The Hall of Fame Case for Bill White

Sometimes it just feels right. Bill White, now 89 years old, is a current candidate to earn a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. White is one of eight candidates on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot (non-players) for the Hall’s Class of 2024. This ballot, which features managers, executives, and umpires whose primary impact was from 1980 and beyond, also includes managers Lou Piniella, Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland, and Cito Gaston, executive Hank Peters, and umpires Ed Montague and Joe West.

Sometimes in the history of baseball, there are men who had a longstanding impact and relevance in the game but didn’t quite measure up to the standards of a Hall of Famer in any aspect of their baseball life. White is one of those men. He was an excellent first baseman (a 7-time Gold Glover) who hit .286 in his 13-year Major League Baseball career. Then, for 18 years, he was a pioneering broadcaster, the first African-American to be a full-time announcer for an MLB team. From 1971-88, he partnered with Phil Rizzuto and Frank Messer in the TV and radio booths for the New York Yankees.

White’s baseball career ended with a six-year assignment as the president of the National League, from 1989-94, making him the first black executive in any major sport. It’s White’s tenure as the president of the N.L. that has placed him on this ballot, the results of which will be revealed at baseball’s winter meetings in Nashville on December 3rd. A committee of 16 members will vote on the candidacies of White and the other seven candidates. If anyone receives 12 out of 16 votes (75%), they’ll be on stage in Cooperstown next summer as a newly minted Hall of Famer.

White may not have had the longevity as either a player, broadcaster, or executive to merit a plaque in Cooperstown but, when you look at the totality of his baseball life, he becomes a compelling candidate.

Cooperstown Cred: Bill White (1B)

• New York/San Francisco Giants (1956 & ’58), St. Louis Cardinals (1959-65 & ’69), Philadelphia Phillies (1966-68)
• Career: .286 BA, .351 OBP, .455 SLG, 1,706 Hits, 202 HR, 870 RBI
• Career: 117 OPS+, 38.6 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 8-time All-Star in 5 different seasons (two games per year played from 1959-62)
• 7-time Gold Glove winner
• Member of 1964 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals
• 18-year broadcaster (1971-88) for the New York Yankees
• President of the National League from 1989-94

(cover photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)

Bill White: Early Years

William DeKova White was born on January 28, 1934, in Lakewood, Florida, a small town in the panhandle right on the Alabama border. White never knew his father and was raised by his mother and grandmother. The family moved to Warren, Ohio (near Youngstown) when Bill was three years old and lived in a segregated housing project.

White played football, basketball, and baseball at Warren G. Harding High School but wasn’t a big star in any sport. He went to nearby Hiram College on a football scholarship, choosing Hiram because of its pre-med program.  White’s life changed when a scout for the New York Giants spotted him swatting two home runs in an amateur tournament in Cincinnati. He worked out for Giants manager Leo Durocher in Pittsburgh while the team was in town to play the Pirates and he was offered a contract. White’s plan was to pursue a medical degree if he didn’t reach the majors in three to four years.

White encountered some racism in Ohio, but it was nothing like what he endured in his early years in the minor leagues. In 1953, playing for Danville (Virginia) in the Carolina League, he was called “nigger” to his face for the first time, and called that season “the worst time of his life.”

In his 2011 memoir “Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play”, he recounted one fan shouting, ‘You’ll be lucky if your black a– makes it out of here alive.’ White only exacerbated the situation by giving the fans the middle finger. His teammates escorted him to the bus, which the mob pelted with rocks.

— Jay Jaffe (FanGraphs Hall of Fame profile for Bill White), November 16, 2023

A powerful left-handed hitter, White hit well at every level of the minor leagues, progressing from Danville to Sioux City, Iowa, Dallas, and Minneapolis, before being promoted to the Giants in May 1956 at the age of 22. White, batting 6th in a lineup that featured Willie Mays as the team’s cleanup hitter, hit a solo home run in his first MLB at bat, leading off the 2nd inning.

These were no longer Durocher’s Giants, a team that had won the 1954 World Series. The 1956 edition, managed by Bill Rigney, only won 67 games, with White quickly establishing himself as one of the team’s best players. In his rookie campaign as the Giants’ starting first basemen, he hit .256 with 22 HR and 59 RBI, with the last two home runs coming in the season’s final game, against future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts. Despite the late start to the season, he quickly established himself as a top defensive first sacker, leading the N.L. in putouts and assists.

