Bill White’s trailblazing and broad-reaching career was recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum last summer, when he received the prestigious Buck O’Neil Award for his role in enhancing the sport’s positive impact on society.
But like O’Neil, who received his namesake honor in 2008 before his posthumous induction into the Hall in '22, White has a strong case to have a place in Cooperstown’s Plaque Gallery as a Hall of Famer.
White, 92, was instrumental in getting O’Neil and other Negro Leaguers into the Hall of Fame, and now his own case will be considered via the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot for managers, executives and umpires. A 16-member panel will cast its votes, and results will be announced on Sunday, Dec. 6.
It’s another opportunity to salute a man who not only had a successful 13-year playing career in MLB, but who went on to have a long and impactful career away from the field as a beloved broadcaster and then as National League president.
“I demanded to be recognized for what I accomplished,” White once said. “Nothing more.”
White accomplished a lot. As a player, he was an eight-time NL All-Star, a seven-time NL Gold Glove Award winner at first base and a 1964 World Series champion with the Cardinals. As a broadcaster, he was the first Black play-by-play person for a Major League team, calling Yankees games alongside the legendary Phil Rizzuto for the better part of 18 seasons. And as an executive, White spent five years as NL president, presiding over the 1993 expansion in which the Marlins and Rockies joined the fold.
Take any of those facets of his career on their own, and they are not enough to justify a Hall of Fame case. Take them in totality, and they paint the picture of a person whose professional career touched parts of five decades and who made a concerted effort to both make his mark and create a building block for others.
“I’ve been around [baseball] for a long time,” White said. “It’s given me a nice living, a nice home, five kids, four that finished college. It’s all through baseball. That’s why you want to protect it.”
White is one of just seven winners of the Buck O’Neil Award. It was recognition of his remarkable perseverance.
Born in Lakewood, Fla., and raised in Warren, Ohio, White signed with the New York Giants out of Hiram College in 1953. He wound up desegregating several teams in the Minors and was just the second Black player in the Carolina League.
White reached the bigs with the Giants in 1956, served in the Army for most of the next two years, then was traded to the Cardinals before the 1959 season. That year, he was selected to the first of six straight All-Star teams and won the first of seven straight Gold Gloves. He finished third in the NL MVP voting in 1964, the year he and the Cards won it all.
White retired with a .286 average, .806 OPS, 1,706 hits, 202 homers, 103 steals and 870 RBIs. His groundbreaking hire as a Yankees broadcaster came in 1971, and his call of Bucky Dent’s home run in the 1978 one-game American League playoff was a career highlight.
Though White was reluctant to take the job as president of the NL in the spring of 1989, he ultimately understood the meaning of the appointment.
“Bill had no choice but to accept that job,” Hall of Famer and former teammate Bob Gibson once said. “Not for himself but for other people.”
White oversaw the NL’s expansion effort. He also played a part in the movement to unite the two leagues under a single administrative umbrella.
White’s career is certainly the most varied of any of the eight candidates on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot. His election would be a boost to those who believe the Plaque Gallery, filled as it may be with true talents, ultimately comes up short in reflecting the many men and women whose impact on the sport was spread across a variety of roles. The Buck O’Neil honor was reflective of a baseball life fully lived. A Hall call would be icing on the cake.