Pat Kennedy: Talks with former president White

St. Louis Cardinals all-star first baseman Bill White and friend John Vlad at Busch Stadium. White arranged for his lifelong friend, a pediatrician from Warren, OH., to be loaned a uniform and spend time with the team during a 1961 dream holiday in St. Louis. Photo: John Vlad.

Originally published July 1, 2019

Recalling his time at the plate, in the booth and at the helm of the National League

By Patrick Kennedy

A dozen words: That’s all the genial gentleman with the thatch of snow-white hair needs to sum up his curious disinterest in big-league baseball – curious because the old timer spent his entire workaday life in the game, attaining the pinnacle of success in uniform, then, after hanging up the cleats, breaking racial barriers in two related off-field endeavours.

“I played it, I called it, I ran it – that was enough,” said Bill White, the slick-fielding first baseman-turned-broadcaster-turned-league president, explaining why he hasn’t been to a ball game in the last quarter-century – and why he hasn’t missed it one iota.

“Life moved on and I moved with it,” explains the man who captured seven consecutive Gold Glove awards, all but one during his salad seasons in the 1960s with the St. Louis Cardinals, and with whom he won a World Series title in ’64. “I had other things to do.”

Fishing, for instance, hand-to-fin combat with 100-pound halibuts inhabiting the frigid waters off Alaska’s Kodiak Island. Or exploring America by asphalt behind the wheel of a highway-hogging 42-foot motor home. Or spending more time with family and friends from long ago. Or just kicking back at his Canadian cottage.

It’s in the latter setting, a 30-minute drive from Kingston, where White opens up on the past to a visitor with a note pad, agreeing to what for him is a rare interview since walking away from baseball in 1994. He has interrupted a self-imposed silence only once, in 2011, to promote his candid autobiography, a book called Uppity. He’s been hooked on summering here ever since a friend lured him north on a fishing trip in 2002. At his request, the exact location of the lake side cottage is withheld here. At 85, White closely guards his privacy.

His 13-year playing career featured five all-star game appearances including the 1963 contest that showcased an all-Cardinal infield (Ken Boyer, Dick Groat, Julian Javier and White). He played for the New York Giants, the Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies, and among his 1,706 hits were 202 that left the yard. Asked to pick a favourite highlight, White, the consummate team player, responds without hesitation: “Watching Maxi (Cardinals’ second baseman Dal Maxvill) catch that fly ball for the final out in the ’64 Series.”

In 1971, two years after his playing days ended, White, who had dabbled in radio in St. Louis and Philadelphia, commenced a memorable 18-year run broadcasting New York Yankee games on radio and later on TV alongside Yankees legend Phil ‘Scooter’ Rizzuto (and Frank Messer). White became the first African-American broadcaster of a major league team.

Bill White interviews former Yankee SS Phil Rizzuto on a Yankee pre-game show.

He laughs to recall the first time he teamed with Rizzuto, who was handling play-by-play duties in a spring-training game. The score was tied in the bottom of the ninth with the Baltimore Orioles at bat. Rizzuto, spotting the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio, outside the booth, whispered to his novice broadcast partner. “Hey White, take the mike. I’m going to set up a golf game with the Clipper,” and with that Scooter scooted away. As fate would have it, the next Oriole batter belted a walk-off home run. “All I could say was ‘Uh-oh,’” White recounts with a chuckle. “That was the first of many times Phil left me alone.”

Diehard baseball fans in this neck of the woods fondly remember the broadcasting duo. “On any given weeknight we might hop in a car and drive beyond the city limits to get clear radio reception and pick up Bill and Scooter painting their wonderful picture of that night’s critical game,” reminisced Kingston-born author Paul Murphy, 64. “They were experts in everything baseball and complimented each other effortlessly.”

In 1989, White was named National League president, the first black leader of a major sports league. During his tenure he guided the senior circuit through expansion and controversy, welcoming new franchises in Miami and Denver and dealing with bombastic Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and the gambling-related suspension of baseball’s hit king Pete Rose.

He smiles when asked about his own first big-league plate appearance. Summoned by the New York Giants on May 7, 1956, the 22-year-old, using borrowed spikes and bat, clubbed a home run at Busch Stadium off Ben Flowers to become one of 118 players to hit a home run in their debut at-bat.