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White’s MLB career went on hiatus when he was drafted into the Army in 1958. He missed all of 1957 and most of 1958, returning to the Giants (now in San Francisco) in late July. Upon his return, White was merely a pinch-hitter, since future Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda had taken over at first base and was in the middle of a Rookie of the Year season. He was traded in March 1959 to the St. Louis Cardinals, a deal that changed his baseball life forever.

Bill White: Cardinals Years (1959-65)

Bill White was blocked at first base with the Giants by Cepeda and, with the St. Louis Cardinals, he was also blocked at first, by future Hall of Famer Stan Musial, now 38 and no longer playing the outfield. Wanting White’s bat in the lineup, manager Solly Hemus moved him to left field and he had a solid season, hitting .302 with 12 HR and 72 RBI. White, now 25, was twice elected to the All-Star Game (two games per year were played from 1959 to ’62) but did not appear in either game.

White wasn’t much of a left fielder defensively so, in 1960, Hemus moved him back to first base, with Musial mostly playing left in a less-than-full-time role. White flourished, winning the first of seven consecutive Gold Gloves. He hadn’t yet blossomed offensively (.283, 16 HR, 79 RBI) but, combined with his defense, was good enough to be elected to the All-Star Game twice again.

White was an All-Star twice again in 1961, this time voted as the starter for the N.L. squads. He went 3 for 7 in the two games with an RBI each. For the year he hit .286 with 20 HR and 90 RBI.

White blossomed offensively in 1962, hitting .324 with 20 HR and 102 RBI. Ironically, he didn’t make either All-Star Game that year, blocked by Cepeda and Ernie Banks, who had moved from shortstop to first base.

In 1963, White continued his offensive prowess, hitting .304 with 27 HR, 109 RBI, 106 Runs, and 200 Hits. He was an All-Star once again (as the starting first baseman) and finished 7th in the MVP vote. The Redbirds, now skippered by Johnny Keane, won 93 games, putting them just 6 games shy of the N.L. pennant.

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1964 was a magical season for the Cardinals. Lou Brock was in the fold in left field, third baseman Ken Boyer had an MVP season, and Bob Gibson led a strong starting rotation with three 18-game winners. Although the Redbirds won the same number of games (93) as they had in 1963, this year it was good enough to win the pennant; the Cards edged the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies by a single game. For his part, White continued to hit like an All-Star, hitting .303 with 21 HR and 102 RBI, his third consecutive season with 100 RBI or more. It was good enough to place him 3rd in the N.L. MVP vote, behind Boyer and Philadelphia’s Johnny Callison.

The 1964 Phillies famously lost 10 games in a row in late September, blowing a 6.5-game lead. The Cardinals were the beneficiaries, with White a key contributor to the Redbirds’ strong finish. He hit .429 (1.268 OPS) with 4 HR and 16 RBI in the Cards’ final 12 games, 9 of which were victories.

White’s bat went quiet in the World Series against the New York Yankees (he went 3-for-27 with a pair of RBI) but his teammates pulled out a 7-game series victory in what would be White’s only postseason appearance.

Keane left the Cardinals to take over the Yankees in 1965; his replacement was White’s former teammate Red Schoendienst. It was a disappointing season for the defending World Series champs with the team winning just 80 contests. White continued his strong play, hitting .289 with 24 HR albeit with a lackluster 73 RBI.

Bill White’s Final Years (1966-69)

After the disappointing 1965 campaign, General Manager Bob Howsam decided to clean house, trading away White, Boyer, and second baseman Dick Groat. White, Groat, and backup catcher Bob Uecker were dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Pat Corrales, Alex Johnson, and Art Mahaffey.

Playing for manager Gene Mauch, the 32-year-old White had another strong campaign, hitting .276 with 22 HR and 103 RBI. He won his 7th and final Gold Glove, while the Phillies finished 4th in the N.L. with 87 wins. It was White’s final campaign as a premier player.

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In December 1966, White tore his right Achilles tendon while playing paddleball. He tried to come back too soon and had several setbacks. Even with the help of novocaine and amphetamines, White was only able to play 110 games, with 369 plate appearances. He hit just .250 with only 8 HR and 33 RBI.

