey, I know your wife's in labor. Why don't you get, get.

quick hit the shower and go to the hospital and watch your kid being born. So my grandpa and him got in a car, drove 100 miles an hour from LA to Fullerton where I was born, somewhere around five o'clock. then, so my grandpa was a scouting director in 67, and then in October, I'm one in a couple of months, and my grandpa becomes the GM of the Dodgers. And within 15 minutes, he trades my dad to the Royals, so he didn't have to deal with any nepotism stuff. And also,

The Royals, was good, 69 was their first year as a major league team. They were an expansion team. So it actually worked out great for my dad. He got to play in the majors because it was an expansion team. He probably had the most play that he's ever had playing time. And my grandpa didn't have to like send him down to AAA. But my grandma was, man, I was.

Jeff Perro (02:51)
Yeah, I saw

you, your grandfather was the first general manager in history to trade his son. And I was like, there's gotta be a little more to that story there.

Jim Campanis (02:57)
I think he's the first of two.

Yeah, the first of two. And my grandma was pissed because I was the first grandchild, you know. So she was like screaming at my grandpa, how can you, now we have to go to Kansas City to see our grandkid and whatever. So, but then my dad got traded for Freddie Patek. And I was a kid, like three to four when my dad was on the Royals.

And then he got traded to the Pirates. Well, that's when you start kind of remembering your life. You know, as a kid, start, you know, around four. So, and so all of a sudden I'm wearing a Pirates jersey. You know, my mom cut it down. My dad would go up and down from Charleston, West Virginia in AAA to the Pirates, which wasn't, you know, maybe I think a six hour drive. And so we would be going back and forth all season and that happened for three years. So I would catch fly balls, you know, in the outfield and I would play catch with

Bruce Kison and play catch with Ed Ott and Dave Parker and these guys are just super cool to me when I was a little kid. You know, they went on for having fabulous careers. But I always felt like, and I was a bat boy, so I kind of just felt like I was part of the team and I'd go on road trips with some of them and boy the stuff I saw as a five year old on a road trip. Anyway, it was.

Jeff Perro (04:11)
Back in those days,

it was the Wild Wild West and the minors and the Big Leagues as well,

Jim Campanis (04:16)
No doubt in the bus, like I remember the bus filled with smoke because everybody smoked back then and you couldn't walk in the aisle because there were so many beer cans in the aisle of the bus. I had to walk on the arms, I remember. But those are fantastic and obviously I'm catching fly balls off of pro hitters in the outfield, throwing them into where we have the bucket behind Now I'm playing tee ball, right, when I'm eight years old and

I was kind of ahead of everybody, if you can imagine.

you know, just in the baseball stuff that I was taught, you know, at that early age, from everything, from my grandpa to my dad, to my dad's teammates, these baseball lessons, it was like, you know, my batting coaches in high school were Tommy Davis, Jim Lefebvre, Manny Mota you know, these are guys that were...

They were teaching me the same thing my dad said, but you know, every kid thinks their dad's full of crap when they're 15, right? It's just like common. And I'm a hitting coach and I actually tell the dad, I go, he's not gonna listen to you. My dad was a major leaguer and I thought he was full of it. And I had to hear Manny Mota and Jim Lefebvre say, you know, your dad was a great hitter, why don't you just listen to him? And I'm like, because they're telling me the same thing, the same thing, right?

Jeff Perro (05:12)
You as well.

Right.

Jim Campanis (05:34)
So that's what I do. I hit yesterday actually with some college players and a really good high school player. And I'm I'm replacing dad in the realm of being a batting coach.

Jeff Perro (05:45)
Right, yeah, it's different perspective that the kids need to hear sometimes. I see it with my kids. Did you think that you appreciated it then? Did you kind of feel like you were, I want say special. Did you appreciate being around baseball the way you did when you were five, six, 11 years old?

Jim Campanis (06:03)
I didn't know anything better and this is a very odd circumstance. So after my dad was done playing, I think I was in third grade, something like that. And ⁓ the only time I ever sat in seats was watching my dad play. And then when we go to the Dodger games, we always sat in my grandpa's box and like Vin Scully was literally like right next to us and there was a wall on the box and it was open air so I could hear his natural voice coming in just around the corner.

And we got served roast beef and Haagen-Dazs ice cream from guy that would serve the press box and everything. And then I'd never sat in a seat at Dodger Stadium until 1980, we went to the All-Star game and my grandpa had to give up his box for the Major League brass to be there. Yeah, so funny thing is so I'm in the fourth row and it was weird because a stranger sitting next to me and

Jeff Perro (06:52)
Officials, bigwigs

Jim Campanis (07:01)
And I didn't know, and people were saying, that's right. And I'm in the fourth row and I actually watched Ken Griffey senior hit a home run and became the all-star MVP of that game. And it was like 1980. And when he became my teammate with the Mariners, like a decade later or whatever, you know, so it was crazy how, you know, how small the world is. Ken Griffey Jr. was my roommate for a while in the minors during the instruction league.

