Comics
Continued from Page 5
(“burned out completely”), he transitioned to find-
ing television audiences for the CBA. He came to be
familiar with soon-to-be legendary ESPN anchor and
commentator Bob Ley, who called games for the CBA
for two years. In 1989, Drucker left the CBA, and
soon after got a call from Ley.

Rumor had it that Pete Rose was going to be sus-
pended by Major League Baseball for gambling on
games. If you were Rose’s lawyer, Ley asked him, how
would you defend yourself? Drucker thought about
it, jotted some notes down and sent them to Ley.

The following week, SportsCenter called Drucker,
and asked him if he would give some advice to Chris
Myers, now a Fox Sports figure, about how to address
the legal questions on air. He one-upped them, and
said that he’d like to simply say what needed to be
said on-air himself. After some hemming and haw-
ing, he got his time, and so impressed his producers
throughout the next few weeks of the proceedings that
he was given a three-year contract to become a legal
correspondent for the league. And by the way: He also
broke the news that Rose would be suspended for life.

He left ESPN to become the commissioner of the
fledgling Arena Football League on June 1, 1994. Two
weeks later, he got a call about covering the fallout
from O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco chase. He
respectfully declined; besides, he thought, how long
could the trial go on?
He spent a few years with the AFL, before sell-
ing the team that would become the Philadelphia
Soul to Jon Bon Jovi. For the first time in 20
years, he found himself with nothing to do over
the summer. Finally, his wife, Fran, said he could
move those big boxes of comic books out of
the house.

His mother had been begging him to do the same
since 1969. OK, he said. After he got a lowball offer on
a collection he believed to be worth at least $10,000,
he turned to a little thing called the World Wide Web.

Only 2 percent of Americans had bought some-
thing online at that point. But Drucker had a
hunch, mostly based on the success of an online
bookseller called Amazon, that selling comics to
customers all over the world could work. The site
was up and running on Jan. 1, 2000. That night, it
had three orders.

In the 20 years since, the stockpile of comics
owned by his website, NewKadia, has grown to close
to a million; in 2017, it sold 250,000 comic books. All
in another job’s work for Jim Drucker. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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Jim Drucker
Photo courtesy of
Jim DeLorenzo
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