"Each summer for more years than he likes to count, Bill White would meet for dinner with an old friend from Hiram College. They would talk about those days on the placid Ohio campus and they would talk about the days since.
'He's a surgeon now and he would describe his work and talk about the lives he has saved,' remembers White. 'I would talk about the exciting games I played, the World Series and All-Star Games I enjoyed and the tremendous Yankee baseball I described through the years.'
There would be much joy at the reunion and a little sadness. The doctor would moan about his inability to hit the curve ball and march on into baseball as White did. The former Yankee broadcaster and new president of the National League would muse about what his own life might have been like if he had continued his educational dream and went through medical school.
The musings will certainly take on a different tone this summer as White begins his term as the 13th National League president and first to represent his race.
Baseball took a historic step on February 3, 1989 when it named William De Kova White as its new NL president to succeed A. Bartlett Giamatti.
What was truly significant about the acceptance of White as the NL boss was not the color of his skin but the quality of his work. White became the first National League president to move into the position from the playing ranks. The American League had made that historic move twice before with Hall of Famer Joe Cronin and present chief Bobby Brown, the former Yankee third baseman and retired physician.
After 18 years in the Yankees' broadcast booth- a more significant move in 1971 than his present promotion in 1989- followers of the former first baseman's career could hardly be surprised.
The smooth fielding, sweet-stroking left-handed hitter with the Giants, Cardinals and Phillies was a leader on every team he played for, was a figure of dignity and style around the Yankees and has as many baseball friends without really trying as any man in the game.
'When I played with him,' says Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, 'he was a leader on our club. The 1964 Cardinals (Gibson, Curt Flood, Ken Boyer, Dick Groat, Lou Brock, Roger Craig, Curt Simmons, Ray Sadecki) was a veteran club. That was the year we passed the Phillies on the final day of the season. We probably didn't have the best talent but we played hard together.'
That Cardinal team was as famous for its clubhouse needling as its performance on the field. One of the lead characters, if not a lead performer, was Bob Uecker. Many of the lines now heard from him on the Tonight Show were tried out on his St. Louis teammates.
'Bill ran a little trading post in that clubhouse,' Gibson added. 'We used to get small gifts for appearing on radio and television in those days, a portable radio, a shaver, a small traveling bag, things like that. We gave everything to Bill for his trading post. Then we visited his locker when we needed an item and made a deal. I think that business experience will help him in his new job.'
Born in Florida and raised in Ohio, White's family always stressed education. Both his parents were school teachers and White clearly made his future intentions known early. He was going to medical school.
'I got through Hiram College on athletic scholarships and then I needed money for medical school. I had been accepted at Ohio State. I decided to postpone school and play one summer after the Giants signed me for a $5,000 bouns,' White says.
He reported to Danville in the Carolina League and hit .298. He got a pay raise from the Giants and decided to try one more season of professional baseball before starting medical school. He batted .319 at Sioux City in the Western League. His fate was fixed.
'I guess I surprised myself and everybody else by how well I did. The Giants were pressing me for a decision about my future. They had big plans for me and they didn't want me leaving them as I was moving up. I decided to cast my lot with baseball,' he says.
The Giants, Cardinals, Phillies and all of baseball would benefit from that decision. White would add his own style and grace to the game. He was not only a fine performer almost from the start, he was a wonderful representative of the game.
He joined the New York Giants in 1956 and was slightly in awe of his more famous teammates, especially Willie Mays, then reaching his peak as one of the game's greatest performers.
'Willie made it all look easy. I had to work for everything I got in baseball,' he says.
He hit .256 as a New York rookie, spent most of the next two years in the service and was traded to the Cardinals in the spring of 1959. He reported to them in St. Petersburg, Florida. He had previously trained with the Giants in Arizona.
'This was 1959, a dozen years after Jackie Robinson, and black players still lived separately from the whites. I wasn't about to sit still for that,' he says.