Jeff Perro (07:02)
I can't believe I had to slum it today at the All-Star game. I'm slumming it here.

That's so strange.

Jim Campanis (07:31)
And so it's just, the baseball is such a small world when you think about, you know, all the people, the amount of people that are in there, we all seem to rub elbows, you know, somewhere in the mix. And everybody had a great nickname. And by the way, if you were on my team, you know, your last name is dog in Spanish, I mean, right? So you'd be J-Dog I think. I think I'd have to call you J-Dog.

Jeff Perro (07:50)
Yeah, as me, growing up in high school, any kind of

form of dog was every nickname I ever had, for sure. For those who don't know, Perro means dog in Spanish.

Jim Campanis (07:55)
Of course, of course.

Jeff Perro (08:00)
Right, right. So, ⁓ your grandfather and your dad, mean, the stuff that you witnessed also, but I'm sure the stories that you were told, and probably even just told over and over and over again, from a perspective that fans and baseball players don't get to see. me something that you heard your grandfather say. That was just that nowadays would just blow your mind if you heard it.

Jim Campanis (08:25)
Yeah, I mean there was a simple things like, ⁓ you know, everybody played multiple sports back then. So my grandpa was a star running back at New York University. By the way, he still is the only Greek born ⁓ player in the Major League player in history. And so he came over to the United States when he was like eight, learned English. He knew Italian because he, where he lived, they were occupied by Italy. So he had to learn Italian, which helped him learn Spanish.

So here's a multilingual guy. gets a scholarship for baseball and football at New York University, prestigious university. His classmates are like ⁓ Kissinger and Howard Cosell and guys like that. And he was friends with those guys the rest of his life. so he was a star running back. ⁓ He was offered several times to.

to sign with the Yankees and the New York Giants. But his mom said, look, you got to graduate college. And that was just a real important thing for him. And so he did. And then he got picked up by the Dodgers. And so he was able to get to the major leagues in 1943. And then his career was kind of iffy at that point. He had some injuries and he couldn't play. I know that story because that happened to me. But anyway, in 1946,

Branch Rickey, the owner of the Dodgers, I should say the general manager, he said that, hey, Al, if you go and help this new kid that we want to play in Montreal, because we're trying to get him to play in 47 in Brooklyn, I want you to teach him how to play second base, because in college and in the pros that he's played, he's only played shortstop or center field. Well, that guy was Jackie Robinson.

every time I think I saw him, because I was an infielder growing up, he would show me that all the different ways that you would do a double play at second base, both as a shortstop and a second baseman. And that was just like how my grandpa was wired, is all baseball all the time. And as he got older and was a general manager, still the Dodgers, he ended up getting like this, I'm telling you, like a 10 foot satellite dish in his backyard. It was ginormous.

Jeff Perro (10:35)
Right.

Jim Campanis (10:36)
just

so he didn't have to go on certain trips. So I remember watching the games with him on Sunday mornings and they would be playing in Montreal or they'd be playing in a cheap stadium. Yeah, and it was just, and to hear him, sometimes he would get on the phone, like that was right next to his big chair, his easy chair, and he called the dugout in some clubhouse or some other stadium and yell at Lasorda.

Jeff Perro (10:46)
Atlanta or something.

Jim Campanis (11:03)
doing something or telling me he needs to do this or do that, you know, so.

Jeff Perro (11:06)
He's sitting there in his socks drinking a beer.

Jim Campanis (11:09)
Well,

he was very serious about the games and then he would. Then he would actually go swimming. had a really nice pool in the back. And that was like his little fun thing was to go swim. swimming every time I think I've ever been there. Of course, he had to put on the rubber hat so his greasy hair didn't mess up the pool.

Jeff Perro (11:14)
Okay, I got you, I got you.

So you said that it helped your development as a young, young, young player being around the game. You ended up being a star at USC. What were the high school years like?

Jim Campanis (11:37)
No doubt. No doubt.

Yeah, I actually made varsity. I mean, we're talking Orange County, California, and it's a hotbed. I think it's one of the top counties in the country. If you add up all the pro players that have ever come out of Orange County, it's got to be in the top three, top two. So it's a very competitive area, and ⁓ I happened to make varsity my freshman year. ⁓

Jeff Perro (11:49)
Absolutely.

