Billy Wagner's excruciating Hall of Fame wait meets joyful end: 'Just happy it's over'
For the fourth time in the past eight years, the 10th and final shot was on the money for a would-be-Baseball Hall of Famer.
Billy Wagner, faced with his last chance at earning enshrinement to baseball’s hall of immortals in Cooperstown, N.Y., finally vaulted the 75% mark to punch his ticket to athletic immortality, receiving a solid 82.5% of support in balloting released Tuesday evening by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, this one year after missing by a galling five votes.
Yet in the time since the Hall of Fame shortened eligibility for the ballot from 15 to 10 years before the 2015 election, hopping a ride on the last available lifeboat to Cooperstown has become fashionable.
In 2017, center fielder Tim Raines made a large jump to 86% in his 10th year. Four years, later, it was designated hitter Edgar Martinez reaching 85.4% after reaching just 70% in his ninth year.
And in 2020, Larry Walker – probably the best all-around player among this group – squeaked over the bar with 76.6% of the vote, a huge leap from 54.4% a year earlier.
Wagner needed no such leap, just a favorable breeze at his back. Nonetheless, for a relief pitcher whose 422 saves don’t put him near the top of the list, whose 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings are harder to contextualize as they came in brief bursts rather than six-plus innings, the wait was arduous.
And when Wagner received the call that this 5-foot-10 southpaw from rural and rugged southwest Virginia was Cooperstown-bound, an emotional dam of sorts finally burst.
Having your legacy parsed – your statistics, your accomplishments, that always nebulous “makeup” that scouts and fans and media alike try to quantify – was exhausting for Wagner. The 10th time around might have been the toughest.
It was also the most fruitful.
“When you start dealing with character and things you can’t control, that’s the toughest part,” Wagner said Tuesday night on a media video conference. “It’s not an unbiased process. But in a day and age where we have so much more – you can look at numbers a little deeper – it’s difficult. I’m an emotional person anyway. These things touch home. They’re a little bit more personal when you fought the way I did.
“For me, I’m just happy it’s over.”
Wagner became the first left-handed reliever elected to the Hall of Fame, and he embraced the other, very unlikely pieces of his rise. He played collegiate ball at the Division III level – Ferrum College.
He hails from a corner of Virginia nothing like the baseball-rich region near the Chesapeake Bay that’s produced All-Stars by the handful – closer to the borders of West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky than brighter lights that allow kids to dream bigger.
He did not see his first major league game until he earned his way into the Cape Cod League – and managed to steal away to a game at Fenway Park
And when he visits the Hall of Fame for a media availability this week, it will mark his first trip to Cooperstown.
Oh, he came close: Wagner began his professional career in the New York-Penn League, pitching seven games for Auburn, including an outing at Oneonta, a Yankees affiliate about a half-hour’s drive from Cooperstown.
That he vaulted the four levels to make the big leagues, pitch 16 years, accrue 422 saves, strike out a historically fantastic 12 batters per nine innings, make seven All-Star teams – and still have to sweat nine years to complete the symbolic and physical last leg to Cooperstown?
Yes, it is a frail process, fraught with peril and perhaps some second-guessing when Wagner retired after the 2010 season to both spend more time with his family and help mold their baseball careers.
Will Wagner is now an infielder with the Blue Jays, and Wagner remarked several times how crucial his family was in navigating the Hall process. And Wagner not once has regretted stepping away, even if he fell short of a few bigger, rounder numbers to buff out his Cooperstown resume.
It all came to a head Tuesday afternoon. Dabbling in some busywork. Going to lunch.
And yet.
“I felt like the clock stopped,” Wagner says of the wait for the literal Hall call – or the soul-crushing silence that serves as a permanent no. “There were many times throughout this day where the emotions were running high.
“From 2 o’clock to about 5:15, it got very slow. It was very hard to control things. This day is really a celebration for all of us – we got through this process. Now, I can finally eat a little bit today and enjoy the itinerary the next couple days.”
It is a brutal process, one outfielder Andruw Jones – who was named on 66.2% of ballots Tuesday - may experience two years from now, when he’ll probably be the next 10th-and-last-timer up for consideration.
Yet Wagner will spend the rest of his life signing autographs tagged with, “Hall of Famer.” It was a punishing wait, with the ultimate payoff.
And Wagner, who now coaches baseball at a private school in Charlottesville, will forever be a beacon – for diminutive hurlers, for D-III dreamers, for those hundreds of miles off most scouts’ radar.
“Those things,” he says, “mean something.”
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