It didn’t get any better for White in 1968; he hit .239 with 9 HR and 40 RBI in 431 plate appearances. He was traded back to the Cardinals in the spring of 1969. White was used almost exclusively as a pinch-hitter, hitting .211 with 0 HR and 4 RBI in a mere 68 PA. He retired at the end of the season with a career .286 average along with 202 HR and 870 RBI.

In his 13 years on the diamond, White counted 13 future Hall of Famers as his teammates:

• Giants: Willie Mays, Hoyt Wilhelm, Red Schoendienst (also with the Cardinals), and Orlando Cepeda.
• Cardinals: Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Minnie Minoso, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, Ted Simmons, and Joe Torre (elected as a manager).
• Phillies: Jim Bunning and Fergie Jenkins.

“You can trust him with your life — if he likes you. And if he doesn’t, I don’t think you’d go away wondering about it.”

— Bob Gibson (reported in the New York Times Magazine), October 13, 1991

Bill White and the Integration of Major League Baseball

Bill White wasn’t a pioneer for the integration of African-American players into Major League Baseball (he debuted 9 years after Jackie Robinson crossed the color line) but he was a leader in speaking up about the lack of equal treatment blacks received as professional baseball players.

During his time in the Army, White showed that he wasn’t the kind of man to quietly accept the inherent discrimination in America. White serving at Fort Knox, Kentucky, he quit the Army baseball team when his teammates’ seemed uncaring when he was refused service in a restaurant.

In the majors, White’s career started in a good place, with the Giants on a team in New York City that had an established black superstar (Willie Mays). The same cannot be said for when he joined the St. Louis Cardinals in 1959. The Cardinals were the last MLB team to integrate seating at their ballpark and the best black player on the team (center fielder Curt Flood) was a second-year player, hardly an established star. Bob Gibson had yet to appear in the majors and didn’t emerge as a regular starter until 1961.

It was in 1961, with Florida’s spring training sites still segregated, White spoke up.

“In St. Petersburg the Cardinals’ black players stayed with local families. The pioneering black sportswriter Wendell Smith had raised the issue and a few major newspapers took up the story. That spring the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce invited only white players to its annual “Salute to Baseball” breakfast. White complained to a reporter, “When will we be made to feel like humans?” He was one of the few black players­—if not the only one—to speak up publicly.

By the next spring a St. Petersburg businessman had bought two motels and made them available to the team. Stars including Musial and Ken Boyer, who usually stayed with their families in rented beach houses, moved into the motels in a show of solidarity. Several players manned grills at dinnertime and White’s wife, Mildred, conducted classes for the children. Locals would drive by to watch black and white families frolicking together in the pool, a sight unprecedented in the Deep South.”

— Warren Corbett (from his SABR bio about Bill White)

By the beginning of spring training in 1962, half of the 14 teams training in Florida had integrated their facilities, the rest would do so by the end of that spring or the next year.

Bill White’s Broadcasting Career

While playing with the Cardinals and the Phillies, Bill White started his career on the airwaves, working in both radio and television. He worked part-time for KMOX radio in St. Louis, hosted a pregame radio show in Philadelphia, and worked in the offseasons as a sports reporter for local TV. After his playing days, he called college basketball and even hockey, becoming the first black broadcaster to call an NHL game.

Thanks in part to the recommendation of Howard Cosell, who had heard White calling college basketball, he was hired to join the broadcast booth for the New York Yankees in 1971. Along with former Yankees’ great Phil Rizzuto and longtime broadcaster Frank Messer, White was one of the voices on both radio and TV that brought Yankees games to life in the 1970s and 80s.

I grew up in New York City as both a Boston Red Sox and New York Mets fan (weird, I know, a story for another day). Anyway, as a New Yorker, the only times I could watch the Red Sox was when they played the Yankees or were on national television. And, thus, I grew up with White, Rizzuto, and Messer as much as I grew up with the Mets’ legendary broadcast trio of Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner.

Rizzuto, the beloved “Scooter” who was a part of seven World Series champion Yankees teams in the 1950s and ’60s, was the comic relief in the booth, with White and Messer playing the straight men. Rizzuto could get away with things that most announcers could not. He would famously leave the booth in the 7th inning so he could beat the traffic to New Jersey on the George Washington Bridge, he coined the phrase “WW” (wasn’t watching) when he missed a play during the game and had to put something in his scorebook. And, of course, he was always wishing friends Happy Birthday and plugging his favorite Italian restaurants.

