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<\/p>\nOn March 9, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum\u2019s Board of Directors selected longtime MLB first baseman, broadcaster and baseball leader Bill White as the sixth recipient of the John Jordan \u201cBuck\u201d O\u2019Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, presented \u201cto an individual for extraordinary efforts to enhance baseball\u2019s positive impact on society.\u201d I recently had the honor of speaking with White about his career and the award, which will be presented to him on July 25 in Cooperstown as part of Baseball Hall of Fame Weekend.<\/p>\n
Bill White, 92 years young, belonged in the Hall of Fame long before now, with a multi-faceted career in the sport that spanned four decades. He played in the majors for 13 years, missing one year due to military service, then spent 20 years as a broadcaster, most notably for the New York Yankees, before finishing his career in baseball with five years as President of the National League. He appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot just three times, never garnering 2 percent of the vote, and at least twice was under consideration by the Veterans Committee without earning enshrinement.<\/p>\n
The Hall has generally not had any idea what to do with candidates like White, whose careers encompassed multiple roles. While their production as players may not have merited induction \u2014 White finished with 38.6 bWAR, which would put him near the bottom end of all first basemen in the Hall \u2014 their contributions to the game as a whole deserve some kind of honor. The Buck O\u2019Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, named for its first recipient, is the closest we get to that sort of all-encompassing recognition of an individual\u2019s life in baseball.<\/p>\n
White began his professional career in 1953 in the Class-B Carolina League, playing for the Danville Leafs, where he hit .298\/.369\/.465 as a 19-year-old; his 20 home runs tied for fourth among all hitters in the league, which featured a few other teenagers and some regular position players in their 30s as well. He was also the only Black player in the league at that time, playing in Danville, located on the southern border of segregation-era Virginia. Fans subjected White to abuse and racial slurs.<\/p>\n
He persevered, playing the next two years in A-ball and Double A, while continuing to take classes at Hiram College in the offseason, as he was studying to be a doctor and saw baseball primarily as a way to help fund his education.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be a doctor,\u201d White told me when I spoke with him a few days after the Hall\u2019s announcement. \u201cI always wondered, \u2018Did I make a mistake?\u2019 but I\u2019ve gotten over that now. I\u2019m very proud to be honored by this (award).\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy people didn\u2019t want me to play baseball,\u201d he continued. \u201cI wanted to be a doctor, and I needed money to go to school, so I played in high school and college. I said I\u2019ll save the money and I\u2019ll become a doctor. Then I was successful as a player. To be quite honest, I think about what would happen if I had become a doctor. I would still be taking part in what I wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
White made his MLB debut for the New York Giants on May 7, 1956, playing nearly every day the rest of that season, mostly at first base. He was drafted by the Army after his rookie year ended, and he missed all of 1957 and half of 1958 while he was serving in Fort Knox. He played on the base\u2019s baseball team briefly, but quit after he was refused service in a restaurant because of his skin color, while his white teammates received service and said nothing.<\/p>\n
When he returned to MLB, he played only 26 games in the second half of 1958 for the Giants (now in San Francisco), as he\u2019d been supplanted at first base by 20-year-old Orlando Cepeda.<\/p>\n
The Giants then traded White to St. Louis, a move he later said in his autobiography Uppity \u201cwould turn out to be one of the best moves of my life.\u201d He spent seven years with the Cardinals, hitting 140 homers and amassing 28.1 bWAR in that span while making five All-Star teams, back when that was a more prestigious honor.<\/p>\n
He developed a reputation as a strong defender at first base as well, with managers and coaches awarding him six Gold Gloves with St. Louis and one more after the Cardinals traded him to Philadelphia before the 1966 season. His last year as a player came in 1969, back with the Cardinals one last time, where he played sparingly as a pinch hitter.<\/p>\n
White\u2019s broadcasting career began while he was still a player, first for KMOX in St. Louis, then later for WFIL-TV (now WPVI) in Philadelphia, where he hosted a pregame show and also worked as a sports reporter in the offseason. When he retired, he became WFIL\u2019s sports director for a year before the Yankees hired him as the first Black broadcaster for any MLB team \u2014 perhaps ironic for a franchise that was last to integrate its playing roster. He called games for the Bronx Bombers for almost 20 years, most of that time working as part of a trio with Frank Messer and Phil Rizzuto.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where I come into the picture: I grew up listening to White, Messer and the Scooter on WABC radio and WPIX-11 on television, and those remain some of my core memories of my baseball fandom. Rizzuto was the character, but we all loved him in my family because he was Italian like we are. Messer was the just-the-facts guy who rarely altered his tone or inflection. White painted more of a picture for the listeners or viewers, with a mellifluous baritone voice and a style that showed more emotion than Messer without relying on histrionics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are many happy memories for me,\u201d White says now. \u201cA lot of guys at work don\u2019t get along, but we got along very well, me, Frank, Rizzuter, that\u2019s what I called (Rizzuto).\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Bill White and Phil Rizzuto together at a Yankees Old-Timers Game. (Focus on Sport \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
When asked about how he learned his style of announcing, he said, \u201cI think I was just lucky. If you play baseball, you\u2019re sitting on the bench, your guy does something, so you go up and watch it. Being up there and watching it happen, made it easy for me to describe it. I think that helped, I really don\u2019t know. I just did it!\u201d<\/p>\n
White describes himself as an attentive player, and says that\u2019s part of how he became such a successful hitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou better know your pitchers \u2014 they spend time knowing you,\u201d he said. \u201cNo. 1, you\u2019ve got to know their best pitch. Some guys can\u2019t throw a curveball well. This guy throws harder than somebody else. So you pay attention to how he\u2019s pitching to you, and you sit down and watch how he pitches to other people, too. If you\u2019re going to be successful you\u2019ve got to spend a lot of time really looking at what people do, even when you\u2019re sitting on the bench. Some guys don\u2019t do that, but I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also noted that his mother encouraged him to read as part of her emphasis on school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still a big reader,\u201d he says, \u201cSometimes, I forget what I have read, but my mother made me a big reader, so I got to be fairly decent in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked White if he had any advice for young people looking to play professionally, especially to young Black players given their declining participation in youth baseball and declining numbers within the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to want to play,\u201d White said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to, it doesn\u2019t make a difference if you\u2019re black, green, white, yellow. I was just thinking about that today. I was fortunate to make the right decision from a financial standpoint. I\u2019ve used that to do other things, to broadcast, to write a book. It\u2019s important not just to depend on baseball, to invest after you\u2019re done playing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a pretty good life. The man upstairs has been great to me, I\u2019ve always got to thank him. (The award) is an excellent thing that has happened. I\u2019m very proud.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On March 9, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum\u2019s Board of Directors selected longtime MLB first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,369,480,2329,99,1231],"class_list":{"0":"post-550297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-new-york-yankees","10":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","11":"tag-san-francisco-giants","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-st-louis-cardinals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}