Jim Campanis (12:06)
And I played third base for the first time and I did pretty well and I made honorable mention all league. I hit over .300 as a freshman, a true freshman as they call it now. And I was 14, and there was some hazing that went on with these older guys. They didn't like this freshman coming in. And then my sophomore year, I batted second in Orange County in batting average.

And then after my senior year, I was on Team USA, know, actually John Smoltz was one of my teammates and we played all over we played in ⁓ in the Louisiana LSU first and then we ended up going to Albany and we We came in second. Unfortunately to Cuba who had it. We think these guys are 30, but we were still we were all high school guys But that was Team USA was a great experience so much so that I wanted to do it after in college so I

Jeff Perro (12:51)
Yeah.

Jim Campanis (12:59)
I had a really good junior season and you know in baseball you get drafted as a junior and I ended up getting drafted a 71st pick round three by the Mariners that was the only downside friggin Mariners. But anyway I elected to go on to Team USA I'm glad I did it but the Mariners lied to me and took my they told me come in and play in August and we'll you'll be a starter for the rest of the season and the day I got there

They took the year away from me and since I signed I couldn't play on Team USA. So I have a lot of those ⁓ sort of like disappointments in the book.

Jeff Perro (13:36)
And that's not

a good first taste of pro baseball in the business of baseball. They yanked you off Team USA and then said go home. Until instructional league.

Jim Campanis (13:41)
It's funny because a lot of

And I had like I had a lot of

coaches that that I had met with the Mariners who are great people. But they were also dealing with the management with the Mariners and their tightwadness. That's a word. And they would say to me, Campy you know, this isn't the Dodgers like just that plain and simple because the Dodgers did everything first class, you know. So eventually I actually got released by them, I think after was like fifth year with them. I

Have a house in Tempe and I bought it from winter ball money actually I still have it ⁓ and so I didn't want to I drove right past my house after I got released and I'm like, you know I'm gonna go to the Angel Complex in Mesa which was a little bit east of my house and I walk in and there's Joe Maddon and Joe's like Campy, what are you doing here? You shouldn't you be in Calgary, which was a AAA team for the for the Mariners and

I told him the story how I got released last day of spring training of course because that's how the Mariners roll. And he's like, oh, this is a break for the Angels We got a place for you. And they sent me to a A-ball to basically kind of be a mentor to the young players. And I think about six guys off that team made it to the majors. And I was kind of like the old guy.

Yeah. And I had a good season, but we had like a playoff game, the very last game of the season, And when I got to the field, I was all ready to be a champion and be the hero of the game. And I look on the lineup and I'm like, God, and I wasn't playing. just, I was catching bullpen that game. And I knew, okay, the Angels are looking at.

their youth movement, what's gonna happen in the future, and me at 26 or 27, that's old man stuff back then. Now that's the prime of your career, but back then, if you weren't in the majors by 23, 24, you weren't gonna be. It was gonna be very hard for that, so.

Jeff Perro (15:27)
is

You have

a life of AA ahead of you, kind of at best, at that age.

Jim Campanis (15:41)
I had three years of double

AA in the past. That's the problem. just couldn't And I had an injury all three years. I broke my wrist. A guy ran me over, dislocated my throwing arm, separated it, which is worse than dislocating. And so it was just a lot of almost like God said, hey, you're not destined to do what your grandpa and dad did. There were just things out of my control.

Jeff Perro (15:44)
Right, right, and you had a few more ahead of you if you'd

Jim Campanis (16:06)
That's one of the things that helped when I wrote this book, There were a lot of I don't know regrets a lot of like ⁓ Bitterness, let's call it and I had about ten years of I called in the book. I called it the bitter years I just couldn't watch a baseball game. I could not watch guys that I was better than or felt I was better than Fulfilling their dream on TV and I just couldn't do it and the only thing that helped me

get through that was in 1998 when they had that home run battle with, Sosa and McGwire going back and forth McGwire went to USC and I'm second at home runs to him at USC for a season and that was special to me and I really wanted to see Mark do it, you know, and I actually saw him not too long ago at the USC alumni game. We talked about that and that's what helped me kind of get back to being

you know, a fan of the game again. Although I still had those, that little bit of, a lot of bit of bitterness, but this book was kind of like going to a therapist. And as I was writing these stories, I started just writing them on Facebook and then people were like, you should get a publisher. And then that's how the book happened. I talked to somebody and then did it.

Jeff Perro (17:21)
Yeah,

I just bumped across your Facebook page a couple weeks ago and that's when I found out about your book. And I apologize to say I haven't read it. I hadn't had a chance to put my hands on it. But I definitely will because baseball biography books like yours and telling the story of that's why I'm doing what I do now. I love hearing about and reading those stories now.