“He actually struck me out,” White says, eyes widening, mouth twisting into a grin, recounting the moment like it happened yesterday and not 63 years ago, “a breaking ball on the outside corner on a 2-2 count. I was already walking back to the dugout when I heard the umpire say, ‘Ball Three.’” Given new life, he promptly hammered the next pitch into the bleachers for the first of 22 home runs he hit during that stellar rookie campaign.

While with the Giants, White forged a lifelong friendship with Willie Mays – the ‘Say Hey Kid’ – one of baseball’s greatest talents who in 1956 was already an established star. Mays took the pea-green big leaguer under his wing and into his house in the East Elmhurst section of Queen’s known as the ‘black Beverley Hills,’ where entertainers Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald also resided. White and Mays – a teetotaler – frequented Harlem hot spots such as the Red Rooster, Ray Robinson’s and Small’s Paradise. They drove to the Polo Grounds in Mays’s tan Cadillac, with Willie perpetually providing batting tips, particularly on opposing pitchers. “(Brooklyn Dodgers ace Don) Newcombe doesn’t have a curve, and if he sticks his tongue out, look for a change-up,” White quotes his old teammate, who decades later would write the foreword for Uppity.

“Willie was like a father to me, I couldn’t have made it without him,” he says, calling the 1959 trade from the Giants to the Cardinals a career low point for him, albeit a necessary one: When White returned to the Giants following two years of military service (1957-58), he found himself third on the team’s depth chart at first base behind two future Hall of Famers, 1958 NL rookie of the year Orlando Cepeda and angular slugger Willie McCovey, who was putting up gaudy numbers in triple-A.

White flourished with the Cardinals, who defeated an aging Yankees squad in the seven-game ’64 World Series. After the clinching victory, he kept a promise made during the season when the notion of copping a pennant seemed far-fetched. He spoke to a local church group before joining his joyous teammates at Stan Musial’s restaurant.

He sold his championship ring several years ago. “I invested the money wisely and I suppose that ring went up in value, too, so we both did well,” he points out. The Gold Glove awards were distributed among the children and grandchildren in his and “lady friend” Nancy McKee’s blended family. (The two, both previously married, met in junior high in Warren, Ohio, and have been together 35 years.)

Somewhere in his winter home high above the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just down the road from the house of ol’ buddy Sandy Koufax, is the gold card presented to White at the end of his term as NL president (1989-1994). The card, which grants the bearer admission to any ballpark in North America, has seldom if ever been used. “It’s packed away in a box somewhere,” says the owner.

It’s been said that White never loved baseball because he knew it would never love him back. Clearly there was little love conferred on him by bigoted fans whenever he suited up in minor-league towns in the Jim Crow South. Nor was he afforded much affection in big league cities that still enforced segregation when he was called up in ’56. White said “I fought racial prejudice my whole life and in my own way.”

“Bill White is not your regular pro athlete,” John Vlad remarks over the phone from Warren, OH. Vlad is the player’s oldest friend going back to grade school in the city of 40,000. “Bill’s an intelligent, pleasant, articulate, caring individual. Around here he’s more than just a famous jock.”

The street adjacent their old high school is called Bill White Way. “Bill’s admired not because he was a Major League ballplayer but because he was a great student, our senior class president, someone who was active in the school and in the community,” he adds.

During the 1961 season, Vlad visited White in St. Louis where, outfitted in a Cardinal uniform, he worked out with the team and hung out with the players afterwards – a fantasy camp minus the fantastic fee. At a barbecue held at White’s house, Vlad teamed with pitcher Bob Gibson in a badminton match against the host and another Cardinal. “We tarred them, too,” he recalls.

INF Tommy Herr, LHP John Tudor and White were inducted into the Cardinals HOF in 2020.

Following high school, the two pals enrolled in premed program at tiny Hiram College – White on an academic scholarship. Vlad – that’s Dr. Vlad – went on to become a pediatrician and at age 84 still has his practice. White, however, thwarted his own plans of becoming a physician by being uncommonly proficient at baseball, a game that today, ironically, he views with noticeable indifference.

For William DeKova White, there was always more to life than baseball. It just took him longer to get on with it.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com.