All three men shared play-by-play duties on both TV and radio, with White happening to be calling the TV action during one of the most famous plays in the 1970s for the Bronx Bombers, Bucky Dent‘s home run over the Green Monster in the one-game playoff with the Red Sox in 1978.

White also was hired by CBS Radio and ABC Sports to do national work, where he also was a part of the Winter Olympics Coverage in 1980 and ’84. White called five World Series on CBS Radio (1976-78, 1987-88) and presented the World Series trophy on ABC when the Yankees won it in 1977.

White’s final season as a broadcaster was in 1988 and he finished his career as an on-air participant for one of the greatest moments in baseball history.

The link below is the full commentary by Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck with White alongside for the famous Kirk Gibson home run during Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. If don’t have 9 minutes for the drama of the entire at-bat, you can scroll to 6:40 to get Buck’s and White’s call of the famous tater.

If you watch the entire clip, you’ll notice that Buck refers to White as “Bill,” as most people normally would. Rizzuto always charmingly called him “White.”

Bill White: National League President

Although his entire career in baseball will be considered, Bill White is currently on the Hall of Fame ballot for his role as the president of the National League, not for his years on the diamond or in the booth.

White had the opportunity to be an executive pioneer with the Yankees; he had twice turned down owner George Steinbrenner to be the Yankees General Manager. White had closely observed how tough it was for a manager or GM to work for The Boss and declined the offers.

In 1988, N.L. President Bart Giamatti became the Commissioner of baseball, creating an executive opening in the senior circuit. And, so in 1989, White became the N.L. president, having been recruited by Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O’Malley. After initial reluctance, White decided that he had to take the job. He became the highest-ranking black executive in any sport.

In the fall of 1988, Hall of Famer Hank Aaron publicly bemoaned the lack of African-American representation in management positions in Major League Baseball, in both the dugout and the executive suite. Aaron himself had become the VP of player development for the Atlanta Braves in 1982 and a few former black players (notably Frank Robinson) had been hired as managers.

“You can say that Jackie Robinson is resting a little more comfortably in his grave now, because he went through hell. If it weren’t for him, there would not have been a Hank Aaron, or a Larry Doby (who broke the color barrier in the American League in 1948), or a Bill White. Baseball has moved into another dimension.”

— Hank Aaron (February 8, 1989)

As the league president, White was mostly responsible for discipline for players, coaches, and managers and for supervising N.L. umpires. White had a cool relationship with the umpires’ union chief, Richie Phillips, who felt that the former player reflectively took the player’s side when in dispute with an ump. White admitted as much to the New York Times’s Claire Smith: “Hey, I can’t help it, I’m still a player. I’ll always be a player.”

White considered his most important accomplishment was how he helped guide the N.L.’s expansion process that led to new franchises in Miami and Denver in 1993, although he was disappointed when the Colorado Rockies did not interview minority candidates for front-office jobs (this was a mandate put in place by Giamatti in 1989 and endorsed by commissioner Fay Vincent).

White was criticized for being inaccessible to the media, save a few reporters (such as Smith) who knew him during his playing days. “I don’t talk to the man, I don’t even try anymore,” said veteran writer Jerome Holtzman. “Why keep trying if the man won’t acknowledge you?”

(White) became frustrated by the seeming impossibility of satisfying so many constituencies — labor and management, players and umpires. “There are just too many spheres of influence all working against each other instead of working to where you get one circle together,” he told Smith. In a 1992 speech to the Black Coaches Association, he voiced some frustration at the owners by saying, “I deal with people now who I know are racists and bigots. I’m bitter. I’m mad.”

— Jay Jaffe (FanGraphs profile of White), November 16, 2023

White retired from his job as N.L. president in 1994, sensing the end of the independent executives in Major Baseball due to the owners’ ouster of Commissioner Vincent, replacing them with “one of their own” (Bud Selig). White turned out to be right; the leagues ceased functioning as separate entities in 2000; his successor Leonard Coleman was the last N.L. president.

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Bill White and the Hall of Fame

Bill White appeared on three BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) ballots, from 1975-77, earning at most 1.9% of the vote in an election that requires 75% for enshrinement into Cooperstown. Prior to his presence on this year’s ballot, he has appeared on a version of the Veterans Committee ballot three times before, never coming close to induction.