Jim Campanis (17:36)
Yeah, this isn't a baseball. That's

But that's the one thing that this book is not. I did not want it to be a biography ⁓ or an autobiography, you know, or anything in that on that way. It was was it was simply a story I would tell my buddy if we were sitting at the bar watching a baseball game. That's what every story in this book. So there's a hundred of them. But I wrote one hundred and seventy five. And every story would be just like, dude, you know that guy right there who just who just at that home run.

Jeff Perro (17:41)
Okay.

That's cool.

Jim Campanis (18:04)
Let me tell you about the time we went to so and so or we did this and that, you know, and that's what the book is. And in fact, I have a great story. I know you're from Huntsville, right? You're a Huntsville guy. So I have a great story when you have time, I'll tell you a couple of them that happened while I was a player in Huntsville.

Jeff Perro (18:15)
Right, right, yeah.

My schedule is pretty free right now.

Jim Campanis (18:26)
let me just tell you a couple of short stories from Huntsville, So the first one, the title of the story is called God Wanted Us to Win.

And if you know being in Huntsville, ⁓ it can get a little treacherous during the summer with the thunderstorms, right?

Jeff Perro (18:43)
Yeah,

Jim Campanis (18:44)
yeah, and we also ⁓ understood that it's gonna rain in the Southern League when you wherever you went, there was a chance of rain and a lot of times it would be pouring when we woke up and it would be it would be 105 by, you game time and sweaty and nasty. And so, so anyway, so we're playing in Huntsville and we could hear now we're in like the seventh or eighth inning.

And we can hear the thunder's coming in, right? Thunder's coming in And I remember it was like the way the field faced, it was coming in like toward home plate, right? And you could hear the thunder, you could see the lightning, you know? And so we have like a strategy where we were, the game was tied, right, at the time. And so we were like, you know, let's get this game in so we don't have to sit, because it was getaway day. We wanted to get on the bus and get back because we had a game the next day in Jacksonville.

So, anyway, so all of a sudden the thunder gets louder and louder and louder.

in the top of the ninth when the score was tied, what ended up happening was that I'm on deck and we have a runner on third and there's two outs and I'm up there kind of timing the pitcher and the batter's up there and the pitcher's up there, right? And we got our guy on third and lightning strikes the light tower.

and it explodes, right? And this happens when the pitcher's in this stretch and he twitches like any human would. ⁓ Everybody hits the ground. It was the loudest noise I've ever heard. And the umpire just was like stoic and was just sitting there and he calls, BALK! Points to the guy at thirds and that's how we scored the winning run. And then we quickly ran out there. One, two, three, we're done. And we got on the bus and got out of there.

Jeff Perro (20:29)
He was

Umpire was ready to go home too. He was gonna have a rain delay on getaway day. It's his getaway day too. That's amazing.

Jim Campanis (20:31)
I do.

And I thanked him when I went out to catch

that next inning, you know. So, and by the way, in the same season, it was wet and I was catching this pitcher named Jim Converse who ended up pitching in the majors and he was little, but he could throw like 96. And he skipped one off of the dirt was wet and it skipped and it didn't like pop up. And I went to catch it and I was down and like, remember how Pena, the catcher for the Pirates used to get like really low.

So I was in that stance on an 0-2 pitch for him to like throw a pitch low and away. It skipped under my glove and broke my cup in Huntsville. the trainer had to take the, this traveling ⁓ ultrasound machine into my hotel room and he's like, I'm not going to do it. And I had to, you know, I had to take care of business with the gel and the ultrasound machine because the swelling got so bad. another Huntsville, another Huntsville fun story there.

Jeff Perro (21:28)
Hopefully

that came back positive or negative whatever the good one is hopefully that's what it came back

Jim Campanis (21:32)
I had a

kid later so everything still worked. So there you go. And then the first ever double A All-Star game was in Huntsville also and I made that team and it was the first time they put all of the double A, all the different double A leagues came together for one All-Star game. It used to be like league by league by league would have the All-Star games. This time it was like the American League versus the National League and all of the All-Stars from...

Jeff Perro (21:36)
Okay, good, good, I'm glad to hear that.

I didn't.

Jim Campanis (22:00)
And I mean, you name the guys who were basically the stars of my generation, they were all on that team.

Jeff Perro (22:07)
All

the guys off the covers of the Baseball Americas of the era, right, right, that game.

Jim Campanis (22:10)
That's right. That's right.

weather was good that night, luckily.