Led by White, Gibson, Flood and an outspoken militant named George Crowe, the minority players fought for and won housing with the rest of the ball club. It was a major step forward. When the Yankees followed suit in that town, it was a lot easier for the Mets when they landed in St. Petersburg in 1962.
White's peak year with the Cardinals probably was the pennant-winning season of 1964. He batted .305, had 102 RBI (White had four seasons over 100 RBI in 13 years), slugged 21 homers and led the league in fielding.
He was traded to the Phillies in 1966, tore his Achilles tendon there in 1968 and ended his career back in St. Louis in 1969. He batted .286 for those 13 seasons, not Hall of Fame numbers, but quality play for good teams.
As his career began winding down, White began revving up as a broadcaster. He did some broadcasting in Philadelphia and was taken on by KMOX in St. Louis in the off-season after the trade.
As the civil rights movement gained strength in the late 1960s, White's name came up often as a candidate for the first black manager. No less a personage than Jackie Robinson singled White out as the most qualified man for that historic breakthrough.
'I never really wanted to manage,' he says. 'I didn't want my job to depend on 25 other guys.'
He became more proficient in broadcasting. In 1971, former Yankee boss Michael Burke brought White to New York as a partner on radio with Phil Rizzuto. It was quite a gamble.
White, intelligent, quick-witted, fast with a quip and highly knowledgeable about the game, was an immediate hit. When George Steinbrenner took over the team in January of 1973 he quickly assured White he was a big part of the new New York Yankees.
'We went back a long way,' says Steinbrenner. 'I remember seeing him as a basketball player for Hiram College when I was coaching an Air Force team. I followed his career as a player and I was proud to have him with the Yankees.'
Steinbrenner never actually offered the managerial job on the team but he did discuss the managerial prospects on several occasions through the years.
'He could have been a great manager if he had wanted to go that way,' Steinbrenner says. 'He's a true leader. He could do anything in business. He could have run my shipping company. He's that good. He'll be as good as anyone the National League ever had in that position.'
For 18 years White and Rizzuto teamed together to bring fans the game on radio and television. There was much affection displayed and a lot of old-fashioned ballplayer humor.
When asked why he would leave the security of baseball broadcasting for the pressures of the National League executive suite, White explained, 'If you ever worked 18 years with Rizzuto you know my motivation. I sat next to that guy all those years and he still doesn't know my first name.'
White was kidding about that as everyone knew. In ball player parlance, no one ever has a first name. That was Rizzuto's way of calling White a teammate.
When the new president was installed at a lavish press conference, the reporters pressed the issue of race. They zeroed in on White's feeling about being the first black to hold the position.
'I don't know how I feel,' he laughed. 'I've been black all my life.'
Gibson is tired of that part of the story.
'The guy got the job because he was the best man the owners could find,' says the former fireballer. 'That should be the last time we have to listen to race questions.'
It is clear White got his new position because he is a solid, intelligent, experienced, dignified, popular baseball man. Color has as much bearing on his qualifications as the Yankees manager being Green or the AL's president being Brown.
The 55-year-old divorced father of five also recognized that there are different stages in a man's life. 'I wanted to get on with my life,' he explains. 'After 18 years of saying 'It's a groundball to second,' it was time for something a bit more definite.'
White had come a long way from those days when he was simply an ex-jock learning his new trade. He is clearly a professional broadcaster with all the skills and authority of some of his great predecessors- Mel Allen, Russ Hodges, Red Barber, Joe Garagiola, Curt Gowdy and Scooter.
'I hope to bring the job my experience as a player and a love of the game,' he says. 'I also hope to bring more harmony between the players and the owners.'
I have known Bill White for more than 30 years. He is an exceptional man. This may not be his final career move.
After all, a man named Ronald Reagan started his professional career as a baseball broadcaster."
-Maury Allen, The New York Yankees Official 1989 Yearbook
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