Although not a Hall of Famer (until, maybe, next month), White has been influential in the administration of the Hall, having spent many years on the Hall’s Board of Directors. In 1991, he was an “affirmative” vote in the Board’s unanimous decision to keep Pete Rose off the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot by adopting a rule indicating that anyone on baseball’s ineligible list “shall not be an eligible candidate to the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

He also was a voting member of several Veterans Committees that considered the candidacies of players overlooked on the writers’ ballot and for non-players. He was no doubt an instrumental “yes” vote in the election of Rizzuto to the Hall of Fame in 1994.

Final Thoughts: Is this Bill White’s Year?

Given that White has never gotten close to a Cooperstown plaque in the past, is there any reason to think that this year might be different? The true answer is that I have absolutely no idea. His case is profoundly unique in that he doesn’t quite measure up either as a player, broadcaster, or executive. Also, the broadcasters have a separate wing anyway; if you’ve ever been to the museum in Cooperstown, you know that the placards for the broadcasters are considerably less impressive than the plaques in the gallery.

The reason that I think it might be different this year is that White has a unique case among the eight candidates on the ballots. As indicated at the top, there are four managers on the ballot (Lou Piniella, Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland, and Cito Gaston), one other executive (Hank Peters), and two umpires (Joe West and Ed Montague). The 16 voting members of the Era Committee can vote for only three out of the eight candidates and a candidate must get 12 out of 16 votes (75%) to make it to Cooperstown.

I’ll be honest. Although one of my best friends is an umpire, I don’t really get putting umps into the Hall of Fame. I don’t know how to properly evaluate Montague or West, other than the fact that the latter worked more games than any other umpire in baseball history. Peters had a productive career as an executive with the Kansas City Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and Cleveland Indians. Peters, however, passed away in 2015 and there has for a long time been a bias towards the living or the very recently deceased.

As for the managers, Gaston is an easy “no.” Although he won a pair of World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, he ranks only 75th on the all-time wins list for MLB managers with 894.

So, for me at least, that leaves three votes for four remaining choices: White, Piniella, Johnson, and Leyland. All three skippers have strong cases and it’s certainly possible that some voters will look to enshrine a managerial trifecta. But I think it’s more likely that voters will look at White as a unique case that doesn’t fit into any historical Hall of Fame precedent.

Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe makes the best case that I’ve seen:

“Because he contributed in three different areas, White’s candidacy isn’t easy to evaluate, but his playing career was a notable one; if not Hall caliber, it’s not far off from the likes of the recently elected (Gil) Hodges and the popular (Steve) Garvey. Hodges’ post-playing exploits boil down to managing the 1969 Mets to an unlikely championship and two other seasons barely above .500 from among his nine on the job. To these eyes, White’s pioneering work as a broadcaster and executive trumps that — there’s one champion annually, after all, but it’s not every year that someone sets major firsts that open so many doors for others… Considering all of that as well as the example White set by speaking out on the record regarding segregated housing as a player, which put his career at risk but led to swift change, I have to question how voters could think of turning him down. The breadth of White’s achievements and the impact he made upon the game in so many areas resonates and merits election.”

— Jay Jaffe (FanGraphs profile of White), November 16, 2023

Jaffe is one of a small number of writers who have written more about the Hall of Fame than I have in the last six years (considerably more, in Jay’s case). I often disagree with him on who should or should not be in the Hall of Fame, but in this case, I’m sold.

I will admit, though, that it makes me a bit uneasy to elect someone as a pioneer simply because they were the first member of a minority class to achieve a certain status in the game. Should Kim Ng be elected to the Hall of Fame in the future because she was the first woman to serve as a general manager of a franchise in the major team sports leagues? There are some who would say “yes” but, I imagine, most would say “It’s too soon; she has to do more.”

To me, you can’t elect White simply because he was the first black man to be the president of one of the leagues. By that logic, then you must also induct Gaston as the first black man to win the World Series as a manager (and, of course, he won two). But it’s easier to compare Gaston to the three other managers on the ballot (apples to apples) and his career doesn’t measure up to the others.

In White’s case, he did more, much more than simply be the “first.” He was an excellent player and a great broadcaster. And, if “firsts” are important to you, he has the dual “first” in broadcasting and as an executive.

All of that, to me, makes him worth a pioneering exception and worthy of a plaque in the Hall of Fame. Sometimes, it just feels right. White feels right. Let’s put the man on stage in Cooperstown next summer.

Thanks for reading.

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