Jeff Perro (22:17)
Right. to backtrack to your college experience. You were a stud at USC. You were on Team USA, but not the Olympic team, and you covered that. Tell us some more about your college career and playing at that, USC being a baseball powerhouse in that area that's a hotbed of talent in the country.

Jim Campanis (22:37)
Yeah. So I signed, I was one of the last recruits with Rod Dedeaux who was a 45 year coach at USC. ⁓ I played great in the fall, but he was never there. Rod owned a very like successful trucking business. And his salary was $1 a year. And he put a lot of his own money into, into the

Jeff Perro (22:56)
I didn't know that.

Jim Campanis (22:59)
the stadium that's called Dedeaux Stadium and all of this stuff like Rod was very hands on, but he didn't coach in the fall, which in California we played 60 games in the fall against junior college teams. So we had, it was like two seasons, you'd have the fall season and then the spring season. And so I ended up hitting almost .400 in the fall season against these junior college pitchers. And then we played a couple of Division I's you're only allowed to play two.

So anyway, ⁓ now Rod comes out for the first game and he just puts in all the guys who were the starters from the year before. I was starting every game because the assistant coaches wanted to win and I was able to do well. And so I was-

Jeff Perro (23:45)
It wasn't like it is

now where everything's filmed, everything's on video, everything's data driven, where he could have easily gone back and typed some things on the computer and said, maybe I should start Jim He didn't think to do that or have the ability to do that.

Jim Campanis (23:55)
That's right. Well, he just had a.

If in 45 years he wasn't going to change his ways, like he, know, Fred Lynn didn't start his freshman year. Mark McGwire was a pitcher his freshman year. He, he did not think freshmen should play because They weren't salty vets as he called them. And by the way, Dedeaux was a, uh, my grandpa was knew Dedeaux from years and years ago. And he was the one that told me you're not going to play because that Rod doesn't believe in it. Right. So it was kind of,

a frustration and then boom, we get a new coach and it's Mike Gillespie. So I played for two ⁓ NCAA Hall of Famers and Gillespie and I just, but we're butting heads. was, you know, Mr. Cocky guy and he was just, wasn't going to have it. And I was on a full scholarship and, nobody else was. And so he was telling me, look, if you don't perform, we're just going to take your scholarship away and there's nothing you can do about it. And that pissed me off.

as it

Jeff Perro (24:52)
That's a tough threat to make on one of your

players, one of your star players much less.

Jim Campanis (24:57)
And that, but that was his plan. Like, and a lot of us came in with like, Hey, who are you? This is how Rod did it. And, and so I always kind of make the joke that, you know, I went from the country club to the prison camp, the way that, that Gillespie ran the show, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. he pushed me. I ended up, he put me at first base. we had a good catcher at the time.

He put me at first base my sophomore year, which I'd never played, but he's like, we're doing this so we can get your bat in the lineup, which was like the first time he ever complimented me. And then I also was able to have good games against future guys like Jack McDowell and people like that that were really good pitchers. And so he saw that, okay, the kid can hit, you know, but our catcher that year was also our closer. So I would go from first base to catcher. He would go from catcher to pitcher.

And he had the most saves in the country that year. made All-American. And then the next year, they moved him to pitcher full time. His name is Brian Nichols, great guy. I still talk to him all the time. And he's a high school coach. So Nick Dog, as we called him, J-Dog. So Nick Dog had a ⁓ career with the Reds. But again, here's a guy who should have pitched in the majors, but he hurt his arm. Like a lot of us had problems with injuries.

Well, my junior year came around though and everything just came together. My grandpa had just a terrible interview on Nightline in 87. And then everybody knew my last name. Everybody knew I was related to him. It was very challenging for a night.

Jeff Perro (26:34)
If they didn't

know, they saw the name on the back of your jersey.

Jim Campanis (26:37)
That's right. And I was 19 and I was just getting hurled insults every place we went. my teammates were lifting me up. But that pissed me off too, because that was wrong. My grandpa said stupid stuff, of course, but that wasn't how we rolled. mean, he was Jackie Robinson's roommate. If you're a racist, you would never have volunteered for that.

And so it was just very frustrating that the correct story wasn't revealed really ever. ⁓ So I kind of took it out on, yeah, well, I put it in the book, but I took it out on the pitchers. I mean, that was the only thing I really could do. ⁓ So I ended up leading the Pac-10 in home runs and RBIs. I actually broke the USC record for 92 RBIs in 62 games. It's still a record.

Jeff Perro (27:10)
and tell your book.

Jim Campanis (27:29)
And I'm number two in home runs for the season. had 23 and I missed the triple crown from by Eric Karros who had a pretty good career himself. He was at UCLA. Yeah, he was all right. And he was my roommate in Alaska. so we, know, we baseball is a small world, right? then I got asked to play on Team USA. And I told you that story earlier.

Jeff Perro (27:29)
Awesome, Joe.

He was all right.

I love it.

Jim Campanis (27:52)
I wanted to play on Team USA. I feel like that's one way that I can sort of maybe help to take the family name and give it little bit better look, you know.

Jeff Perro (28:03)
I see I didn't look at from that perspective. I looked at as, know, Team USA is heck of an honor and a heck of an adventure that you can take in the baseball world. But yeah, it would be a great way to put a positive spin on that family name.

Jim Campanis (28:15)
it ended up being a situation where I kind of wasted a couple of months if you look at it, you know, from retrospect. But I still have friends that were on that team that I never would have met and close friends. Joe Slusarki is one guy who he was a pitcher with the A's and Houston. I caught him great, great, great human being. I still talk, I just talked to him the other day. In fact, we would just call each other all the time and.

These are lifelong friends that I never would have met had I not played on that team. And I went to Japan for two weeks. I probably wouldn't ever go back there, but it was a free trip and I can check Asia off my... I only need to get to Australia now. I've been in every other continent but Australia. ⁓ Basically because of baseball or my work after baseball.

Jeff Perro (29:01)
Gotcha.

your last season playing professionally was 93 with the Angels? 94.

Jim Campanis (29:11)
94 with the Angels, yeah,

in the minors in Lake Elsinore. That's what I was telling you. I knew I was done. And after that, I just said, you know, I was actually broken. Every part of my body hurt. I think I was coming up on 28 when I realized things were just not the way they used to be. And it took me so long and I had to take so many pills to just throw the ball. It just didn't make any sense.

I was using this stuff called DMSO which they put on horses so that they don't limp out and it can't be healthy. So I actually went back to college.

Jeff Perro (29:49)
Exactly. If you continue to that for

It's not worth doing that to your body.

Jim Campanis (29:54)
But I did go back to

college after that. And that's what Gillespie told me when I saw him the next time after that. He's like, you're like the only guy that I can remember who was, you know, like, like good as a player who went back and got his degree. And I did. And I, and I got a degree in broadcast management from Arizona State. Cause I remember I told you, I bought a house in Arizona. So we were living in that house. Uh, and it was just a across town in Tempe.

And that class also had an internship, and so I interned at a country radio station because I'm so country. anyway, it ended up being a great experience, and they hired me. And then I sort of just kind of climbed the ladder in the radio advertising side to the point where I started my own ad agency in California. We moved here in 2000, back here.

And I was killing it. When people listened to the radio, like before Spotify and before Pandora and all those music things, I was absolutely killing it. And I had all these ideas and I worked with huge companies doing special promotional ideas. I happen to have this gift of creativity. I've been playing guitar since I was 15. I play ukulele on a song the other day for a jingle. And all of that stuff is kind of...

homogenized and gone now. Like now they just pay a license to like the Eagles so they can use the Eagles song in their commercial or something. Well, back in the day, people didn't do that. They wanted guys like me to come up with something, you know? So I had a really, really good, probably 10, 15 year run. It was another, it was, I was just as competitive as I was in baseball.

Jeff Perro (31:30)
And you really, you enjoyed that, right? It sounds like you enjoyed that.

Jim Campanis (31:38)
but now I got to put it in another direction. So I work with car dealers, I work with a bail bonds company and I used to get rappers who couldn't get their songs onto the hip hop stations. So I'm like, dude, I got an idea.

if you change your lyrics to these copy points that I have for my bail bond company and their phone number, I'll get your song on the radio. I got these, that bail bonds company went from, to number one in the United States because of these commercials. And to this day I have people, I was skiing not too long ago and we used to give away t-shirts with I came up with a copyrighted logo and everything of the bail guy.

Jeff Perro (32:02)
I bet they loved it.

Jim Campanis (32:20)
That was the guy, the bail guy, and he had an eagle on his arm and he was kind half Superman, half Captain America. And the place is called American Liberty Bail Bonds, so we had to make like an American Liberty superhero. Yeah. And so I'm skiing like a couple of years ago in local mountains in California, and there's a dude wearing the American Liberty Bail Bonds t-shirt skiing down the hill. And I'm like, that's how you know you did it. You're like, okay, that was successful.

Jeff Perro (32:30)
something to incorporate that.

but it's never gonna

die. You might be seeing those forever, American Liberty Bell Bonds, you be seeing those forever. Are they still around? Is that jingle still around? It's probably on YouTube.

Jim Campanis (32:50)
That's right. They are still around.

The kids are running it now. The dad retired and he was the one that I really got along well with. ⁓ And again, the bail industry changed just like radio industry changed.

They owned 17 houses or something at one point because people skipped on the bailing and they had to give up their grandma's house. Terrible stories, right? But they were very successful.

I was doing primarily audio advertising and then some of my clients wanted to do TV commercials, right? So I started to get into the TV commercial side and I found a really cool guy he still does a lot of TV commercials in Los Angeles and San Diego, San Francisco. And so whenever we need a TV commercial, we use him and I have

a guy that I share this on in my office right now and I share an office with this other guy. I call him Rhino. We always have nicknames to everybody. Mike Rheinburger Rhino. so we have our own ad agencies, our own agencies, marketing agencies, and we collaborate. So what we're doing now is we produce podcasts and we actually use the same platform that we're on right now, that Riverside platform. And we have, work with the National University

which is an online college. ⁓ I think they're in the top three or four in the country. ⁓ And then there's also a local Whole Foods company called Mother's Market. We've close to 700 podcasts and even radio shows before podcasts became a thing. All audio. So I became, unlike the audio engineer, I started being an audio engineer by making radio commercials back in the day. So it's funny how...

things come full circle, but we're just in the process of ⁓ where we think we're going to get this new college that's a local college, junior college. We had a great meeting with them. They just need to approve our budget. even did a, every show should have a little bit of a musical jingle to it, a little musical identity. So I'm the one who makes all the music for these podcasts. And we've, I've done four different musical pieces for four different podcasts that we've worked. ⁓

And so, you know, it's just, it's, one of those things where how does that translate to baseball? Well, in a lot of ways though, the drive, you have to be kind of a little bit creative. And when you play baseball, you have to have sort of the savviness, right? ⁓ so you can make a pivot here. You can make a pivot there in baseball the same way you would do, ⁓ in this line of work. Now I'm also working with an AI company. And so this AI company makes,

Jeff Perro (35:13)
competition.

Jim Campanis (35:32)
without getting too deep, make AI assistance, but they also have a program that works for media companies. And that's where my role is. We're waiting for a merger to happen ⁓ with another public company. I got all these things lined up. Now we're just waiting for them to activate, you know.

Jeff Perro (35:49)
and they're all going to activate at the same time and it's going to be crazy.

Jim Campanis (35:52)
Well, then I'd rather be in that situation than, ⁓ you know, hurry up and wait. Good problem to have, that's right.

Jeff Perro (35:57)
It's a good problem to have.

you're also doing lessons on the side,

Jim Campanis (36:04)
Yeah, so I actually have, ⁓ I've worked with hundreds of guys. I was a high school coach for four years, but it was just like too much time. And I had to drive a hundred miles a day to there and back and in Los Angeles, you know, that's three hours in the car most days. So it was just too much. that also has helped me get

through the grieving process, I guess you would call it, of not making my ultimate dream, right? So, I mean, at this point, I've just recently been asked to coach with a high school that's a little more local to here. We're kind of just discussing how that might work. I might just be a private coach for the kids for hitting, or I might be a guy in uniform, too. So we're still kind of seeing how things like that work, but it's...

Jeff Perro (36:48)
consultant.

Jim Campanis (36:54)
The coaching, yesterday I coached a couple college guys and a couple high school guys. And this summer I'll be coaching a ton more guys, the guys that come back from college who are playing locally. I'll be coaching those guys again. I have this thing, it's called a tripod, right? So mechanics.

timing of course is so important in baseball and then the mental approach right so you can't you can't hit the same way against let's say a left-hander who throws you know 78 versus the right-hander who throws 96 you have to have a different plan right and so I took a class and it's in my book and I think this is relevant to anybody who's listening this mental approach to life right so

So they taught us about how to visualize and I'm not sure if you've heard of this sort of program but you can, our minds are so strong. So what I learned in this class was you can visualize playing against the team that you're gonna be playing against the next day. and I did this against Jack McDowell. So here's a guy who's gonna throw 96 with a filthy split and a nasty slider.

And I put him in his Stanford uniform. put him onto the USC mound in my mind the night before. And I visualized him throwing those pitches. And you can slow down the arm because our brains are so great at doing things like that. So they call that super focus. you get to this point where, now you walk up to the plate, you don't even hear him announce your name. You're so relaxed because you visualize the success.

the night before and this goes for when I do a presentation for a client. I visualize on that the night before. So I know what I'm going to say. I know what I'm going to do. I go into this meeting and now I just kind of turn into a robot and it all comes back.

Jeff Perro (38:48)
It's automatic.

I love the mental psychology and the mental performance stuff. I've read books on it and such. I've also managed restaurants for a long time as well. the mental performance stuff is almost a synonym in them for management in a way.

So I've read lots of management style books on the same thing. my wife is an ER trauma nurse. She's been doing that for about a year. She's been a nurse for a long time, but she's in ER trauma now. That's some heavy duty stuff. mean, that's gunshots, car accidents, things like that. And you know, she struggles with stuff coming home sometimes and not wanting to go to work the next day because today was so terrible because there's something involving a 13 year old kid. And I feel like I've helped her talk her through visualization and other things to get your mind.

Jim Campanis (39:17)
Yep.

Yeah.

Jeff Perro (39:31)
right to be able to get up and go to work the next day and then perform well. And I think I've kind of had an impact with that. But it's a huge interest of mine too and has been for 30 years.

Jim Campanis (39:39)
It totally is.

And again, one of the things that's helped me too is, you know, I play music and that, and I listen to music and I think that there's, and a lot of, lot of the music I listen to is instrumental. So I don't have to get distracted by the lyrics. let the music sort of like, I don't know, cleanse me a little bit but help me work through whatever kind of issue it might be presenting itself.

Now you can't step out of the box, but that's what I used to do was step out of the box. Or if I swung and fouled a ball off that I knew that I should have hit, I used to walk through the left-handed batter's box all the way around the umpire and then back in. And that sort of helped me reset the frustration that I had for just missing that pitch. And those little things, make a ginormous

difference you know when it comes to let's face it I mean it's called mental health now back then it was like suck it up buttercup like you know kind of kind of attitude but really I found that if you can find strategies to

Jeff Perro (40:35)
Yeah, right. Definitely.

Jim Campanis (40:43)
to just sort of forget and move on or learn from and then not make that mistake again, these kind of things. Or just something happens to you like I had a rock hit my windshield recently and I was pissed off and I kept thinking about how much it's gonna cost. It cost 200 bucks with my insurance. All of that worry for what? Yeah, 200 bucks is 200 bucks, but it wasn't 1,000 or 1,200 like the windshield cost.

you know. So again these are these are things that help me as a player.

Jeff Perro (41:13)
It takes some

I have a...

Jim Campanis (41:17)
These are things that I kept these mental pieces and there's actually if you go on my YouTube channel, there's a 17 minute like baseball centric talk about visualization and I just kind of went through what I wrote in my book, Visualizing Success. So if you were to Google visualizing success and my name, it's an audio story but it's on YouTube and it just shows this, you know, the screen, the slate of me just visualizing success.

in my name, but it goes through the process that I learned on how to take your anxiety away when it comes time to perform.

Jeff Perro (41:56)
I'll share that as well. but like you said, it's a new thing. It used to be suck it up, buttercup. But now I left baseball in 2013. I was the clubhouse manager for the Montgomery Biscuits, which is the Rays' AA. And they had a mental performance.

Jim Campanis (42:06)
Okay.

Jeff Perro (42:10)
coach, like a roving mental performance instructor. And that was just like weird, like, that's, that's a new thing. That's, that's strange. Now everybody's doing it. Every club, I'm sure has probably a team of mental performance specialists. And on top of that, all the other gurus and such and ex players and stuff, we talk about mental performance and for the first a hundred years of baseball, that wasn't a thing. That's nice to see.

Jim Campanis (42:32)
No,

not just it wasn't a thing, it was frowned upon. It was like that you were weak. were a head case or you were weak. Right.

Jeff Perro (42:38)
Right, right. Yeah, you were a head case. If you speak to a psychologist, yeah,

you were a head case, you were weak and that was part of your makeup and that was a strike against you for sure.

Jim Campanis (42:47)
And a lot of guys took

to the sauce after the game to forget. And I know that I was guilty of that as well. There were times where I just sucked and I couldn't get to a beer soon enough to just wash my sorrows away, then I'd go home. But I always had a guitar with me. On every road trip, I took guitars anywhere. I would even buy a guitar if I didn't have one. And I learned that when I started playing when I was 15. I'm pretty good and I write my own

songs and things like that I was talking about. ⁓ I found that to be a really great way to recharge.

everybody should find their way to recharge. Maybe it's just hanging with your dog. And that works for me too. I have a great little French bulldog. She loves me and nobody else. And it's great when I get home and she just wants to sit there in my lap and I play guitar and she just looks at me like I'm a rock star.

Jeff Perro (43:47)
Well, Mr. Jim Campanis, it's been a pleasure talking to you. thank you for joining us on the show today. And I really look forward to having more conversations with you in the future, hopefully.

Jim Campanis (43:59)
Please call me anytime. I really enjoyed the conversation, man. This is a lot of fun.